UNDERCOVER – A chronicle for our times, a response to the pandemic and climate change, a giant tapestry of stories in Welsh and English inspired by the Welsh blanket, from Welsh Creative Artists and Older Citizens, led by Artistic Director, Caroline Lamb with Janet Fieldsend and Aleksandra Nikolajev Jones.
The ‘known’ has become ‘unknown’.
The ‘normal’ has become ‘abnormal’.
The World has been turned on its head. Life has become precarious.
UNDERCOVER – a large-scale work from Striking Attitudes. A walk-through promenade-style performance and installation of Dance, Theatre, Photography, Poetry, Videography, Music and Textiles, in North and South Wales in Spring 2023.
CREATIVE ARTISTS – many creative artists contributed to the Undercover project.
UNDERCOVER –
The project, the performance and the film were conceived, choreographed & directed by Caroline Lamb, Artistic Director
Rehearsal Director -Janet Fieldsend
Creative Producer – Aleksandra Nikolajev Jones
Michal Iwanowski, Photographer, photographed the older professional dancers in the Welsh landscape.
Llio James, Weaver, wove an original contemporary Welsh blanket.
David Ozkoidi, DOP, filmed the Undercover and Weave films.
Marega Palser, Artist, curated and created art work including the ‘tree’ for the final room.
Dan Swain, Composer wrote music for the Undercover film and the live performance
Iestyn Tyne, Poet wrote a poem for the Undercover film and the performance.
Joanna Howells, Nancy Una Simmons and Rachel Thomas – Textiles 2nd year BA Textile Students, Carmarthen School of Art
Four films were created as part of the Undercover project:
UNDERCOVER, WEAVE, BLANCED and PERFECT DISTANCE. See the Community section for more information and links to the films. The Undercover film is currently being offered to film festivals.
PERFORMERS – Live performance and Undercover film.
Caroline Bunce, June Campbell Davies, Brendan Charleson, Dylan Davies, Janet Fieldsend, Burt Van Gorp, Aleksandra Nikolajev Jones, Adrienne O’Sullivan, Shirley Stansfield
With
Jane Billinge, Janet Blackman, Liz Harris, Miranda James, Olivia Jones, Karen Le Beau, Lynne Lewis, Cath Noyes, Angela Rhodes, Alicia Richards
UNDERCOVER INSTALLATION & PERFORMANCE – FEBRUARY-APRIL 2023, CHAPTER ARTS CENTRE, CARDIFF AND GALERI, CAERNARFON
The Forest of Fear
ROOM 1
THE FOREST OF FEAR … the anxieties of our times. Our times are unsettling and uncertain. A response to the Covid 19 pandemic.
What happened? Something terrible.
What did you feel? Terrified.
What could we do? Nothing.
The Room of Comforting Things
ROOM 2 … How did you get through? What gave you comfort? Sanctuary
I walked and I walked and I walked and I saw... A clear open landscape A double rainbow A blooming, untouched meadow
The Garden of Earthly Delights
ROOM 3
The realisation during the pandemic of the importance of our natural world, the awareness of climate change and a search for hope and a better future.
But how did you get through? I walked and I walked and I walked.
What did you see? The natural world in all its beauty, all its glory.
What did it tell you? That we need to take care, be careful and cherish it.
Photo Credit: Noel Dacey
THE LOSS OF TOUCH – THE WELSH BLANKET – A RE-CONNECTION
Are we allowed to touch? Is it safe? The need to reconnect, share and release pandemic experiences together.
The idea for our UNDERCOVER project first came to me through our Zoom creative movement sessions, as the lockdown continued in early 2021.The time felt traumatic, frightening. As thousands died from the virus, I wanted to do some work that made us feel calmer, safer.
I remembered work I had done with Welsh Blankets in 2013. A body enveloped in a blanket is soothed as the feel of the blanket, the wool, connects us to touch. Touch was missing, especially absent from older people’s lives in our Covid19 world.
I started to develop a movement sequence that embodied themes of wrapping, swaddling and enfolding and so the journey to re-connect, share and release the inner stories of older people during this particular time began with a blanket – a universal, grounding image of comfort and safety
The Welsh blanket gave us ways of opening up and reconnecting to the world, post Covid19, through the experience of something old, known and loved, held dear in Welsh culture.
STARTING POINTS
Several images were particularly potent as choreographic stimuli and for text and structure of the final work. Here are four of them:-
1.THE MOUTH OF HELL – SIMON MARMION 1425 – 1489 from a medieval manuscript – an image of fear.
2.DANSE MACABRE OR THE DANCE OF DEATH – Hans Holbein the Younger – used as a choreographic starting point.
3. THE DERVISH KHAN’S STONE GARDEN – unless we take notice of climate change we might end up with gardens made solely of dead branches, stone and dust.
4. POEM COMMISSIONED FROM IESTYN TYNE and used as a stimulus for the UNDERCOVER film.
(ar ol Darvish Khan Esfandiyarpour)
Mae gennym oll ein defodau, a thrwy bicselau chwyddiedig fy sgrin mae bugail mud a byddar wrth ei ddefodau yntau; yn dawnsio mewn gardd lle nad oes dim yn tyfu, dim yn tyfu ond cerrig a llwch. Mae’n symud trwy’i goedlan o fonion noeth, cledrau’i ddwylo a sodlau’i draed yn sibrwd eu hiaith.
