‘In Between Spaces’
Signdance Collective International was established in 1987 and are the pioneers of the art form, Signdance Theatre. Signdance Theatre is an innovative fusion of sign-language, dance and theatre combined with original live music and digital media.
We are seeking crowdfunding support to help take our latest work, "In Between Spaces" into full production and tour. From the outset, our work has focused on delivering an aesthetically grounded inclusive practice that artistically transcends functionality and ticking the boxes. This project has a strong community engagement participation programme for Disabled, Deaf, Black and Asian young people.' In Between Spaces' offers the company a unique opportunity to work with digital media, creative scripting, and new collaborators. This will further our visual/sign accessible performance work and reach new audiences.
"I feel as if I have watched a feature film and now, I would like to see it all over again!"
Audience feedback following research and development preview at Wycombe Arts Centre, UK.
The crowdfunding support will provide invaluable matching funding to the in-kind contributions from our partners. So far the research and development phase has received funding from in-house funds, the Arts Council of England, Graz, Styria and Austria Arts Council and now we seek help for the company to reach its audiences throughout the tour. Your contribution will go a long way towards helping us to meet additional production costs, tour costs, including artists and collaborators fees, accommodation and travel costs.
Further information below
”What are these in-between spaces now, in 2019? Technology allows us to seem to be in more than one place at once, air travel moves us across continents and oceans, so we can experience different cultures almost at the push of a button. These innovations should make us empathize so much more with each other as humans as we get to know and understand our differences, and yet brutal wars and injustice persist. How we navigate this fast-changing world and really connect to each other is the stuff of this new work.”
Kate Lawrence Movement Director
“In Between Spaces” began as a set of original songs and music that we wrote and has since grown into a new sign-dance music-theatre digital-art performance and public engagement project. It integrates inclusive elements and creative scripting with digital-design alongside our already accessible performances. The work has been created for a universal audience and is fully accessible for those who have access requirements.
The story centres on four individual characters perambulating in a world outside of time. A meeting between a man, a woman, Time and The Oracle takes place in between the space of the digital world and reality. It isn’t clear if the characters are human or digital echoes. The story investigates our human identity in an age of transient digital glitches, where our real lives seem to be becoming increasingly entangled within our digital interactions. Sometimes the characters seem like that they are the first humans on Earth or maybe they are last. Among memories of sunny days, bus trips and alleyways, their paths mirror one another as they criss-cross between the screen and real-time. Will they ever be able to meet in the authentic sense? The work explores whether humans can exist and communicate in two spaces at once and at what price.
We are developing this project with the following partners Transmitter Performance Austria with composer Angelina Schwammerlin with 73Degree Film & Media Wales with film-maker Robert Corcoran, Wycombe Arts Centre. Lionel Macauley LMM Productions New Jersey, And with Director Ozan Gokmen Bornova Municipal Theatre Turkey Dramaturg Pedro De Senna, Middlesex University London and Choreography Kate Lawrence, Vertical Dance Wales
Tour dates include; The Burton Taylor Studio at Oxford Playhouse, an international Disability Arts Conference in Guadalajara, Mexico, Middlesex University, London, (where we will deliver a national seminar about the quality of inclusion for disabled people within the story of art and world culture), Theatre 503, London, One Life Festival on the Isle of Wight with learning disabled participants, a tour of Styria in Austria, Focus Wales International Music Festival, Our home -base Wycombe Arts Centre, Buckinghamshire UK, a collaboration with Punch Records in Birmingham, and a collaboration tour with LMM productions New Jersey USA
SigndanceCollective
SDC is a touring performance company established in 1987. We are a culturally diverse organization with an experienced team of Deaf and Disabled artists at the helm. Inclusion and diversity are at the heart of all our projects. Directors are Isolte Avila, Cuban dancer, California Institute Of the Arts Graduate https://youtu.be/c2L5K2y9XIM and Deaf Welsh Actor, David Bower, well known for his role in Four Weddings and A Funeral as the younger brother of Hugh Grant, and as Quasimodo in BBC Radio 4’s critically acclaimed Hunch Back Of Notre Dame. Together they pioneered Signdance Theatre; a mix of sign language, theatre, dance and live original music. David Bower is Profoundly Deaf and Isolte Avila is physically disabled. Together they have developed one of the most innovative and inclusive art forms of the last 30 years; Signdance theatre. The company has given and continues to give employment, educational, and artistic opportunities to hundreds of Deaf, Disabled and marginalized people across the world. Since 2001, and with the support of strong international partnerships, the work of SDC was established as a platform to further develop the art-form through collaborative practice.