UK PREMIERE

Presented with DanceXchange

HIGHER is inspired by the experience of clubbing and club dancing. This form of dance, not easily ascribed to any category, takes the cultural role of a social dance and features various techniques, styles and influences and exemplifies what is the ultimate purpose of dancing: self expression.

Philosopher Julia Kristeva once said: “ As to be human embraced political, sexual, religious, familiar identity, we are undergoing a time of major identity crises. We need to find a language that transcends the human in order to overcome such crises and awake a new Renaissance. This language can be dance”. I interpret this cathartic power of dance, as a form of prayer and celebration of existence. I found in the club a place for such transcendant activity, upholding the comparison of clubs to churches, however obscured by the most common understanding of clubbing as a mere recreational activity.

While trying to transfer the magical essence of the club to the theatrical/representational context of the black box, and trusting in dance as the practice that compensates for the fact that we can never be each other, we attempt to become one.

HIGHER is included in the Fierce Weekend Pass which can be purchased here.

Michele Rizzo – HIGHER from Rencontres chorégraphiques on Vimeo.

Concept and Choreography: Michele Rizzo
Music: Lorenzo Senni
Performance: Juan Pablo Camara, Max Goran, Michele Rizzo
Light design: Michele Rizzo
Production: Frascati Theatre and ICK Amsterdam
Special thanks to Lucas Heistinger, Bogomir Doringer, Katerina Bakatzaki

Presented with DanceXchange.

PILGRIM is a physical journey through the mystical sound scores created by Electronic Musician James Holden. It is a reminder of the ancient and enduring kinship between Dance and Music and the deeply transformative qualities of both. The work is haunted by remnants of English folk heritage and pagan sensibilities shifting between hypnotic and euphoric states. Lucy’s physical vocabulary is irreverent and eclectic; she guides us through minimal sophistication towards Acid House and arduous repetition, resulting in a variety of perceptual and physical shifts. Coaxed along by Holden’s beguiling and epic rhythms she is constantly questioning and reminding us of why we Dance?

Choreography and Performance: Lucy Suggate
Music: “The Inheritors” by James Holden

Concept devised during Modul Dance residency between Lucy Suggate and Sonia Gomez at GRANER in Barcelona.

Produced by Arts Council England and British Council Artists International Development Fund. Festival TNT Terrasa, Marta Oliveres, Modul Dance, Mercat De les Flors, Graner, Bora Bora and Dansehallerne. Special Thanks to James Holden and Gemma Sheppard, Bush Hartshorn and Dance4.

Lucy also leads a Professional Class – Thursday 19 October – 10am

This is a drop in event 

Presented with BEDLAM Festival.

What if the depression we endure is not just about biochemical disfunction, but the result of political failure?

Ann Cvetkovich suggests we have incomplete projects of liberation and I tend to agree; decolonisation, feminism, civil rights. We have the wounds of incomplete projects but what if the bandages are on too tight? What if the wounds need cleaning, investigating or maybe the wound just needs to see the light?

I’m Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired examines historical traumas in the everyday felt sensations of our lives. It’s about the domestic and the grand; maybe the depression we feel is the result of being the other for so long? … The energy it has taken to survive, endure, resist and have hope against it all.

PILOT Nights provide a space where theatre-makers can develop their work and try out new ideas in front of a lively and supportive crowd; the pieces presented are all works-in-progress.

PILOT Nights has been running for over 10 years and remains an important part of the creative landscape for the independent theatre sector in the West Midlands.

Open to artists from across the UK, we’re very excited to be presenting a special edition as part of Fierce Festival 2017!

LINEUP NOW ANNOUNCED!!!

-Speaking in the (oppressor’s) tongue – Selina Bonelli 

– Paris Hasn’t stopped Burning – Danni Ebanks-Ingram 

– Dorian Electra – Dorian Electra (pictured) 

– Thom and Tom – Thom and Tom  

–  We’re Right, You’re Wrong – Ginny Lemon and Meating People is Easy

–  Homecoming – Benedict Stewardson

– Here Comes The Sun – Joseph Morgan Schofield

This PILOT Nights event will take place @ AE Harris, the venue run by Stan’s Cafe

The Line up for HOTLINE #1 is:

Phoebe Collings-James
Malik Nashad Sharpe
Michele Rizzo

Information on HOTLINE #2 can be found here.

HOTLINE aims to be a critical space that can facilitate and hold complex conversations that don’t look to agreement as a point of entry or conclusion. The events start from our own intrigue, attractions and research, there are no given themes or topics of conversation. For each event three people are invited to share provocations/presentations/thoughts.
We are interested in why people do what they do, how the particular logics are formed that drive and direct decisions/actions/tastes and art-making. We want to look at the more invisible parts of people’s practices – with their specific interests and intrigues becoming catalysts for group conversations. We work with the understanding that everyone attending is involved in the creation of that space and how the conversation unfolds.

We hope for those conversations to nurture a deeper need for connection, communication and generative live encounters that motivate and mobilise bold creative action.We both work within the arts and presenters are often but not exclusively artists; HOTLINE is not an artist talk or panel discussion.

HOTLINE is a constantly shifting format for a public conversation, a space to share in the love the hate the ambivalence and the complexity of things, hosted by Jamila Johnson-Small and Sara Sassanelli. Each event happens at a different location that we can access at no cost.

