Swings & Dramaturgy: Matthew Hawkins @ Edfringe 2017

In-The-Making Collective

Swings & Roundabouts

Opening: 7, 14, 21 Aug 15.30 | £10.00 (£8.00) | 2 hours, drop-in

Dance Base (Venue 22) 14–16 Grassmarket, Edinburgh

Engage with Edinburgh’s most accomplished independent dance artists, every Monday at Dance Base.

In-the-Making Collective is a gathering of accomplished, independent dance makers who work nationally and internationally but abide largely in Edinburgh. Focusing on the process of making, each performance within the Swings & Roundabouts is different, offering a variety of dance every Monday.

In-The-Making Collective will be in the studio for 2 hours on the 7, 14, and 21 August, improvising and creating to a live electronic score by composer Bill Thompson. Audiences are invited to enter the studio for as long as they please and find their own vantage points among the artists.

• What was the inspiration for this performance?

MH. Alongside fully and conventionally produced performances, I DREAM there could be a light-touch, streamlined way of performing. I am in search of this. A year ago I was approached by Merav Israel and Claire Pencak with ideas that affirmed we were on a similar track. We were, and still are, inspired to design and steer toward this kind of collective event that takes its own shape.

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas?

MH. It’s always going to be a compressed experience of ideas in a heightened circumstance, methinks. Often the public discussion happens before and after, whereas I think the ideas mainly discuss each other within the show’s duration.

• How did you become interested in making performance?

MH. Dancing in a performance always brought out an array of intense feelings in me. I feel I ‘belong’ in that zone. Performance vindicates the training and growth I am constantly sharing in. Making performance means there is a performance I can find myself in.

• Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

MH. It’s a collective approach, stemming from an individual initiative, steered by the three of us.

• Does the show fit with your usual productions?

MH. It’s an alternative: something that can’t be reached in the usual way, but yet feels compatible with an ongoing outlook.

• What do you hope that the audience will experience?

MH. A fulfilling epic space in time: a pleasure in the witness of something shaping before the eyes in real time and a lucid probe into the ‘how’.

• What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

MH. Strategies grew from an open-door invitation to inhabit studio 2 at Dancebase. Being invited stemmed from a programmer’s great experience of seeing our collective perform in a gallery space last year. In the new circumstance, we look for strategies to combine elements that we feel ‘work’ (a reference to practices we know) with the right kind of departures and risks that made our previous outing shine.

We opt now for fewer decisions to be made in any rehearsal process. We are hatching ways of deftly writing (and editing) short scores, to trigger and define structures and ‘events’ whose dancing is entirely fresh.

Formed by Matthew Hawkins, Meray Israel and Claire Pençak, performers will include Nicholas Bone, Ian Cameron, Amy Longmuir, Rosalind Masson, Alex McCabe, Sheila Macdougall, Brigid McCarthy, Tony Mills and Bill Thompson.