Exhibition highlights | 'Joy' curator tour | Wellcome Collection
Joy curators Tour - Wellcome Collection Exhibition Joy
Friday, October 01, 2021
Choreographing Joy
Friday 22 October 2021, 15:00—16:30
- Free
- Workshop
- British Sign Language
What you’ll do
Experience the power of dance in an online movement workshop with choreographer Vania Gala.
Following a warm-up, Gala will introduce you to the meditative and trance-like state
that dancing can evoke as you move to music from Harold Offeh’s ‘The Joy Inside Our Tears’
installation.
No previous experience is required and you’ll be invited to move in whatever way is comfortable for you.
The workshop will be a live closed event with a small group of people, which will not be recorded.
We encourage cameras to be on so you can dance with others and ask questions.
After booking a ticket, you will receive a confirmation email with joining instructions.
About your contributorsHarold Offeh
Harold Offeh
(he/him)
Curator
Harold Offeh is a UK-based artist working in a range of media including performance, video,
photography, learning and social arts practice. Offeh is interested in the space created by inhabiting
or embodying histories, using humour to confront the viewer with historical narratives and
contemporary culture. He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, including Tate Britain
and Tate Modern, South London Gallery, Turf Projects (London), Kettle’s Yard, Wysing Arts Centre
Studio (Cambridge), Studio Museum Harlem (New York), MAC VAL (France) Kunsthal Charlottenborg
(Denmark) and Art Tower Mito (Japan). He recently completed a PhD exploring the activation of
Black album covers through performance. He is a Reader in Fine Art at Leeds Beckett University and a tutor in Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art.
Vânia Gala
(she/her)
Choreographer
Vânia Gala is a choreographer and researcher. Gala's choreographies and conversational
performances explore the critical potential of (non)performance(s) and opacity in the present time.
Her interests lie in critical dance studies, performance philosophy and experimental practices with
an emphasis on notions of refusal, choreo-thinking, fugitivity, improvisation(s), negotiation, dissensus, hospitality and value.
Wednesday, July 21, 2021
Joy Inside Our Tears - Wellcome Collection
Joy Inside Our Tears opened this week at the Wellcome Collection @wellcomecollection . The work explores the power and pleasure of social dance and duration to overcome societal trauma. Made during the lockdown this past winter. The work is presented as part of the Joy and Tranquility exhibitions from 15 July 2021—27 February 2022.
By Harold Offeh
Performers: Samra Mayanja @samra_mayanja, Veronica Cordova de la Rosa
@veronica_cordovadelarosa, Ebun Sodipo @epastry and Harold Offeh
Choreography. Dr Vania Gala @vaniagala
Sound Design. Xana @xa88na
Vinyl Design and Photography, Eloise Calandre @eloise_calandre
Editing and Production Manager, Jack Scott
Production Assistant: James Johnson
Curators George Vasey @georgevasey and Laurie Britton Newell @lauriecurates
Exhibitions manager Bryony Harris @bryonyrosanna
@wellcomecollection
There are fantastic commissions by artists @_jasleen.kaur_ @amaliapica @chrystal_lebas and @davidshringley
Images: Joy Inside Our Tears, Harold Offeh 2021; Joy, Wellcome Collection / Steven Pocock, 2021. CC-BY-NC
Thursday, February 25, 2021
TaPRA (Theatre and Performance Research Association) Conference 2019
TaPRA (Theatre and Performance Research Association) Conference 2019
“Dispossession: Agency, Ecology and Theatrical Reality”
TaPRA 2019 University of Exeter
Vânia Gala
Other Possible choreographies: The Potential of the Missing Performer
This talk assumes the performative conversational form in a round-table with the participants. It will be written in the way my practice is experienced, attempted: interrupted by scores and chance procedures.
I will frame questions related to the potential of withdrawal, opacity and disappearance as fundamental ideas for choreographic performance in the present time.
