Mugstock: The Garden: Korean Architecture

MugStock will offer a unique blend of live entertainment and activities such as pond dipping, castle tours, guided walks, woodland rambles, survival, storytelling, mountain biking, willow weaving and archery.

Mugdock Country Park Joint Management Committee is hugely supportive of the project.

Councillor Eric Gotts, Chair of the Committee, said, "We are very pleased that the organisers have chosen the wonderful surrounds of Mugdock to host this very special event.

"It's an exciting idea and has the potential to offer increased visitor numbers to the park, new audiences and a fresh way to enjoy one of Scotland's finest natural attractions."

Mugdock currently receives over 600,000 visitors each year and hopes are high that more visitors will be attracted from Glasgow, Stirling and beyond.

Alan Govan, who conceived the idea five years ago while visiting the park with his wife, added, "MugStock is a not-for-profit festival and we are all working on a voluntary basis, so our hearts are really in it to create an event which showcases the park itself while being something special for festival-goers."

Organisers expect 2,000 campers to attend the inaugural event on 7th - 9th August and are optimistic about launching with an Indie GoGo campaign next month.

Theatre 503 back for the New Year

The Diary of the Nobody @ King's Head

Soho Theatre: Springing to Life

I found it eventually

Press Release from the Soho Theatre begins...

Welcome to 2015, where everything is political in the lead up to the impending May 2015 general election.

Hang on, they have got to be kidding. An election, in 2015? We just had a big one - well, I suppose it was not an election, it was a Referendum, but it still had campaigning and talented artists sacrificing their ability to make work that expressed a political view (not the No voters, but still...).

Does this mean more political theatre?
As the media hone in on the political stage, Soho Theatre’s toeing the party line by announcing upcoming Spring theatre highlights with their own version of what a party can be. Exciting, evocative and powerful new work, new collaborations and London premieres dominate this season, where – if you read between the lines of the manifesto – you'll find serious and satirical metaphors on the housing crisis, social marginalisation and isolation, unemployment, youth prospects, rural degradation, cultural collisions and anarchy in the face of the establishment.

Seriously, as long as it is 'read between the lines' stuff. It is very rare that 'reading the lines' agit-prop theatre is any good. Rare, not impossible...

But it’s going to be more fun than that.

Soho Theatre begins its 2015 theatre programme, like any good political campaign does, by sending in the clowns. Kraken (6–18 Jan), is a simple man travelling through an illogical world. The award-winning, Gaulier-trained physical comedian, Trygve Wakenshaw, mocks and revitalises his own (mostly) wordless rhetoric as he wills you the audience to suspend your disbelief. 

It's next door. I got confused.

Why can't you send him up to Scotland? I thought that having Boris as Mayor was enough slapstick for everyone. 

The 2014 Melbourne International Comedy Festival Barry Award nominated follow-up to Squidboy comes to Soho Theatre for its London premiere as part of the London International Mime Festival. 

Meanwhile, the greatest orator of physical rhetoric and coercion of the mob from violence to peace and love – Doctor Brown – returns to Soho Theatre with a trilogy of his most recent, award-winning, work in three consecutive weeks – Because, Becaves and Befrdfgth (12–17, 19–24, 26–31 Jan).

Okay, the political thing was a way in, wasn't it? These are really political works (except in the weak 'everything is politics' way).

The epidemic of loneliness and social isolation, and its close relationship with mental health in both younger adults and the elderly, hit headlines earlier this year when the Office for National Statistics found London to be the loneliness capital of Europe. 

I don't think it did in Scotland. These are important issues - I am familiar with emotional loneliness (and the physical variety. I am still available, ladies), and mental health problems, but is this like London waking up to the problem because it finally impacts on London.

Oh, yes, this is aimed at London audiences, and the previous comment could be seen as bitter and inappropriate parochialism. 

Making its London premiere in February, following its critically acclaimed preview run during the final week of Edinburgh Festival Fringe, is a deeply personal show by Kim Noble. A 2014 Total Theatre Judges Award winner, Kim Noble: You're Not Alone (3 Feb – 7 Mar) has been described as funny, provocative and “the very definition of a must see”. A profoundly moving piece of theatre by one of UK’s most incredible live performance artists that will stay with you long after you leave the theatre.

Yeah, we had him in Scotland first. 


Taking a moment to see that the grass is not always greener on the other side, Soho Theatre looks across the pond at those who have fallen short of the coveted ‘American Dream’. Bristol’s most exciting young company, FellSwoop Theatre, blend live music, mime and heart-wrenching humour in Ablutions (10–22 Feb) based on Patrick deWitt’s Booker-nominated novel, telling the grimly funny story of a Los Angeles barman’s demise into the sodden depths of the underworld as he embarks on a road trip of his own spiritual ablution, and constitutional abandonment.

