Percussion and Hoola

Ruth and Adam Battle-Wayre joined us for a workshop on the 7th of December exploring common language and expression between percussion (Marianthe), photography (Adam), and circus (Sacha and Ruth). Ruth and I had experience of Hoola hooping and juggling together, I had experience of working with Marianthe's drum language and Ruth had experience of working with her husbands photography. This background experience made a lot more flow possible in our exploration.

Questions

How much does previous practice enable further improvisation dialogue?

What are the strongest links between the disparate mediums?

How would this work develop into a performative piece and how would the choreography/improvisation continuum be weighted?

Ruth's many years of experience in devised theatre (lots of improvisation) led to some stunning mirroring. The knowledge we both had of Hoola hoop movement properties enhanced this dialogue. Due to our different styles of Hoola we also found points where we did not share certain aspects of the language and this led to natural and beautiful transistions. Marianthe explicitly described how stops in the Egyptian  rhythm she was playing  were used in Egyptian dance and this created some great communication across both mediums. Adam filmed through one static camera and moved around the space with another camera capturing moments. The key that connected everything was the finding, celebration, and connecting to the moments that we created and could all distinctly sense.