By approaching performance from this perspective I aim at filling in gaps resulting from the exploitative ceasura between "Nature" and " Society" (Moore, 2015) created by capitalism. For performance to focus on this caesura, on the empty interval between "Nature" and "Society" produced by exploitative capitalism is to open up performance to other alternative performances, knowledges and even concepts often "reduced" (Glissant, 1997) or ignored. Moreover, such an approach can prove productive in revealing performance's generative capacity under a time characterized by hyper presence and a compulsion to perform. As performance becomes a core feature of hyper-capitalism could a refusal to perform or a withdrawal of the performer provide alternatives or critical stance on the way we live today? What other presences,existences, knowledges have been ignored by performance because of the ineherited division of "Nature" and "Society"? How can choreography move away from the aesthetic burden object/subject divide inherited from modernism? Finally, I ask in what ways are we not as performance artists presently endeavouring in visible resistance but accomplices in the present form of capitalism?
This contribution will be taking a look at some arrangements present in the works of Bousier, Hammons, Verdonk and Jeong from this perspective and locating them under a broader performance studies perspective through the lenses of Haraway, Latour, Agamben, Glissant and Kunst's considerations.
Vânia Gala Choreographer and researcher based in London. She holds a MAC with Distinction (Trinity Laban) and is a PhD candidate at Kingston University. Collaborations as performer have involved Les Ballets C. de La B., Constanza Macras and Sonia Boyce. Recent creations include “Cooling Down Signs” a Pan- European commission by Beyond Front@ performed at Dance Week Festival (HR), D.I.D (AT), Front@ Festival (SI), Bakelit (HU). In 2019 she was awarded Best Choreography Award by Theatre Guide Awards (Portugal).
Thursday, September 5 2019
2:00pm BST
Working Group Session 3: Theatre, Performance and Philosophy
Vânia Gala
Other Possible choreographies: The Potential of the Missing Performer
This talk assumes the performative conversational form in a round-table with the participants. It will be written in the way my practice is experienced, attempted: interrupted by scores and chance procedures.
I will frame questions related to the potential of withdrawal, opacity and disappearance as fundamental ideas for choreographic performance in the present time.
By approaching performance from this perspective I aim at filling in gaps resulting from the exploitative ceasura between "Nature" and " Society" (Moore, 2015) created by capitalism. For performance to focus on this caesura, on the empty interval between "Nature" and "Society" produced by exploitative capitalism is to open up performance to other alternative performances, knowledges and even concepts often "reduced" (Glissant, 1997) or ignored. Moreover, such an approach can prove productive in revealing performance's generative capacity under a time characterized by hyper presence and a compulsion to perform. As performance becomes a core feature of hyper-capitalism could a refusal to perform or a withdrawal of the performer provide alternatives or critical stance on the way we live today? What other presences,existences, knowledges have been ignored by performance because of the ineherited division of "Nature" and "Society"? How can choreography move away from the aesthetic burden object/subject divide inherited from modernism? Finally, I ask in what ways are we not as performance artists presently endeavouring in visible resistance but accomplices in the present form of capitalism?
This contribution will be taking a look at some arrangements present in the works of Bousier, Hammons, Verdonk and Jeong from this perspective and locating them under a broader performance studies perspective through the lenses of Haraway, Latour, Agamben, Glissant and Kunst's considerations.
Vânia Gala Choreographer and researcher based in London. She holds a MAC with Distinction (Trinity Laban) and is a PhD candidate at Kingston University. Collaborations as performer have involved Les Ballets C. de La B., Constanza Macras and Sonia Boyce. Recent creations include “Cooling Down Signs” a Pan- European commission by Beyond Front@ performed at Dance Week Festival (HR), D.I.D (AT), Front@ Festival (SI), Bakelit (HU). In 2019 she was awarded Best Choreography Award by Theatre Guide Awards (Portugal).
Thursday, September 5 2019
2:00pm BST
Working Group Session 3: Theatre, Performance and Philosophy
Press link above for video
Dance of Belém, 2011 | Instalação video
Credits:
Dancer - Vania Gala
Soundtrack - DJ Johnny
Camera - Ines Amado; Sandro Resende
Producers - Paul Goodwin; Bruno Malveira
Director - Sonia Boyce
Special thanks to: Ines Amado; Paul Goodwin; P28
Dance of Belem - a Sonia Boyce project (2011)
Credits:
Dancer - Vania Gala
Soundtrack - DJ Johnny
Camera - Ines Amado; Sandro Resende
Producers - Paul Goodwin; Bruno Malveira
Director - Sonia Boyce
Special thanks to: Ines Amado; Paul Goodwin; P28
Dance of Belem - a Sonia Boyce project (2011)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)