Sounds intriguing, but I am not sure what constitutional abandonment means. There seems to an alternative American Dream these days - romanticising getting pissed up and failing. 

Heading to Britain’s rural regions next, and the prospects of employment for young people, with two young men who can’t even kill a cow. Produced by the Midlands’ Pentabus Theatre, Milked (3–8 Mar), written by their playwright-in-residence Simon Longman, is a bold black comedy about friendship and unemployment in the countryside – and a cow called Sandy. Two young men are faced with the reality of what the world has to offer them, within the confines of their regional setting, and what they have to offer out in return. The run is part of Pentabus’s national tour.

With a soundtrack by the Wurzels, perhaps?

The housing crisis forms the premise for the first official comedy from theatre heavyweight Philip Ridley. Radiant Vermin (10 Mar – 12 Apr) makes its world premiere at Bristol’s Tobacco Factory Theatre before its London premiere and five-week residency at Soho Theatre. 

Win. Ridley rocks - only I see why they are calling it his first official comedy. His scripts are hilarious, but only if you have a dark sense of humour. 

Radiant Vermin tells the story of Ollie and Jill, a young couple who want to tell you how they got themselves off the waiting list and onto the housing ladder. Radiant Vermin uncovers what (sinister) lengths a couple would go to, personally and within their community, in order to achieve their dream home: it’s Hunger Games, but for the middle class, and they did it all for their baby…

The Hunger Games is about the middle class and their attitude to life, ain't it? 
Right, that'll do for this press release. If it gets too long, no one will read it. 

Shoot, I didn't mean that and The Last Days of Mankind

A thrilling double bill that hauls the realities of WW1 into the present moment and asks what happens to life when war takes over.
Marking the centenary of the outbreak of WW1, Time Zone Theatre and Austrian director Pamela Schermann invited British playwrights to respond to Karl Kraus’s The Last Days of Mankind. The winning play, Shoot, I didn't mean that by Catriona Kerridge, will run alongside a staging of the epilogue of Kraus's epic. The resulting double-bill aims to encourage an intercultural dialogue about global conflicts combining a play by one of the most influential Austrian playwrights of the 20th century with an emerging British talent.

Director Pamela Schermann says‘I was excited to see what The Last Days of Mankind means to young British playwrights. Kraus’s play centres around the absurdity of war and the people who are forced to continue their lives under these morbid circumstances.’

Kerridge’s dark comedy follows four women’s strange and surreal downfall as they become intoxicated by the politics of The Great War. Juliet waltzes into a difficult situation at Vienna’s famous flea market; two schoolgirls struggle not to giggle during a Remembrance Day service; and an interpreter loses her voice. 

Shoot, I didn't mean that is play about a shared fear for the future, inspired by Karl Kraus’s The Last Days of Mankind.

Karl Kraus’s response to the outbreak of WW1, its impact on the lives of the people, and the role of the media is made up of over 200 scenes across five acts, one for each year of the War, 3 following fictional characters, archetypes and historical figures. While the main play was naturalistic, using material from newspapers and actual conversations, the epilogue takes on an expressionist, apocalyptic vision of a world destroyed by war.

Tuesday 23rd September – Saturday 18th October 2014

Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm

Sunday matinees, 3pm

LCMF 2014 26 May - 1 June Second Home, London

LCMF 2014

26 May - 1 June

Second Home, London

The second edition of the London Contemporary Music Festival (LCMF 2013), "the capital's most adventurous and ambitious festival of new music" (The Guardian), returns next Monday. LCMF 2014 (lcmf.co.uk) will offer a week of multi-disciplinary events exploring the best new music and performances from around the world in Rohan Silva's extraordinary new space, Second Home.

Highlights include an exclusive presentation by artist Michelangelo Pistoletto, the UK premiere of two string quartets by Italy’s greatest living composer Salvatore Sciarrino, a night of Marxist Chillwave (in association with Verso books), the world premiere of a concerto for violin and computer by synth pioneer Peter Zinovieff, a rare Noh play presentation by an acclaimed young Japanese troupe, a recital by Warhol and Burroughs collaborator John Giorno and a performance by Gavin Bryars.

In association with Verso books and the Quietus, we also present a series of talks at Ace Hotel Shoreditch.

