DramaturgyHouse: Bill Coleman @ Edfringe 2017

DOLLHOUSE

15 – 27 Aug

Previews:

15 Aug | 20.45 | 50 mins | 12+

£10 (£8 conc)

Opening:

16 – 27 Aug | 20.45 | 50 mins | 12+

£12 (£10 conc)

DOLLHOUSE will not be performed on Monday 21 Aug.

Contemporary dance master and choreographer Bill Coleman portrays a figure whose whole world is literally falling in around him.

Sharing the stage with avant-garde composer Gordon Monahan an object-laden room collapses and breaks at the dancers every touch. Playing the role of modern fakir Coleman suffers through what at times are almost comic situations on his way to sonic and visual pandemonium.

Both eye-popping spectacle and unique score, DOLLHOUSE encompasses tap dancing and performance art while mechanical and electronic objects, both handmade and found, deliver disrupting and surprising rhythms for the ears and eyes.

• What was the inspiration for this
  
  performance?Buster Keaton and interacting with things breaking and falling were the basic inspiration for this work…of course like any creative journey once in the studio the process itself became the inspiration, we wandered far from Buster and the silent comedies.
  
  
  
  
• Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas?I work in dance with a particular focus on embodiment…trying to enact or respond with my full body rather than commenting on something. Ultimately ideas must be embodied to actually happen, just as change must be embodied in some way to happen. So yes transformative performance is a good platform or venue to meditate on ideas.
  
  
  
• 
  How did you become interested in making performance?I started Tap dancing at 15, which is basically making noise while moving around in front of people. I had shown glimmers of creativity at school with a play and some funny dances at Dance School but it wasn’t until I had encountered contemporary dance and its ‘you can pretty much do anything’ appeal that I became interested in making performance.
  
  
  
• Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?This was a very collaborative process, it could only really manifest the way it did with Gordon’s (composer) presence.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Does the show fit with your usual productions?No. In a way we both stepped slightly outside our artistic practices in order to make something that seems to be very hard to describe.
  
  
  
• What do you hope that the audience will experience?I hope they will feel both the sound and the movement.
  
  
• What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

Art, when it’s at its best, is very eloquent. I think we tried to accomplish all the goals we set for ourselves as best we could. We then threw in a dash of humour, surprise and theatricality executed by experienced performers was perhaps our strategy.