About Many Lifetimes
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A new work in the round by interdisciplinary dance company Yewande 103, accompanied by live music from Bianca Wilson and Femi Oriogun-Williams.
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Join Yewande 103 for a gentle evening of mesmerising solos and witness movement tenderly transforming between one performer and the next.
Many Lifetimes is steeped in personal archives around change, loss, acts of remembrance and the passage of time.
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Many Lifetimes previewed at Dance City, Newcastle in June 2024.
For more info and future bookings please get in touch via our contact page.
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From Alexandrina:
I am offering a collective moment to witness solos pass between performers. An invitation to hold one another in our watching and our changing. To allow the detail of dancing, the hum and thud of heartbeats, the gentle transformations, the developing of constellations both bodily and cosmic.
Outside, there is a sudden, huge downpour. I am editing a poem and thinking through a new dance work. I am thinking through layers of change whether profound, minor, shocking, wanted. I am again drawn to flooding, being flooded, again sensitive and re-sensitising. I am again wondering about spilling but about gathering too.
My heart. The Ocean. Everywhere splinters.
An image I keep returning to within grief, is to hold my broken heart splinters in an expansive, new network so the task is less about mending and more about holding these pieces suspended in space, as they are; a net of grief and a net of love.
Many Lifetimes is a new live work in the round by Yewande 103 building on our body of work exploring dynamic cycles of loss and healing through watery symbolism.
All under a melting canopy.
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Many Lifetimes will be in development throughout 2024 with rehearsals at FABRIC and Dance City. Commissioned by Dance City & Battersea Arts Centre. R&D has also been commissioned and supported by Battersea Art Centre
Creative Team
Concept, Creative Direction and Choreography: Alexandrina Yewande Hemsley
Dance Movement Collaborators: Pierre Babbage, Alexandrina Yewande Hemsley, Rickae Hewitt-Martin, Greta Mendez, Rudzani Moleya, B. Solomon, Alice Tatge
Production: Metal & Water, Nancy May Roberts, Elsabet Yonas
Sound Design & Composition: Bianca Wilson, Femi Oriogun-Williams, Ray Aggs
Set Co-Design: Rūta Irbīte, Alexandrina Yewande Hemsley
Set Fabrication and installation: Rūta Irbīte
Costume Design: Abiola Onabule
Costume Collages: Alexandrina Yewande Hemsley
Text: Alexandrina Yewande Hemsley
Rehearsal Direction: Angel Dust
Accessibility Coordinator: Sensoria, Saskia Horton
Audio Description - SoundScribe, Shivaangee Agrawal and Elaine Joseph
Special thanks to Chiron Stamp for design collaboration and to Frances Morgan for dance movement collaboration in the research and development period at Battersea Arts Centre.
Special thanks to Ana Grotta, David Archer and Reiss Dendie
Many Lifetimes has been commissioned by Dance City and the Gillian Dickinson Fund, FABRIC and Battersea Arts Centre. Additional development support has been funded by Art Council England.