Jennifer Walshe will give a rendition of her own work i: same person/ii: not the same person (2007) that sees "a steady crescendo of electronic flutter" give way to "a torrent of half-whistling, half-salivating vocalism".

About SECOND HOME

Opening in Shoreditch this autumn, Second Home will be the world's most innovative space for entrepreneurs and creative businesses.

Before construction work begins, the Second Home team have invited some friends to host a series of music, art and digital events in their empty building on Hanbury Street. For all Second Home press enquiries, please email: info@secondhome.io.

Rohan Silva, co-founder of Second Home: “We're really pleased that LCMF are hosting their brilliant event in our empty Second Home building. Second Home is going to be a place where creative people and companies come together to do amazing things, and it's great that this is already starting to happen even before our construction work begins."

Address:

Second Home

68-80 Hanbury Street

Spitafields

E1 5JL

About LCMF

LCMF is a not-for-profit multi-disciplinary arts commissioning agency specialising in music and performance. The London Contemporary Music Festival 2014 will be their third festival in the past year, following last year's critically acclaimed London Contemporary Music Festival (July/Aug 2013) and our recent retrospective The Music of Bernard Parmegiani (March 2014). It is run by four curators: Aisha Orazbayeva, Sam Mackay, Igor Toronyi-Lalic and Lucy R

Where dance is going next

SPRING LOADED

Where dance is going next

25 Apr - 14 Jun 2014

The Place

Sadly, I am not going to make some madcap prediction about the future of dance (although I have one. It involves dancers not moving at all, and plenty of shouting by the audience). Instead, I am sharing the press release from The Place, the cool place by Euston station in London (where my mother's Ballet Society hold their meetings, I believe).

Press release begins...

Spring Loaded is a season of work specially curated by The Place which is jam-packed with ideas about contemporary dance and movement based performance that challenge boundaries and preconceptions about what dance is. 

With 3 premieres, 17 nights and 24 choreographers the programme showcases a diverse mix of UK and international dance makers. Each choreographer has been chosen because they are established in their practice, they are at the point in their career where they are making vital, exciting and valuable work. They are making work that demands to be seen.

Some of the shows are funny, some use words, there is loud music and film incorporated in others. Some of the shows have lots of dancing and some have a lot less, the ideas explored range from the everyday to the esoteric. From dealing with everyday superstitions, mass group behaviour, or the desire to survive despite the fragility of life, to how we interact with technology and express our cultural inheritance these shows all have one thing in common, and that is; they are where dance is going next.

“We watch a lot of performance and we are convinced that these people and these projects are the most exciting, new things out there. They might be people you’ve not have heard of yet. This is about the future of dance, to help both the artists and audiences make that journey away from things they are familiar with. Spring Loaded is the arena where brilliant artists of the next decade can showcase their work.” Eddie Nixon, Theatre and Artist Development Director, The Place 

April The season opens with a world premiere of Easy Rider by Work Place artist Eva Recacha (Fri 25 Apr). This brand new piece looks at the human compulsion to engage with superstitious beliefs and practices in the pursuit of happiness. Recacha draws on first-hand observations of ritualistic behaviour in her native Spain such as reading horoscopes and self-help manuals, to old wives tales and religion. Much like her Place Prize Finals 2013 piece, Easy Rider is stripped down of all superfluous elements to unravel the pure essence of our need to belong. It reflects our own beliefs in a raw, haunting and nonjudgmental way.  

Southpaw Dance Company (Tue 29 Apr) present a double-bill of work. Based in the North East of England choreographer and dance artist Robby Graham combines Bboying, contemporary technique and contact practices in a brand new movement style. Riots is inspired by protests against rising social unrest around the world and is a short and high energy piece. Men on a Mission is an insight to the cliques and artificial glamour associated with recreational drugs. Graham’s choreography touches on the false confidence, frenzied highs and paranoiac tendencies. He describes the piece as “Trainspotting… if Quentin Tarantino directed it.'

MayThe season continues with a subtle and entrancing new piece by Vera Tussing (Wed 7 May) who is also a Work Place artist. In T-Dance four dancers, connected by wooden poles held in place only by physical tension, form a ‘moving sculpture’. The ever present threat of collapse should one person lose focus, has the effect of drawing in the audience and invites empathy with the experience on stage. T-Dance explores our need to touch, be touched and the cause and effect of physical connections.

British choreographer and rising star James Wilton (Sat 10 May), who created a piece for the Rugby League World Cup 2013, presents his brand new Last Man Standing. The piece focuses on human behaviour when facing danger; how we cope with life’s fragility and the desire to survive. Wilton explores the emotions of fear, anger and determination as ways to respond to these universal elements of the human existence.  Driven by unparalleled energy and athleticism, Wilton’s blends martial arts, break dancing and capoeira to create raw and ground-breaking choreography for his cast of six world class dancers.

