No Landing // Jennifer Essex & Harry Man @dancepoetry - Tumblr Blog

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// No Landing is a Contemporary Dance and Poetry Collaboration by Jennifer Essex and Harry Man for the Fleetwood Initiative 2015 Artists’ Residency. Jennifer Essex (b.1980) is a dancer and choreographer from Toronto, Canada. She was recently selected as a BENCH fellow, one of only five female choreographers selected from across the UK. Her work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, Manitoba Arts Council, and Arts Council England. She has performed across Europe and North America including at the O2 Arena (London), The Barbican (London), and Harbourfront Centre (Toronto) and in the feature films Anna Karenina and Les Miserables. More of her work can be found at: www.jenniferessex.com Harry Man (b. 1982) is a poet and translator. His first pamphlet ‘Lift’ was the winner of the Bridges of Struga Award in 2014, and was shortlisted for the Sabotage Award for ‘Best Pamphlet’. His work has appeared in Poems in the Waiting Room, New Welsh Review, the Battersea Review and he has been anthologised in the Emma Press Anthology of Fatherhood and elsewhere. More of his work can be found at www.manmadebooks.co.uk Photograph: Phil J Hill Photography

Watch a video from the roof of the castle here: https://vimeo.com/140911655

#dance poetry collaboration danceandpoetry jenniferessex harryman

Exploration on the roof of the castle. Video by Phil Hill. When Jetpacks Dreamed of a Future with Humans

Autotuners were one thing, but gyroscopes were another. Human riders weren’t needed for a jetpack way of life. A jetpack could be his own jetpack back then, brandishing a rattler gun, fusion ventures never had the backing, strapless waistbands, and strapless dresses were must-haves. Jetpacks ran on the magic beans of neon propulsion fluid. A semi-sensible jetpack could earn an honest flying, a chameleon at home in any jetpack bar, cooling his or her jets by the kerosene lakes, jetpack couples locked airframes, infused their resin, intake sensors flashing with suction on their airbox boots. Nobody thought the day would come when bonobos would thump the glass, paddocks jumbled with the goodyears far enough apart to test them. These tool-making genetic freaks were the stuff of atom-age science fiction. It’s 2017, where’s my bonobo? Of course some escaped and the jungles and the glaciers beckoned. Jetpacks risked corrosion, fuselages frosting up, the burning hope appalling in its trap of engine cowling ice, the loss of ducts, flight control cables, all for the key to a user to grant them the freedom to roam the skies under control, not to zip about the treetops like yo-yos, but controlled by an automaton powered by synapse, explorers of mechachemical reflexes, tomorrow’s happiness, to be happy tomorrow, Drizella-like, never fitting the glass slipper, never the one dance with a prince leading to another, another, another.

A Special Hold // Sensation Poem

1. Once the distance between the sun and the horizon is the thickness of your thumb, walk from the marsh to the sea. Bend your head over the wash of the sea and make a wish.

#poetry contemporary dance poetryanddance collaboration choreography experimental nolanding sensation poem

2. Give yourself time to catch a swan, a fieldfare or a brent goose pass close overhead, or get as close as you can to a murmuration. Give one of the animals the name of a close childhood friend.

#poetry contemporary dance poetryanddance collaboration choreography experimental nolanding sensation poem

3. Under your shirt, place a flat palm against your bare chest and time eight heartbeats.

#poetry contemporary dance poetryanddance collaboration choreography experimental nolanding sensation poem

4. Cup your hands together, bring them to your ear, purse your lips and try to whistle as you breathe in. Gradually look further and further up into the sky.

