We are looking to raise £500 to aid us in launching our contemporary arts & dance company 'Carbon Cadence', intially the money will be invested into creating our first London based performance, at Chisenhale Dance Space in Mile End. This will allow us to begin our jounrey, give us the opportunity to develop our skills as directors and artists. Additionally our work is supported by Jacqui Jones (ex-principle dance with Rambert and Senior Lecturer at LIPA) and Gavin Persand (Dancer with Matthew Bourne's New Adventures), both who are mentoring us as a company and indiviually as artists.
Company Mission Statement
Our aim as a company first and foremost is to create concept based interdisciplinary performance works. We believe in uniting the different forms of art to produce completely original work, with the music and dance being produced with equal importance. Mixing classical dance aesthetics with tribal percussive sounds and allowing them to bleed into the other art form generating new dynamics in performance art.
Additionally through our work we want to expose and explore subject matters that are traditionally not discussed. Shedding light on subjects of the human condition and experience that are taboo in order to aid dialogue to begin around these difficult subject issues. As an all-male company of dancers we feel that this edge will help us in removing the need for gender stereotyping in arts. We want to break away from the classic gender conventions from our pieces and work simply with human bodies without any presumed society convention of relationship, status or gender. Our focus is not on creating narrative stories but exploring the effects and strains that they can bring.
The company is directed by Thom Wootton and Laura Williams who met at the Liverpool Insititute of Performing Arts while working on an originally show creating together and found that they worked well working as a pair, pulling together Dance (Thom completed the Dance Degree) and music (Laura completed the Music Degree).
What is unique about our company?
As a young male dancer myself throughout my industry experience I have felt rather limited by the work created and especially as I looked out into the industry. Dance puts a huge emphasis on the classic conventions of men being strong and grounded. Even with other all male work the conventions of the hyper-masculine man are forced on male dancers. In my view this limits the possibilities hugely of what we could achieve with male performance in dance. I want to choreograph roles specifically for male performers that will open up the types of emotions and characterisations that male dancers can have. However I do not only want to explore the range of roles men can play but also the movement content. I want to change the conventions of the placement on men in a performance structure, usually the females’ hero. The leads partner. I believe we need to now allow men to be the focus, which I believe will be refreshing for the both the audience and dancers. Finally for me the exploration of the male body and expanding its movement vocabulary is highly important, allowing men to use their extensions, adage work and softer dynamics in performance
Another one of our main USPs as a dance company is the division of our work between live theatre productions and dance films. With the rising popularity of work from choreographer such as Holly Blakey, Ryan Heffington and Jill Meyers contemporary dance is becoming rapidly more deamnded in music videos with artists such as Sia, Hozier and Florence + The Machine utilizing this dance art form. With this sector of the industry becoming more and more fashionable there is an audience growing for this platform of dance. While this is growing this is the perfect time to create work like this in a company environment, not only because it’s fashionable but using this online platform will allow our work to be far more accessible and will help us grow at a potentially much faster rate than if we created solely theatre performance work. Additionally I believe that this will also allow us to attract a younger audience to contemporary dance, engaging them through an environment that they are more comfortable with than the traditional route of attending the theatre.
Personal Statements
“As a young male dancer I always feel limited by the roles and choreography presented to me throughout the contemporary dance industry. Although work has highlighted and created a platform for male dance with choreographers such as Matthew Bourne making a vast amount of work centred around male characters for me the movement vocabulary and the characters still hold a sense of the classical stereotypes first created by ballet, with men playing princes and hero’s and supporting the women. I believe there is still a range of work that needs to be created to allow male dancers to be fully expressive and I want to address this. I want to completely remove the conventions of gender in my work to allow artists to fully portray the diversity of the human condition. My second passion is music. Listening to music is deeply personal for me and I always feel myself being wrapped into its layers to understand its emotive complexities. Then with a personal understanding it inevitably spills into embodying these messages physically. With Carbon Cadence creating from both sides of this symbiotic relationship we can expresses clear emotions and narratives with the dance and music together in one clear goal. This I believe is extremely unique and will welcome audiences more into the world we are creating onstage or in film.”
Thom Wootton - Director of Dance
“Without music, there is no dance. However, I see that without dance, there is no music. Collaboration is one of the most important factors of the arts industry. Without acknowledging each other's talents, there is no drive. I believe that my drive is working with other artists to create something special. I want the music to fit as one part of the artistic puzzle that Carbon Cadence creates. Understanding someone else's art before your own can open up a world of opportunity. I've learnt that music and dance belong together, not as isolated forms.”
Laura Williams - Director of Music