Details

Sign Dance Collective are the pioneers and inventors of the term used to describe the meeting of sign language and dance: Signdance Theatre. Dances For A Lost Traveler represents an intense departure for Signdance away from the biographical framework of recent work and into something personal and from the heart. Drawing on collaborations with Sardinian director Ornella Dagostino from Carovana SMI, Primoz Bayzak from Slovenia's Batontac Dance plus a range of musicians, film and dance artists. Listen (23 minutes) Based on David Bower's experience of Tinnitus, this piece uses disability as a creative tool to inform the performance work. It is the most hard-hitting of the four pieces - giving the audience an intense visual and auditory experience. The stage is cast with a backdrop of high-pitched tones, which are translated through sound software to create a landscape suggestive of high tower blocks and flowers. Doves fly through this setting, immersing the audience. Against this cloth of sound and image, David moves rapidly and intently. It is as if he is enclosed, trying desperately to escape. He runs, paces sings and dances through a box-like structure conveying ideas about the connection between language and the inner landscape of tinnitus.nchoreography : Isolte Avila direction and music : Luke Barlow film : Sarana Mehra Here (25 minutes) is lyrical - the movement consisting of a carefully dramatised piece of dance made up of signed dialogue. The performance takes place on the floor, with a live projection of David Bower and Isolte Avila onto the wall, telling the story of a relationship in flux. The detail is in the signing, but beyond that Here describes an emotional landscape - one that is again contained within a box. choreography : Primoz Bayzak music : Mark Holub & Frognal film : Caglar Kimyoncu. The Words (20 minutes), locates the movement in written and spoken language. Using a series of responses to architecture.. A random bucket of sentences is played and spilled like rain on the performers heads. They are pulled arbitrarily in front of a live camera and are signed furtively. The energy builds to a crescendo, describing the confusion, frustration and ultimately the beauty of language in its relationship to disability and deafness. direction : Carla Onni music : Alex Ward Travelling (35 minutes) tells the story of how it is to live a life of constantly crossing boundaries - geographical and physical boundaries as well as existential boundaries relating to disability and deafness. Isolte offers the audience a chance to go to 'the Happy Place'. She takes on the role of a travel agent offering holidays in the sun. But how does the movement of peoples' around the world, as tourists, migrants, or as artists, affect indigenous communities? How does political conflict affect the traveller? What does it feel like to live the nomadic lifestyle of the artist? The piece unravels with a series of journeys through film, dance and song. David Bower takes on a comic role inspired by his experience of officials at customs. He acts out the often-bizarre demands made of the traveller, who is forced to dance through hoops on in order to get permission to cross a border. Isolte plays out the dichotomies she has faced, having lived with a dual identity of being Cuban and Puerto Rican American. 'Ultimately the piece leaves its audience with a powerful image of travelling through the palm of the hand. At the core of Signdance's work is the beauty of using sign language as a form of dance and of expression. I hope Dances For A Lost Traveler gets taken on by venues across the UK' Colin Hambrook DAO

Creatives/Company

Choreographer(s): Isolte Avila (Listen), Isolte Avila (Here)
Director(s): Luke Barlow (Listen), Carla Onni (The Words), Ornella Dagostino Carovana SMI (Travelling)
Music(s): Luke Barlow (Listen), Mark Holub (Here), Frognal (Here), Alex Ward (The Words), Liran Donin (Travelling)
Other(s): Sarana Mehra (film - Listen), Caglar Kimyoncu (Here - film), David Bower (Travelling)