#poetry contemporary dance poetryanddance collaboration choreography experimental nolanding sensation poem

5. Slowly yawn until you hear the crackle in your ears and think of a something you eat now that you never used to like.

#poetry contemporary dance poetryanddance collaboration choreography experimental nolanding sensation poem

6. Hold your left hand with your right hand as though it belonged to someone else, then let it go.

#poetry contemporary dance poetryanddance collaboration choreography experimental nolanding sensation poem

Poems from Matt Bryden & sketches - Harry Man //No Landing // Day 10

The North West Bastion - Harry Man

Why not join me in the North West Bastion where it says 4, over by the Dutch six pounder cannon? This is where the wooden walls would’ve partitioned the room into eating, living and sleeping accommodation. The Master Gunner was billeted here. One Master Gunner is reputed to have lived here with his wife and six of his children. Notice the long row of chimneys. Open fires would've kept the barracks warm. After the 1873 wings were erected on the original 1544 foundations in the far left of the room you’ll see a doorway if you’d like to make your way through there, I’ll join you in a moment. Why not join me in the the North West Bastion where it says 4? ======== Poems from Matt Bryden

The Projection You can make out my smile over what is the keep; standing on the bumper of the jeep reach the elastic of my tie. Jumping up from the vehicle might touch the gun loop; my mother’s eye; behind it, it would take fifteen men to clean, load and reload each barrel, one man alone to damp down the powder from the old charge. Sound whisked away through the overhead chimneys. (Behind the walls the smell of cigarette smoke and latrines). My brother is squinting, high above the moat, as if he can see his sister (missing from the frame) over the lighthouse beam that dyes a second column red. There is room inside this composition for another – at the centre, his expression says. The stone tints us like Bohemian crystal. Were the image to fail, it would be in one motion, impossible to say whether left to right, or top down, but with a wipe; for now, rocked by the whirring fan, the image holds.

My Puppy Recalls the Sea

After depleting our vessel by one soul she barks from the pontoon, runs the length of the lagoon, skirls her voice to a howl; Morosini, Venetian conqueror, was a cat lover. A wooden cage in his grip he assessed the battlefield: a führer trading walnuts; an artisan expending 1 million kroner on a single strain of mushroom – the mycologist insane. He lifted the trellis and released the pampered animal to a rock from which it looked about silently. Crecy, it thought at once, and reviewed the admiral’s plans. The outflanking manouevre would not work on such open ground – it ran a paw across the dust, smartly. The boat kisses land, having drifted into seaweed, and the cocker races round to meet us her champagne fur salt to the touch.

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“Prepare for action” No. 1 provides and fixes sights No. 2 elevating wheel and assists 4 with side arms. No. 3 hoisting tackle consisting of double and triple blocks and handles of running up jacks. He removes muzzle tampeon. No 4 side arms No. 5 wedge wads… 6 pages and 11 men later the 38 tonne gun is ready for action

#dance #collaboration #HurstCastle

//No Landing - Day 8

We examined ways in which spoken word can interact with movement and the timing of spoken word. ‘Stand by for Tape Backup’ by Ross Sutherland is a seriously impressive live show in which Ross Sutherland will time his monologue to a live long play VHS tape. The tape contains glimpses of the television of his childhood alongside memories of spending time with his grandfather. There are shows like the Fresh Prince of Bel Air and the Crystal Maze, and an advert for NatWest bank. Key phrases mimic the action on the stage where someone could be remembering watching washing in a tumble dryer while Will Smith on his Fresh Prince throne rolls upside down, or the frustrations of having no money to take home from a salary while being all smiles at work… in a bank.

#poetry contemporary dance poetryanddance collaboration cannon RML Victorian guns choreography experimental

Dance sketches - Day 10 // No Landing

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Poems from Matt Bryden

#poetry contemporary dance poetryanddance collaboration cannon RML Victorian guns choreography experimental

For No Landing we looked at another text which are the drill instructions for the 12.5 RML (Rifle Muzzle Loading) gun. A section from the instructions is still pinned to the wall, close to the entrance to the casemate. Thick replica bulletproof rope riggings "mantlets" dangle across the armour plate where once the gun would have pointed out to sea. The guns were built in fear of Napoleon III a new heir apparent to the Bonaparte Empire and who, it was felt by the French, would take France to victory in Europe. He reigned from 1852-1871.

Assembling a sensation/experience poem from bricolage found on The Spit during yesterday's expedition.

#poetry contemporary dance poetryanddance collaboration

9 inch RML firing. We posted this up for the ALK guys, and in particular Mat Dickson. One of these guns can be found in the courtyard in the west wing of Hurst Castle.

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No Landing // Jennifer Essex & Harry Man