Chocks Away! Saturday and Sunday with StopGAP

Although this piece is called Tracking I’m reliably informed that it’s known informally to the company as ‘Chocks Away!’

StopGAP are an integrated dance company http://www.stopgap.uk.com/ who encompass performers with learning disabilities, wheelchair users, and non-disabled performers. Their piece is a mix of modern, kitsch work, performed with such joie de vivre that it’s pretty impossible not to be completely charmed. Many of the trappings of ‘British-ness’ were in this work – red phone boxes, 60s attire, boats, umbrellas (and therefore rain), mobile phones, and a real sense of humour.

Even the skateboarders who’d been filming themselves going up and down the rather lovely new patio at the front of the Pavilion came and watched the piece, and were particularly struck by the amazing upper body strength of David Toole.

French Company ExNihlio also performed their substantial piece, Trajets de Ville at 4pm in the square on both Saturday and Sunday. This was a rather dark piece of dance which seemed to me to focus on the ‘street life’ of Marseille. It was a more challenging piece – both to perform and to watch. By the end of the work it felt like you’d been taken through a very real journey, which seemed to have a hopeful and happy resolution.

I am hoping to write more about both of the ExNihlio pieces, in particular about the work performed in the mornings around Bournemouth which formed the quite subversive Trajets de Vie. These pieces, based around experiences garnered from working and watching how people move or rest on benches when they are on the margins of society were incredibly truthful and raw.

As the Artistic Programme Manager for Pavilion said in the Artist’s talk (which we promise to publish the notes on, do check back here!): “We have shown three works as part of this festival, showing how human movement can inhabit public spaces…. This was a great day for new work and for novel, outdoor art”.