Today marks the final day of my choreographic residency at Royal Museums Greenwich and it is with a heavy heart that I conclude a 14 month journey that has been truly epic and inspirational for me as an artist.
I have so much to take forward from my time at the museums and will look back very fondly on the varied and unique opportunities I have been able to experience from performing in the stunning Queen’s House to working with inspirational young people from Tidemill Academy to displaying my first public installation in the National Maritime Museum’s RE·THINK gallery.
My residency has culminated on a high point on the 26th June with the sharing of We may be some time, a participatory dance and music performance project I have been working on over the past two months, which involved a group of performers from the local area. The project was a collaboration between the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich Dance and Trinity Laban, and the performance was programmed as a part of Greenwich Dances Festival 2016. The performance took the form of a trail in which performers inhabited various spaces in the museum that the audience were then encouraged to explore at their own leisure. We had a great audience for the event and a lovely atmosphere of curiosity and playfulness pulsed through the museum.
My future plans include continuing elements of the research that was sparked during my residency at Royal Museums Greenwich, particularly around the notion of choreographer as explorer and further investigating the relationship between body, landscape and place. I am delighted to announce that I will be undertaking a residency in the Arctic next June run by The Arctic Circle, in which I will be living and working on a ship for two weeks with scientists, educators and other artists.
I am very grateful for the time I have had at Royal Museums Greenwich and hope that I will get the opportunity to come back in the future to embark on another project adventure.
All the best
Beth