Julie Cunningham & Company Present M/Y-KOVSKY I FIRE BIRD This November
Performances are Thursday 10 & Friday 11 November.
By: Stephi Wild Aug. 31, 2022
Julie Cunningham & Company comes to the Lilian Baylis Studio to present m/y-kovsky and fire bird, two queer responses to music by Western classical composers on Thursday 10 & Friday 11 November.
m/y-kovsky is set to Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No.1 (first movement) and performed by four dancers. Initially conceived as part of an exploratory evening of work for Art Night 2019, Cunningham draws on a traditional dance canon to play with queer ways of relating to each other, the space and the music.
Exploring the relationship one might hold with the classical score today, and the power of music to change us, the work looks at the ways Tchaikovsky's piece is made relevant through today's bodies. Cunningham's queer choreographic reading builds a repertoire on gender that shifts away from patriarchal codes to centre an alternative perspective.
fire bird, a solo, is Cunningham's most personal work yet. Since an arresting moment hearing Stravinsky's iconic Firebird in New York, the piece has deeply resonated with Cunningham - who brings salient motifs of the classical score to life in this interpretation.
Coming to the end of a journey to find out who they are, Jules Cunningham offers here the start of something new. Originally performed over a century ago, the score in this dance piece supports a choreography of emancipation. The show is a raw attempt to present the varied, fragmented pieces of the artist's own identity.
The production is articulated around a web-like structure that delineates the space to dance through, and with - ultimately looking at what happens when one attempts to contain the parts of the self. Cunningham's fire bird is a reappropriation of the theme of freedom.
Talking about the show, Cunningham says: "Here are all the parts of myself together, always changing, unstable and fragmented. I am dealing with contradictions - capability and collapse, wanting to hide and wanting to be seen. I am undefended and undefeated."
Jules Cunningham is an acclaimed, National Dance Award-winning dance artist, formerly with Merce Cunningham Dance Company and Michael Clark Company. They have also performed in projects with Boris Charmatz, Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz, and Thick & Tight. Cunningham's work explores gender, identity and the body and its emotional states. They work at the intersection of movement and text from sources ranging from popular culture to literature and classical scores.
Relaxed Performances on Thursday 10 & Friday 11 November at 8 pm
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