Research Article by Jacky Lansley, Fergus Early, Jreena Green, Esther Huss, Ingrid Mackinnon & Tim Taylor
Published online May 2023

This group article explores personal and political experiences of six UK based artists who came together in 2016 to create a performance project ‘About Us’ and have continued to support each other throughout the pandemic. The article is a collage of writings and images which convey the personal stories of each author and reflect on differences and alliances concerning gender, racial identity, age, sexuality and social class.

Lansley introduces the context in which this diverse group came together. She identifies the research themes explored in ‘About Us’, which threw up fundamental questions concerning what it is to be both human and animal, and why we oppress and demonize other animal species. Green discusses these ideas from her perspective as a black woman, for whom the position that we are all animals is complex, raising issues concerning slavery and scientific racism. Huss discusses taking on the lease of an old miners’ institute in a quest to bring back cultural life to an impoverished area of Northumberland. She tracks historical and cultural links between the closure of the pits in the 80s and the present, identifying forms of protest which brought miners’ unions and artists together in solidarity. Taylor draws on writings by the philosopher Jacques Rancière to explore finding solidarity across difference within both his teaching and performance work. He discusses how the group supported him to develop a language that expressed intimate thoughts and feelings about being a gay man. Early uses poetry and parable to question our relationship to the planet and all the species we share it with. He interrogates the Judeo-Christian notion of hierarchical ‘civilization’ and explores the intelligence of trees. Mackinnon reflects on her position as a black woman and mother in a world that strives for unity, but continues to divide. She discusses how the group draws on strengths as movement and dance makers to share differences in ways that enable growth and understanding.

In August of this year DRS had the pleasure of hosting a solo performance by the independent artist Matthew Hawkins. The beautiful work was titled ‘Ready’ and was inspired by a box set of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, left to Matthew by his father. The performance was followed by a very interesting Q&A discussion with the small guest audience. DRS is delighted to launch both a short film of the performance – filmed and edited by Flavia Bertram – along with the full recording of the Q&A.

Over the pandemic, DRS Artistic Director Jacky Lansley tasked herself with creating short dances for camera as a way to keep moving and creating. ‘For Them’ – a suite of four films – is a result of that process.

“The film ‘The Open Door’ came about during one of the lockdowns when I simply decided I had to see other people – even a glimpse of people passing by would be a feast! Sometimes people would stop and look in, chat and even dance a little in the street. This live sharing was a relief and inspiration and reminded me, again, that creative ideas can come from the everyday and the minimal.

This project is also a celebration and honouring of the Dance Research Studio… which for 20 years has inspired and supported radical dance of all descriptions. Many artists have found a home at the studio, hundreds of works have been made on its beech wood floor… It has allowed me to continue researching through challenging times and I am grateful that I have been able to create this project ‘For Them’.”

– Jacky Lansley

Dance Research Studio has made a short documentary film about some of the projects that we were able to support with Arts Council emergency funding during lockdown:

‘The Free Artist?’ A research and consultation process to explore the impact of lockdown and beyond on the freelance independent sector. Participating artists: Chinasa Vivian Ezugha, Esther Huss, Ingrid MacKinnon, Jreena Green, Rachael Davies, Seke Chimutengwende, Susan Kempster, Jacky Lansley, Timothy Taylor, Ursula Early, Zosia Jo and Lucy Tuck.

‘The Speaking Dancer’ online interdisciplinary performance workshops, led by Jacky Lansley and Sally E Dean. Participating artists: Jemima Bennett, Angela Elvira Bruce, Katya Bourvis, Kat Cooley, Anna Dighero, Kemi Durosinmi, Manny Emslie, Bettina Helmrich, Josephine Hepplewhite, Lauren Hart, Donald Hutera, Katie Keeble, Ioana Kirk, Anna Kuman, Andrea Ondrušková, Malti Patel, Alejandro Postigo, Mary Price-O’Connor, Nicholas Quinn, Helen Robertson, and Emily Robinson.

Interdisciplinary Research Project

Originally scheduled to take place at DRS and Dance 4/iC4C in the spring-summer of 2020, ‘We Are Animals’ is a research project which aims to engage with the urgent cultural momentum driving forward awareness about environmental sustainability and animal extinction – and make a valuable research contribution through remembering that we too are animals.

The creative team have continued to meet online throughout the lockdown period, taking the research forward and supporting each other through a difficult period. 

