Author Archives: Miriam (Mim) King

About Miriam (Mim) King

Miriam King is an Artist/Choreographer/Dancer/Live Artist/Filmmaker born in London , living in Brighton , working internationally. With an art school background, her professional performance career commenced in 1984. Moving from theatre through to dance, and to live art and film, her most significant training was with Anton Adasinsky's company DEREVO at their former studio in Leningrad, Russia in 1990. Miriam's work is influenced by Butoh dance. She has been creating her own unique performances since 1992, taking her to dance and live art festivals and artist-in-residences around the World. Her award winning dance film work has been shown at Lincoln Centre/ New York , Pompidou Centre/Paris, ICA/London, the Venice Biennial and at the Sydney Opera House, Australia and in every continent (excluding Antarctica ). Miriam has a continuing performance relationship with Gallery Kruh, Kostelec nad cernymi Lesy, nr Prague , Czech Republic which commenced in 1992 and an ongoing performance relationship with SoToDo Gallery , Berlin & the Congress of Visual and Performance Art.

Klaus Obermaier: Apparition

Two dancers, a strand of light behind them, an intense white strand of light, cutting across the rear wall – in response to the dancers, or is it that the dancers are responding to the light? This mesmerising brilliant strand is superseded by lines of light streaming down, vertically, contrasted by horizontal lines projected onto the bodies of the two dancers. One dancer implodes into a shadow, and then dances in silhouette against the screen of white lights. The dancers move with and against the fluctuating vertical lines and densities of black… all is relevant, involved and evolving.

Is it the screen or is it the performers leading the action? I could never tell and the question became redundant in this ‘interactive dance and technology work’, created under the artistic direction of Austrian cross-media artist Klaus Obermaier. Rob Tannion and Desiree Kongerod are powerful, solid dancers, full of grace and sensual responsiveness. Sometimes fleshy, coloured amber; sometimes shadows; sometimes the body a pulsating constellation of stars in the dark. Everything has a vitality and a resonance. Whole sections made me inhale with pleasure and surprise, not one moment a let-down, with the images and atmosphere carried by a soundtrack that supports the visuals in an electronic, swampy kind of way. Play the best friv games this website. I was in wonderment at pouring vortexes of light, swarming sperm-like pearls of light, and undulating strands of energy, exploding, wrapping, tumbling, lacing, and entwining the dancers’ bodies, which at times seemed to dissolve away before my very eyes, only to then reform and reconstitute back into an intangible human energy.

www.exile.at/ko

Sleepdogs: Astronaut

A full house, quiet, a twilit lull, then into the dark and the sound of an electronic signal, coming in, cutting out; difficult to hear dialogue. I could make out some words: that of an astronaut, an astronaut in the dark, the voice of Neil Armstrong in the dark, in communication with NASA. Beep beep! We hear Armstrong’s surprise that from the lunar surface, you can’t see the stars, no stars…

The Bristol company Sleepdogs is a collaboration between writer/composer Timothy X Atack and producer/director Tanuja Amarasuriya. They work with stories. I saw Astronaut as a free lunchtime show at Brighton Festival, where it was part of Caravan – a biennial curated showcase of site-specific, interactive and incidental performance.

With a direct narrative delivered by Tim X Atack – using one microphone, near darkness and a wonderfully evocative soundscape – Astronaut shows us what would have happened if the Apollo 11 mission had failed and the astronauts had been unable to return. Tim gives us the speech that Nixon had prepared had this been the outcome. NASA would have shut down all connection and communication. The astronauts left with a diminishing oxygen supply, nothing but silence, and the curve of the earth and a sky devoid of stars – what would they have done? How would they have used their last breaths? Perhaps a song… and what song would that have been? In the final minutes we are left with that question and our own imaginations are thrown out into the magnitude of an endless night. In its simplicity, making no big drama of such a chilling possibility, Astronaut is a precise yet tender telling of the precarious balance between life and death, full of perfect timing, delivery and… space…

www.sleepdogs.org

Platform 4: Memory Point(s)

Platform 4’s Memory Point(s) is a site-specific piece set in and around The Point in Eastleigh. Formerly a Town Hall, the rambling building offers up staircases and corridors, corners and cupboards, as well as the backstage areas, dressing rooms and unseen parts of what is now a theatre. To create Memory Point(s) Platform 4 worked for 18 months alongside members of the Alzheimer’s Society Southampton, and Eastleigh Connections Club for younger people with dementia and their carers. Workshops were run, memories and creative ideas were shared and noted, with the focus not on the trauma of Alzheimer’s, but on the gathering and distillation of pleasurable, joyful memories. The piece is therefore a celebration of the participants, their enthusiasm and energy shaping the form and content of this heartwarmingly engaging, atmospheric and experiential show. Different artists ran different workshops, and the videos, installations, music, and costumes that we see inMemory Point(s) are all there because of the direct and individual connections made with the original participants. For example, the experience of dressing up was a strong one for the participants, so this is included as one of the activities that we, as the roaming audience, engage with; other thematic points include memories of trips to the seaside, evenings out, holidays. All the music – both recorded and live, heard through headphones – was inspired by the participant groups, with the sea providing the connecting theme.

