Who can know the dancer from the dance? – Yeats
Thrilled and very appreciative to be one of the 17 artists who have received an ACES Award 16/17 from the Arts Council NI and very excited to begin work on #KnowingtheDance which is looking at the places where poetry and dance/movement meet.
Full details of all the ACES awardees can be found on the Arts Council NI’s website HERE.
My work programme for the coming year (hardly feels like work) is roughly like this:
(1) Research phase – finding places where dance & poetry currently meet and seeking out innovative approaches
(2) Masterclass with a choreographer/maker who is doing really interesting work bridging the gap between dance/movement and other artforms
(3) A new ‘body’ of work exploring the concepts behind ‘Knowing the Dance’ – I’ll be looking at some technical things here as well around how we write ‘the body electric’ – as it were – via rhythm, use of language and grammar etc
(4) Performance piece in collaboration with a wonderful dancer/choreographer
(5) Creative Writing Workshop based on the above for sharing with the groups that I work with
(5) Launch of my collection with Templar Poetry, Spring 2017
(6) General writing development in tandem with the above. I’ve been very impressed by developments by previous ACES recipients and hoping to add to that.
I’ll be sharing and documenting #knowingthedance through this blog through the year.
Thanks to Down Recorder for a profile this week (16 November) on my writing, ACES and the Lagan Online/Reading Room initiative ’12NOW’. Great to be doing this in Downpatrick and working on the ACES project with Down Arts Centre.
Letters From Lady Nakatomi 