Dove Stone: PLACE

Olivia

By Olivia

It has been a busy couple of weeks here at Born and Bred HQ, as our site-specific dance project PLACE came to its end with a one-day event to celebrate the ever-changing nature of Dove Stone's beautiful landscape and the wildlife that call it home. The event was run in collaboration with the RSPB as well as a myriad of local artists.

To name a few:

Laurence Rose

Laurence has worked at the RSPB for 30 years. In his spare time he composes music and has had works performed at concerts and festival throughout the UK and also in the Netherlands. For PLACE Laurence composed Water Music, for double brass band and Tree Music, for an unlimited number of all-corners.

Arbarus

Visual artist Richard 'arbarus' Dawson is based at Wooded Mill in Mossley. For PLACE he created a number of installations reflecting his interests and long association with Dove Stone, its landscape, flora and fauna in new ways.

Jacqui Symons

Jacqui created beautiful prints of leaves, using colour and repetition to create both abstract and representational works of art.

Stanza

The East Manchester and Tameside Stanza group of poets donated poetry written in and inspired by the site to be attached to logs around the trail.

Obviously Born and Bred were there performing their new site-specific work of the same title; PLACE. The piece was a response to landscape and was created, devised and performed on site. You can see photographs and video from the event on our YouTube Channel and Facebook page.

The weekend after we were still feeling inspired by Dove Stone so we took it as our theme for our wonderful Dancestry legacy workshop. Our main creative task was all about water as there is lots of that knocking about up at Dove Stone. We began by drawing water pictures and sounds using chalks and pastels. We used our drawings to help us consolidate our thoughts and ideas, and then working in small groups of two and three created short sections of dance that we then practised and refined.

By the time our grown-ups arrived, we had linked them all together to make a short water-based performance. As usual the workshop was brilliant fun. We are now looking forward to our next workshop on Sunday 20th October when we shall be exploring Victorian Saddleworth - I feel 'Food Glorious Food' coming on, well we did have a workhouse!

Posted in