Joe Moran | Dance Art Foundation (Tue 13 May) present Assembly, a triple bill of distinct and contrasting works by choreographed by Moran. Decommission, a compelling new solo performed by Moran, is a lively experiment in intimacy and risk. Commissioned for The Place Prize for dance sponsored by Bloomberg 2012, Obverse pursues formalism in choreography. For Moran’s third work, masculinity comes under inspection to complete the Assembly line up. Each work tackles full bodied dancing and critical thinking. Together they make an arresting evening of dance and discourse driven by movement and flickering with ideas.

Sometimes intense, sometimes delightfully funny, Work Place artists Igor and Moreno (Thu 15 & Fri 16 May) present their new work Idiot-Syncrasy. Igor and Moreno call on their folk Sardinian and Basque tradition to create a contemporary take on what most of ancient dances share: jumping for empowerment and happiness. On stage the two performers use repetitive movement to highlight a sense of unity but also to reveal subtle differences. Idiot-Syncrasy is a quirky piece exploring the importance of commitment to a cause and perseverance in trying to change the world despite sometimes feeling like idiots for attempting it.

In a triple-bill which includes premiere, Mamoru Iriguchi (Wed 28 May) introduces his visually quirky and surrealistically humorous work that playfully references choreography, imagery of the body and our interaction with technology. Projector/Conjector is a Swan-Lake-inspired love duet between performers with a TV and a projector attached to their heads. One Man Show (a Place Prize commission), features a solo performer and his digital doppelgängers. GRAFT is a brand new piece that has been specially commissioned by The Place for Spring Loaded 2014 and is shown for the first time tonight. GRAFT explores the shifting landscape of body and space through displacement of body parts Mamoru Iriguchi is an Artsadmin Associate Artist 2012-14 and winner of Best Design, Evening standard Theatre Awards.

Nestled within Spring Loaded is the Trailblazers Showcase – Exposure (Sat 31 May). This mixed bill presents a range of performances incorporating film, installation, abstract choreography, dancehall, reggae and Guinean dance theatre with live music by ADAD’s 2013-14 Trailblazing artists Idrissa Camara, Cindy Claes, Cleo Lake, Kenzi Ireland and Denise Rowe.  Co-curated by Trailblazer Champions Denise Rowe and Vicki Igbokwe the evening offers a tour through the far reaches of African diaspora dance as it is being explored and expressed today. ADAD is a national organisation that supports the practice and appreciation of dance of the African Diaspora.

June The final month of Spring Loaded gets off to a flying start with a night by Mickael ‘Marso’ Riviere (Wed 4 Jun). Born in France and now based in the Midlands in the UK, choreographer and bboy Marso joins forces with two exceptional talents; acclaimed choreographer, actor and dancer Guy Nader, and extraordinary performer and choreographer Salah El Brogy (who has been at The Place as part of Protein’s Border Tales). Together they have co-created two brand new duets; In Match Guy Nader and Marso construct a visually breathtaking place where destruction and renewal, devastation and beauty are never far apart.  Salah El Brogy and Marso present Halfway to The Other Side; part spiritual journey, part absurd reflection on our human tendency to repeat, replicate, endlessly circle through life and turn time on its head.

Six extraordinary dancers from the Hofesh Shechter Company become choreographers in this third incarnation of In Good Company (Fri 6 Jun). Brimming with maverick spirit and irrepressible talent they have created five new and very different dance pieces and one extraordinary film, especially for this Spring Loaded project. The dancers, hailing from the UK, France, Holland, Egypt and Germany are currently touring in Shechter’s work worldwide, and have been given carte blanche to find their own unique choreographic voices. This year In Good Company choreographers are: Maëva Berthelot, Sam Coren, Frédéric Despierre, Bruno Guillore,Kim Kohlman, Sita Ostheimer

French born choreographer Philippe Blanchard (Tue 10 Jun) together with Italian filmmaker twins Luca and Gabriele Stifani have created a thought provoking installation piece This is that. Together they question discrepancies between what we see and how we interpret images and appearances.  This is a stripped-down, highly entertaining and witty performance that is as much spoken dance as danced dance.

