• On Lying

    What's on her mind so far? War poetry and rock stars; philosophy, adrenalin, history and not playing the tambourine; skin that hangs on bones differently than it used to, not really having a life story to tell, singing so low that her voice disappears, the lungs of men, and the weight of the microphone stand.

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    Fascinations with fictions open up as a body is moved to confess or at least commit to making it all up; but how many ways does a body tell its story? This one-woman theatre performance started with a desire to tell it like it is and after crowd-pleasing performances in Newcastle, Girona and Chicago - “more dark, more fragile, more...unlikely...”, this thing is indeed becoming something like a sketch for a rock opera. Or perhaps how she imagines writing a blog might be if she could only bear the thought of turning up in so many other people’s lives at once...

    Supported by Arts Council of England with additional support from Dance City and OPENPORT Festival, Chicago.

    Performances have included: Dance City, Newcastle upon Tyne and Festival des Urbaines, Lausanne (2008) and Theaterhaus Gessnerallee (2009).

    Previous performances of the solo in development included On Lying (in a blue dress/early version) and second version (after all this/blue dress/with singing) at OPENPORT, Chicago in (February and December 2007) and at BAC, London and Star & Shadow Cinema, Newcastle (June 2007). An installation version of the work was made for Gresol Art, Girona, Spain (March 2008). Other presentations at symposiums and events included the written performance paper notes on lying and syncope (published in Performance Research, A Lexicon issue, 11.3, Sept. 2006, p.82-85).

    On Lying with Singing: Research Document 2007

    An earlier video collaboration with Becky Edmunds. Documentary footage gathered in the early stages of work in progress towards the new solo. A short edit of studio improvisations filmed by Becky and fragments from Fiona’s own video sketchbook material. Layering of images and sound reveal glimpses from recordings of source ideas, a reflection on the research time, feeding into the future work. This is deliberately partial, a document getting ahead of itself, an incomplete account of actions and ideas.

    video

    On Lying With Singing: Research Document (9:07)
    On Lying - live extract (1:28)
    Camera and edit by Becky Edmunds

    images

    Writing

    Some thoughts on the performance On Lying by Anita Ponton (2008)     (PDF)




  • salt drawing

    a body weight measured in salt (and twice her weight as a girl)
    one handful dissolved inside a skin - a close-up, uncovered
    and covered, quietly now

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    A short solo performance (5 minutes) designed for a solo audience presented various festival contexts and sites including studio theatres, galleries, a castle and a ship’s cabin.

    A short work for the audience and a long work for the performer.

    (Serralves Museum for Contemporary Arts, Oporto; Bonington Gallery Nottingham 2004; Navigate festival, Baltic 2005; Gresol Art, Girona 2006).

    Supported by Arts Council of England

    salt drawing developed after an earlier series of short solo performances/live installations designed for a solo audience, titled: the small stolen dances. A series of small works, drawing attention to questions of intimacy in performance, adapted for different sites and contexts; a back stage dressing room, a kitchen, a seminar room and a gallery. The performer used a compact mirror to view the audience who were invited to look at the work through opera glasses. (Inbetween Time Festival, Arnolfini; Site Gallery, Sheffield; Dia E Vento, Oporto 2001; Connecting Principle, Newcastle University 2002; Sensitive Skin, Nottingham 2003).

    This body of work was connected to ...kneeling down softly/And what is something to cry about then; a previous solo which was first performed with audience at either end of a 20 metre performance space and later for just 2 audience members as a 20 minute piece, repeated for several hours. This was the first of various pieces using mirrors and also the deadweight of 54 kg of salt, the equivalent of the performer’s own body weight. (Tramway, Glasgow; Chisenhale Dance Space, London 2001; Arnolfini, Bristol 2002).

    A Tramway and Arnolfini Live co-commission.

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    salt drawing: close edit (3:30)
    Camera and edit by Becky Edmunds

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  • Other versions of an uncertain body

    finding a place to perform her memory / next to her own screen image, as a trace / next to the ease and anxiety of the artist’s talk / and the fact of the speaker’s body / writing / another version here / differently, now

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    Other versions of an uncertain body is a solo performance lecture which included a collaboration with video maker Becky Edmunds. The work seeks to foreground the event of the written paper, emphasising the connection of the material to the memory of live performance, developing out of an ongoing concern with issues around practices of documentation and how our bodies and the bodies of others become written into our work.

    (Baltic Newcastle/Gateshead; PARIP conference, Leeds University 2005; University of Chichester; University of Wales, Aberystwyth 2006).

    This work was also part of the PhD project (2005 Nottingham Trent University) titled Other versions of an uncertain body: writing towards an account of a solo performance practice.

    With support from Arts Council England.

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    Other versions of an uncertain body - Baltic short web edit (3:00)
    Camera and edit by Becky Edmunds

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