They are exploring a wide range of cultural, political  and ecological narratives, which both celebrate the human animal as part of human subjectivity and also degrade the animal as the opposite of everything human beings aspire to. These sources will provide a framework for creative research, which aims to achieve some understanding of human symbiosis and empathy with other animals and to ask fundamental questions about an idea of ‘civilisation’ which separates ‘us’ from ‘them’.

On the ‘We Are Animals’ pages of the DRS site, the artists – Jacky Lansley,  Jreena Green, Esther Huss, Ingrid Mackinnon, Fergus  Early and Tim Taylor – share starting points and fragments from their individual and collective research.

Click here for more information. 

Saturday October 24th 2020

‘The Speaking Dancer’ online workshop offers students coming from a professional and or performing arts degree background the opportunity to rethink their relationship to their practice, within the supportive and innovative context of Dance Research Studio. The workshop will introduce cross disciplinary training methods and stimuli which support the artist as both performer and author.

During the pandemic crisis we have all been severely challenged while struggling to maintain emotional and physical equilibrium within the new and strange reality. For many it will have been a time of isolation and splitting from the warmth and energy of family and friends. The idea of ‘The Speaking Dancer’ online suggests the opposite of separation, and will be an opportunity to come together remotely as a group to create, play, learn and explore collaboratively.

Click here for more information and to register.

The programme will offer participants the opportunity to create new work, engage in innovative training and research strategies, meet a wide community of practitioners online and contribute to fundamental debates and new writing about the current challenging issues facing all of us. Watch this space for more information over the coming months.

At the beginning of the Covid Crisis, Dance Research Studio’s Artistic Director Jacky Lansley began making a series of short unedited films which focus on her feet, as a way of staying in touch with everyone. She called this project Foot Notes and invited other practitioners to make their own short foot films and send them to DRS. To date the studio has  received sixteen beautiful foot films from different parts of the world, which can be viewed on the DRS Foot Notes page, in DRS’ Facebook and Instagram feeds. 

DRS is continuing to invite practitioners to send in their foot films to become part of the Foot Notes project: you need very little room to make a foot choreography, though make sure it is a safe environment in which to move and film; you  may find it useful to choose an inspiring piece of music or soundscape– and/or  your space maybe your  inspiration; you need a phone camera which you can hold yourself, or someone else can film you.

If you would like to send your foot films to Dance Research Studio (flavia@danceresearchstudio.com) we can put them out on our website and other platforms alongside my films.

Wishing you all well – and happy foot movie making!
Jacky

In response to on-going developments surrounding COVID-19 worldwide, Dance Research Studio has decided to stop public activities from Monday 16th March until further notice. We take the safeguarding of our artistic community very seriously and believe it is necessary to support and comply with the closure of non-essential public spaces at this time.

We will maintain a social media presence and are considering ways of keeping creative work going through online discussion and research. We very much look forward to welcoming back our associate and residency artists, teachers, students and others to the studio when the situation has changed for the better.

February 7th – March 22nd, 2020

‘X6 Dance Space (1976-80): Liberation Notes’ at Cell Project Space is the first presentation of work about the X6 Collective (1976-80), founded by dance artists Emilyn Claid, Maedée Duprès, Fergus Early, Jacky Lansley and Mary Prestidge.

The X6 Collective was a counter-cultural dance movement active from 1976 to 1980 in London, UK. X6 established an entirely new structure and way of working outside of Britain’s mainstream ballet and contemporary dance institutions. It was concerned with a fundamentally new approach to dance aesthetics, organisation and teaching, informed by emerging feminist and queer theoretical frameworks.  The collective resisted style as a definition and operated within a non-hierarchal structure, producing a diverse and radical programme of performances, classes and workshops that took place in a warehouse in Butler’s Wharf, London – the X6 Dance Space. In addition, X6 produced and published ‘New Dance’ magazine (1977-88), a vital platform for progressive writing, which explored dance and its social context. The collective played a critical role in the development of UK contemporary and New Dance practices.

This exhibition brings together unseen, archival material including original publicity from performances and events as well as a display of selected New Dance magazines. X6 developed new radical ways of working and thinking about dance relevant to its particular social and political moment.

This exhibition presents an opportunity to revisit the movement and consider the legacy of X6 within a contemporary framework, rethinking strategies of collectivity, resistance and opposition to oppressive politics within a current cultural and social context.

A programme of discussions and performances will take place throughout the duration of the exhibition, including new performance work by X6 founders Emilyn Claid, Fergus Early, Jacky Lansley and Mary Prestidge.

Click here for more information