Dyma ardd sydd, fel pob gardd, yn gofyn ei dyfrio, ac rwyt tithau’n ardd. Mae gen tithau’r harddwch o’th fewn sy’n achosi i bethau egino a blaguro o blygiadau diffeithwch.
Yn hwyrach ymlaen, wedi i mi fod allan yn fy ngardd fy hun yn tynnu chwyn o’r gwely mefus, yn cymryd petalau marw fesul plwc rhwng bys a bawd, rydw i’n darllen am yr ardd dywodlyd, am wrthsafiad carregog y defodau a’i plannodd hi’n deml o esgyrn.
Beth yw gwrthsafiad ond dod allan eto wedi’r hirlwm; ailddeor trwy haenau o bridd, o bryder ac wynebu’r byd?
(after Darvish Khan Esfandiyarpour)
We all have our rituals, and through my screen’s swollen pixels a deaf and mute shepherd is at his rituals, too; dancing in a garden where nothing grows, where nothing grows but stone and dust. He moves through his grove of bare trunks, the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet whispering their language.
This is a garden that asks, as all gardens, to be watered; and you too are a garden. You too contain the beauty that causes things to germinate and flourish from the folds of a desert.
Later on, having been outside in my own garden pulling weeds from the strawberry bed, plucking dead petals between thumb and forefinger, I read of this sandy garden, of the stony resistance in the rituals by which it was planted, this temple of bones.
What is resistance if not emerging once more from bleakness;
re-hatching through layers of soil, of fear
and facing the world?
UNDERCOVER – THE FILM – 2023
Conceived, choreographed & directed by Caroline Lamb with Janet Fieldsend and Aleksandra Nikolajev Jones
Cameraman – David Ozkoidi
Poem – Iestyn Tyne – Inspired by the Dervish Khan Esfandiyarpour’s Stone Garden
Music – Dan Swain
PERFORMERS – Caroline Bunce, June Campbell Davies, Brendan Charleson, Dylan Davies, Janet Fieldsend, Burt Van Gorp, Aleksandra Nikolajev Jones, Adrienne O’Sullivan, Shirley Stansfield
With
Jane Billinge, Janet Blackman, Liz Harris, Miranda James, Olivia Jones, Karen Le Beau, Lynne Lewis, Cath Noyes, Angela Rhodes, Alicia Richards
COMMUNITY CREATIVE SESSIONS FOR THE UNDERCOVER PROJECT.
MOVEMENT/DANCE SESSIONS ACROSS WALES.
WEST WALES- Teifi Dance, led by Geraldine Hurl, created the WEAVE film, directed by Caroline Lamb, filmed by David Ozkoidi.
WEAVE Performers – Vanya Constant, Mani Dowsett, Teena Gould, Angela Lockwood, Julie Rising, Gillian Stevens, Sue Wales
NORTH WALES – Dawns i Bawb, led by Keren Meadows and Julie Dorgen with residents of Haulfre residential home, created the BLANCED film, movement sequence from Caroline Lamb, filmed by Keren Dorgen.
BLANCED Performers – Keren Meadows, Julie Dorgen, Lauren Rooney, Kamar El Hoziel, Felicity Hudgel, Residents of Haulfre home.
MUSIC – Weave and Blanced – ‘Pas Dinogad’ from Ffynnon – Stacey Blythe and Lynne Denman
SOUTH WALES – led by June Campbell Davies with Oasis One World Choir members, created the PERFECT DISTANCE film, filmed by Aleksandra Nikolajev Jones.
PERFECT DISTANCE Performers – Jean Yabaro, Ayoub Boukhalfa, Jason Baptiste, Ibrahim Kamagate, Faisal Hakim, Ayman Hakim, Mostafa Ahmed Abdel Aziz Abdetawab
CREATIVE WRITING SESSIONS IN NORTH AND SOUTH WALES – Led by Iestyn Tyne. Text used in performance from Vanya Constant, Lin Graham and Adrienne O’Sullivan and others.
Supported by Arts Council Wales and partnered with Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Dawns I Bawb, Caernarfon and Galeri, Caernarfon.
Forcefully yet sensitively put together. I was transfixed by it all – tearful at the end. It brought up the enormity of the restrictions and deprivations of lockdown – we were so powerless: or made to be powerless. Now there is some distance I can connect with the challenges, the loss, and the horror. Also, the preciousness of our bodies, our relationships, of nature: of being present in nature. Thank you all.
Teena Gould 26.02.2023
The production was an immersive and unique experience. Their performance blurred the boundaries between art forms … and created a magical experience. All senses were engaged, transforming the experience from 2D to 3D.
I was deeply moved, never having experienced anything like this before and the importance of what Striking Attitudes represent, reached out across from the studio floor and touched me.” JOMEC Student assignment about ageing in the creative industries 24.03.2023I was mesmerised from the very first moment the performance began. The dancers/actors sucked me in, and I was in awe of these “older” performers’ flexibility, skills and ability to convey the essence of the production to someone like me! The interweaving of dance, movement, poetry, dialogue, photography
and video were engaging and very clearly (but subtly) conveyed the production’s themes of covid, plague, darkness and then comfort and, ultimately, sanctuary.
You should be very proud of what you and the team have achieved. The mix of live performance, film and exhibition demonstrated a wonderful symbiosis, where the connecting threads of movement, text, visual images (both still and moving), and texture blended to take the audience on a thought provoking and at times emotional journey. It had a connectedness that spoke of all our different experiences especially during the pandemic. A feast!
I will never forget this project.
Striking Attitudes 