We are interested in the growing demand for artists to be present in ways beyond the show/exhibition/text that create spaces and exacerbate systems of unequal exchange, where institutions or curators cash in on the cultural capital of artists but give little in return. We want to move beyond spaces that enable complicity between artists, audiences & curators that serve to perpetuate modes of consumption of artist/s as resource or infallible authority.

HOTLINE at Fierce will feature contributions from artists presenting in the festival. Check back for updates on presenters/contributors nearer the time.

LINEUP

Hosted by Ginny Lemon

With performances from:

Sandra Johnston,
Keijaun Thomas,
Whiskey Chow,
Justin Shoulder,
Zander Porter X James Batchelor,
Ariah Lester,
Lucy McCormick,
& Susannah Hewlett

Our Very Fierce Grand Opening event is always very special and we’re thrilled this year to be holding it at Birmingham Museum. Expect different performances around the museum as well as a toast to launch the festival, DJs and host Ginny Lemon + it’s all free!

Performances will happen throughout the evening. Including:

Zander Porter X James Batchelor
Alien Intimacy

A dance of “human” and “alien” embodiments, Alien Intimacy speculates on the movement of an interpersonally constructed alien sense, drawing relations between the visible and the invisible or the physically embodied and the virtually disembodied. The distance between human and alien expands and contracts via virtual imagery, silver-tactile mediation, and internet-referential performativity. Temporal denseness and specificity conjure an intimacy for this distance as an almost-touchable “space between.”

Whiskey Chow
M.A.C.H.O

‘M.A.C.H.O’ situates a symbolic conversation between female/queer masculinity and a fetishized man-like figure, creating an absurd companionship. In the piece, Artist Whiskey Chow reveals a “failed” masculinity on gendered, sexed, raced and marginalized bodies to problematize hierarchies of masculinities in western capitalist society.

WORLD PREMIERE
Durational drop-in

Performance Actions
6am: The Wake
6pm: The Processional

They were kings and queens (once upon a time) that is, of course, when they were HUMAN.

They were progenitors and lords of ALL humanity. Until their children betrayed them.

Their flesh branded. Their names erased. Their throne toppled. Their diadem revoked.

They are still kings and queens – if hell and damnation can be considered a coronation. They are now the rulers of death, misery, oppression, pestilence and savagery.

Where once the heartbeats of man responded to the calls of talking drums. The drums have since been silenced and the heartbeats have long faded away.
Replaced by the clangor of shackles.

And where you could once hear GOD whispering peace and freedom in the winds – the air filled with the divine fragrance of frankincense and myrrh (Heaven and Earth).

Now there is only stagnant and stifling winds carrying the rotten miasma of blood, piss, shit and despair.

Where once there were human beings, there is now only the presence of flies…

Fierce Says: We first met Preach in NYC back in 2013. Since then we’ve followed what has turned out to be an incredible body of activist performance works. Through a conversation across continents we’re delighted to be working with him to create a performance especially for Birmingham, in his first UK performance.

Artist Lecture – Thursday 19th October – 5:30pm – Birmingham School of Art

UK PREMIERE

How does climate change, a vastly distributed emergency, become personal? What is it about the slow-motion accident that escapes our defense responses?

In This ritual is not an accident, time and scale are recalibrated as personal histories are shredded, recomposed, and the slow-motion accident of climate change becomes intimate. Women undergo surgery, first passive, then actively involved in their own operations.

Created for small audiences, this performance becomes an emergent text, windstorm, and choir; a contemporary ritual to reset nervous systems collectively.

This ritual is not an accident from her skin like summer on Vimeo.

Get tickets for the Friday performance here.

In collaboration with ELAN, supported by Canada Council for the Arts and co-curated with Studio 303 (Montreal).

UK PREMIERE

“In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”

Or in other words: There is hardly any object the young multi-talented Belgian Louis Vanhaverbeke cannot incorporate into his sound-world. Frisbees, watering cans, drum computers, camping cookers, skateboards, record players, plastic toys and disposable items are some of the ingredients he assembles to create a sensational kinetic sound installation.

The award-winning and exceptional performer moves through his Multiverse with playful ease. He raps, fiddles around and comes up with ever-new ideas. What seems to be chaotic at first glance turns out to be a sophisticated, high-precision and witty performance which captivates audiences with its exuberant creativity and originality.

Fierce Says: Louis Vanhaverbeke is about to lift off. Catch him whilst you can in his debut UK performances before he majorly hits the big time. A visual theatrical treat with much more to it than initially meets the eye. This is one neat show that left us looking to the stars with a brilliant soundtrack to boot.

Multiverse is included in the Fierce Weekend Pass which can be purchased here.

Dramaturge: Dries Douibi
Production: CAMPO arts centre, Ghent

Presented with Ort Gallery

Taking momentum from one of the key issues shaping public debate, artist Eca Eps explores the chaos presented by conflict and migration and civic nationalism. Utilising elements of speech, sound and play in a participatory performance, the artist draws on the materiality of water as a leveller that cuts across territorial boundaries, with emphasis on its dualistic capacity to constitute both a barrier and a lifeline, underscored by the spatial provenance of a derelict gala pool.

This event is presented as part of Eca Eps’s From Chibok To Calais exhibition at Ort Gallery, Balsall Heath (12–5pm Tuesday – Saturday, until 11 November).

#performanceartnow