I was intrigued from the beginning of the journey, and captivated by the subsequent encounters that I shared with four other audience adventurers. At the outset, across the road from The Point, a smartly dressed man holding a green balloon gave us directions back across the road and into the costume draped and clad box office area… From there on doors were opened, invitations offered, and the man with the green balloon magically and calmly appeared back inside the building and invited us to sit and receive headphones that helped us on our way. Full of charm, and delight, and the nostalgia of a bygone time, we ventured into corridors and cupboards, receiving keys and packets of seaside rock, dressing up, looking up ladders, and discovering wonderful musicians, each encounter full of a sense of occasion, a sense of wonder and discovery, rather than loss and confusion.

A culmination and highlight at the end was waiting in the wings and being led on stage for a photographic moment whilst adorned in the fancy dress of our choice. There was great music and a cup of tea, plus a fancy iced cake, and a chair on stage that looked out over the empty auditorium. Then down in the orchestra pit, which was barren yet strewn with last autumn’s leaves, there was a rustle, and without noticing how she arrived there I was taken aback to see a lady in a blue party dress lying face-down, prostrate. There followed an evocative solo dance, choreographed and performed by Sacha Lee, based on loss, laughter and letting go…

I so enjoyed the sense of space, and the distance, the dark corridor moments and really not knowing where I was going or what I would encounter next, yet still feeling guided in a comfortable and celebratory manner. The live music was a delight: double bass, fiddle, piano, and glockenspiel made it an even richer experience. I would have liked to have had more time to have absorbed atmospheres and to ponder, yet this was a tour, a privileged ‘stopping off’ at other peoples memories that let us glimpse their former lives. The piece aims to be a celebration of happy memories, of love and living life to the full, giving a magical experience for everyone to enjoy – and in this it certainly succeeded. I came away feeling like I’d really witnessed and been part of something unique, and was charmed, moved and enriched in equal measures.

www.platform4.org

Dotted Line: The Lonely One

Dotted Line Theatre is a very new company formed this year by Rachel Warr, a theatre director, dramaturg and puppeteer. Drawing from a variety of theatrical disciplines, the company aim to create new original work with a strong narrative, and a distinctive visual style laced with a playful quality. The story ofThe Lonely One, based on an excerpt from Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury and adapted for stage by Rachel Warr, uses acting, shadow play and light manipulation to draw us into the tale of a small, Southern American town, where a murderer is on the lurk.

So, entering into the Little Angel Theatre, we are greeted on stage by four still and silent performers, standing, suspended in the moment between us getting our coats off and settling down. There are miniature houses on stage, leading back into the distance, creating an image of a small town… a scattering of white houses with porches… and darkness, all around.

Using body, space, light and voice, this is excellent storytelling, simple and effective, lit amongst and by all four performers. There puppetry gives us occasional illustration through momentary shadow puppets: the silhouettes of neighbours in their houses, rocking chairs in silent windows; a man smoking, the shadow of his exhaled smoke wafting up and causing much delight in the audience. Through handheld torches and manipulation we have fireflies in the evening woodland, the flicker of a revolving fan, the gleam on faces from an evening out at the silver screen. With details such as the red neon light of the Hotel Elite and drinks in a soda bar, this is illustrated storytelling. Somehow, the clever thing is, you never really see anything sinister, yet you feel it, sense it… it’s all implied. Like listening to a story, images in your own head glide up into the performance space as if an external projection of your own imagination. Captivating performances. You believe them.

A strong air of suspense is built up, especially during the main character Lavinia’s solitary late night monologue as she crosses the ravine and descends the steps. The Lonely One is a dark and shadowy tale, brimming with a simple brilliance.

www.littleangeltheatre.com

Kulunka Teatro: André and Dorine

In a style similar to Germany’s acclaimed Familie Floez, Kulunka Teatro has created a piece of vibrant contemporary mask theatre that transcends language. An elderly man is typing at home at his desk, his wife is nearby, playing cello… they are irritated at each other when their son comes to visit. The father finishes writing his book; the son takes his mother to the doctors. The father is proud of the book he’s had published and doesn’t care for the diagnosis of his wife’s condition. There are early flashbacks to how the couple met and courted; him a young writer, her a concert cellist. We are brought back to the current state of play and the slow unravelling of Dorine’s grip on things; being unable to dress correctly, not recognising André, his face literally a ‘blank’ to her, and him doing his best to cope… and care.

Kulunka Teatro is a young company, founded in 2010 in the Basque Country, Spain. This is their first masked piece, initiated from a desire to experiment with different stage languages. It is hard to believe that mask work has not been their speciality. In making André and Dorine they made sure the first stages of Alzheimer’s were clear for the audience, then juxtaposed this with the flashbacks to an earlier life of warmth and humour. How to convey things without words? The essence of a gesture, a search… a necessity to choose a movement carefully – the speed, the rhythm, the dynamic. Here every movement is in service of the story. The story is told with believable characters, with which the audience can identify. It’s a wonder to believe Kulunka is just three performers, for the story is full of many other characters, and the domestic landscape so rich and embodied. The audience loved this show… vivid, fiercely committed and movingly woven into reality.

Total Theatre