HIDE delves under the skin of its creators and audiences. Deborah Light (Fri 13 Jun) layers movement, image, sound and text to put the multiplicity of human nature into question. It does this by blurring the boundaries between autobiography and fiction, between the performance on stage and reality. A cast of three outstanding female dancers Jo Fong (Rosas, DV8), Eddie Ladd (Volcano, Brith Gof) and Rosalind Hâf Brooks (Earthfall)are brought together in a stark environment to create a visceral performance that is bold and intimate.

The final show of the season is a dramatic three-screen cinematic dance event called Witness which has been created by Jo Fong (Sat 14Jun). The piece crosses art forms and explores the themes of portraiture and the representation of women in art, dance, and the line between performance and reality. Witness’ driving force is movement, as the audience follow the three dancers in the making of their personal choreographic portraits.

Listings
All performances start at 8pm.

April

Fri 25   Eva Recacha (premiere)

Sat 26             Eva Recacha

Tue 29 Southpaw Dance Company

May

Wed 7 Vera Tussing

Thu 8   Vera Tussing

Sat 10 James Wilton Dance

Tue 13 Joe Moran

Thu 15 Igor and Moreno

Fri 16    Igor and Moreno

Wed 28 Mamoru Iriguchi (includes a premiere)

Sat 31   Association of Dance of the African Diaspora

June

Wed 4 Mickael Marso Riviere

Fri 6     Hofesh Shechter Company presents In Good Company (premiere)

Sat 7    Hofesh Shechter Company presents In Good Company

Tue 10             Philippe Blanchard

Fri 13    Deborah Light

Sat 14 Jo Fong

How to book

The Place

17 Duke’s Road, London WC1H 9PY

Booking: www.theplace.org.uk/ 020 7121 1100

(Mon-Sat, 10.30am-7pm, 10.30am-6pm on evenings with no performances)

Prices: £15 (conc. £12), except Jo Fong £9 (conc. £6)

Ticket offer:  By booking for two shows in the Spring Loaded season you get one of your

tickets half-price.

More Bad News From The Credit Crunch

I fear that this is going to become a regular column on the blog, in which I present a press release from a venue that is either closing or under threat. After shedding a tear for The Brew House (which resides in what was once my favourite place in Wessex, Taunton), Hackney Wick's interestingly named ]performance s p a c e [ is getting worried.

Put into a panic by the conformation of the closure of Stoke Newington International Airport and the Old Vic Tunnels - in one of these cases, the old enemy of the arts, "development of the area" was mentioned - ]performance s p a c e [ is renewing its call for public support. 

I have little to add to the press release, so time for some cut and paste. If I don't write an original article soon, though, I'll get mistaken for a national newspaper. 

Due to the fast paced gentrification taking place in Hackney Wick, faces the same fate and desperately needs your help, now. ]performance s p a c e [ need to raise £6000.00 immediately and are running a crowd-funding campaign: I ♥ ]ps[ (please see HERE) and a series of workshops (please see HERE). The capital raised through these two initiatives is a the finale drive to save the organisation from closure.

]performance s p a c e [ is an entirely unfunded, artist led organisation and the only, performance art specific, studio and exhibition space in the UK. Radical, and challenging, they programme the work you seldom see anywhere else. They are partners of Live Art UK, the national network of Live Art promoters and to date have programmed performance, film, symposiums and workshops from artists such as: Ron Athey, Franko B, Amanda Coogan, Alastair MacLennan, Kira O'Reilly, Sheree Rose, Manuel Vason, members of Black Market International along with a plethora of emerging and mid career performance artists such as: Sinead O’Donnell, jamie lewis hadley, Benjamin Sebastian, Bean, Poppy Jackson, Hugh O’Donnell, Martin O’Brien, Dani Ploeger, Nicola Canavan & Lynn Lu. In a letter of support, Lois Keidan (Director, Live Art Development Agency) wrote:

“We see ]performance s p a c e [ as a critical partner whose contribution to the cultural landscape of the UK cannot be overestimated.” and as “...absolutely vital to a healthy culture and to the research and development of new artists, ideas and discourses.”

Flaneur zine recently interviewed the directors, Bean and Benjamin Sebastian. You can read  the interview HERE.

]performance s p a c e [ has continuously programmed new artists and maintained open access through FREE admission to ALL core programming. ]performance s p a c e [ supports hundreds of marginalised artists, nationally and internationally, all for the direct benefit of UK audiences, yet is being neglected by both local and national cultural bodies and funding organisations. To date, the organisation has had a total of six funding bids rejected by major funding bodies and despite regular requests, no support from local authorities.

This one of a kind artist led initiative needs your help NOW or it will close by April.

Don’t let another unique art space disappear.

I ♥ ]ps[- Please donate