Seasons 4.0 – an experiment in dance, music and interactive technology via your smartphone. Please join us for a work-in-progress sharing in London.
Time: Friday 5th September 2014, 12 noon.
Venue: Rich Mix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London, E1 6LA
Please join us to watch, test and respond to this new Drake Music commission (work-in-progress) for the composer Sonia Allori, working with choreographer Sheron Wray, technologist Fleeta Siegel and dramaturg Danny Braverman.
Seasons 4.0 is a collaboration across electro-acoustic music, contemporary dance and interactive technology. This event is the culmination of a two-week period of intense research and development. We are sharing our work with an audience in order to gather feedback and shape the project for the next stage. The performance will last approximately 20 minutes and will be followed by an artists’ Q&A, and accompanied by audience evaluation.
FREE entry.
NB Audience interaction is via your smartphone. If you don’t have a smartphone you are welcome to attend but will not be able to take part in the interaction.
Seasons 4.0 is funded by Unlimited – celebrating the work of disabled artists, using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and Creative Scotland. It is also supported by Drake Music through the Rayne Foundation, Arts Council Catalyst and the Connect & Collaborate London programme.
If you are attending other Unlimited events at the Southbank, there is a quick 30 minute, step-free Jubille Line / East London Line route between Rich Mix at Shoreditch High Street and the Southbank at Waterloo, via Canada Water, or 26 bus. See TFL for details.
The Creative Team
Drake Music has a 20 year history of breaking down disabling barriers to music through innovative approaches to teaching, learning and making music using music and assistive technology. Traditionally concentrating on learning and participation, since 2011 Drake Music has sought to strengthen its professional artistic development through an Artistic Development and Innovation strand within the organisation. Seasons4.0 is the first public project to come out of this new strand.
Sonia Allori is a Scottish/Italian composer, musician, music therapist and writer trying to find a way forwards in life using disability and music and words as tools for change. She is keen to progress into the “real world” now following on from a period of postgraduate study resulting in a PhD in Music Composition and an MSc in Music Therapy. Sonia plays the clarinet, sax, bassoon, flute, whistles, piano and has been known to sing from time to time! She has recently started exploring the use of technology and electronics to temper and enhance the sounds she can create organically, resulting in the creation of a fusion sound palette of acoustic instruments and electronic wizardry.
Sheron Wray, former NESTA Fellow, is an improviser, choreographer, director, teacher and scholar. She self-titles as a ‘Performance Architect’, receiving her Master’s degree from Middlesex University and currently completing her PhD at the University of Surrey. She danced with London Contemporary Dance Theatre and Rambert Dance Company between 1988 and 2001. Sheron is widely known for her role as the leading performer and legal custodian of Harmonica Breakdown (1938), choreographed by Jane Dudley. As its custodian she continues to restage the work globally. As artistic director of JazzXchange Music and Dance Company between 1992 and 2004 she collaborated with musicians including Gary Crosby, Julian Joseph, Wynton Marsalis, Zoe Rahman and Byron Wallen. For the UK’s 2012 Cultural Olympiad Festival she was commissioned to choreograph The Brown Bomber, collaborating with Joseph once again, supported by the PRS Foundation. As a result of her 4-year NESTA fellowship, dance of the African diaspora, jazz and improvisation intersect in her concept of digitally enabled improvisation which manifests in the award-winning Texterritory. Texterritory is an interactive performance platform created in collaboration with Fleeta Siegel. Recent productions include Texterritory Congo, Digitally Ever Present and Texterritory USA. Her recent Ted talk embodies her philosophy . In 2013 she re-launched JazzXchange and was appointed guest curator of contemporary performance for the Monuments and Museums of Ghana.
Fleeta Chew Siegel is a multi media practitioner who has co-produced a variety of projects with a multitude of co-creators- secondary school kids to make computer games; young people who have a range of learning disabilities to make short films and Lego Robots; websites; interactive CD-ROM’s and web/Flash based games. He has also produced a documentary, ‘In Search of the Valley’, about Silicon Valley and has 2 video projects in post-produciton. He has also consulted for Discovery Channel Europe to produce videos for mobile streaming. His long running collaboration with Sheron Wray on the innovative Texterritory- which uses mobile phones and SMS technology to allow interaction between the audience and performer- has produced numerous world-wide performances over the last 8 years in Los Angeles, New York, London, Bucharest, Munich and Polveriggi, Italy.
Danny Braverman FRSA is a theatre maker with 30 years’ experience in community theatre, arts education and collaborative methodologies. As Head of Education at Theatre Royal Stratford East, he set up the pioneering citizenship programme Making a Difference, which led to the publication of his book Playing a Part: Drama and Citizenship in 2002. Following a two-year post as Senior Theatre Officer with Arts Council England, London where he led on theatre for children and young people, Danny became Director of the Orpheus Centre, where he developed an innovative arts-based programme for young disabled adults in transition to independent living. Danny is a Lecturer in Applied Theatre at Goldsmiths University, and is currently touring his critically acclaimed solo show Wot? No Fish!! nationally and internationally 2014 and 2015.
Audiences
Seasons 4.0 aims to investigate how different audiences engage with the performing arts, as well as how people operate in public space. It is designed for inclusive audiences of disabled and non-disabled people, and as such explores a ‘disability aesthetic’, embedding inclusivity as an artistic feature.
