(re)turn
Sheep(s) | Amaara Raheem, Helka Kaski, Katja Nyqvist, Susanna Recchia and Rosalie Wahlfrid
Sheep(s) were awarded Dance and Homemade bursary from Chisenhale Dance Space for a research and development process to reflect on their individual and collective assumptions memories, experiences, training and histories as independent and inter-dependent dance artists, who are all shaped by the inheritance of British New Dance. In addition to making performance they investigated what it means (artistically and ideologically) to work within non-hierarchical structures. (Re)Turn was an enquiry into common ideas, principles, and aesthetics. It was a journey to other times (past, present and future), where they used all their senses to remember, reconnect and reply.
Some Writing ‘On Archives’:
Underneath the forest floor we creep, we slide. Upturned earthworms scatter, heads accidentally cut off. A mountain. Paper clips dangle from our earlobes – neon pink. Ink on our fingertips, staining our brittle bones. Outside a jackhammer and blue sky day. We began in Winter, in Arctic conditions, we end in Spring facing Summer. In another room the archive remains untouched. We haven’t even scratched the surface. Where is it? These traces.
And then later, after hours of moving and such supportive feedback from Theron, we sat at the big wooden table in the main space and collectively wrote notes for the programme.
We wrote our truth. We wrote a frame from which to see this work. We wrote words that had emerged from our moving and from our talking. We wrote some answers to our question - where is the archive in all of this?
The archive is held in our bodies.
The archive is here in the floor and in the wall.
The archive is everything we’ve ever done together and everything that’s ever been done in this room.
The archive is not here. It’s in another room. In a room within a room.
At one point quite early on Susanna raised the dance floor from one corner, to reveal the wooden floorboards underneath. I crept under the black covering and sat for a moment on that hard wooden floor, with all its iconic history. Un-peeling the floor, tucking myself under the duvet of legacy. How do we communicate what we know and we don't know? all the things that have happened and that are happening now? how do we respect / honour and/or name our teachers? the artists that have paved a way for us? and how do we move on from them? make our own way? create history for ourselves and others? standing on the cusp, we go in and out of the floor, in and out of the audience and and in and out of each other. We fall, we crash, we repeat, we invent, we listen, we talk, we walk, we remember, we respond, we run, we fly, we pause, we return - to movement.