Landscape of the Bones project

The Landscape of the Bones This practice-led research project explores the affective relationship between landscape and body through the medium of dance performance. The research focuses on the interplay between both real and imaginary landscapes, and the embodied impact of nostalgia, journey and distance. It considers how we may conduct an archeology of bodily experience, and re-discover and re-present the traces of those relationships, events and journeys through performance practice. Specifically, the project questions the impact on Hewison’s (dancing) body, of his return to (what was always) an unstable sense of home in the North West of England in 2011. The research responds to American architect and academic Miwon Kwo who referred to this as “the nostalgic desire for a retrieval of rooted, place-bound identities on the one hand, and the anti-nostalgic embrace of a nomadic fluidity of subjectivity, identity and spatiality on the other”. (1997). The project engages with Kwo’s ideas through interrogation of responses to physical, psychological and emotional phenomena. The project also responds to Hewison’s dialogues with the North West-based artist Richard Skelton, and his work in exploring landscape in sound-composition and writing, and specifically through his interrogation of the minute details of physical reality. Hewison’s departure from that position extends towards creative exploration of the non-physical territories of loss; of missed-places, half-remembered events, and internalized landscapes. The research has focused on unpicking relationships between deep structures and surface-impacts within the context of the human body, and with reference to geographical, emotional and narrative landscapes. The project outcomes are two original pieces of dance/performance: Oh Let Me Confess (Hewison) 35 minute solo, commissioned by Volcano Theatre Company and premiered at The Birthday Party Festival, Swansea, February 2013. The Landscape of the Bones (Hewison and Man) 15 minute duet, commissioned by Costa Contemporanea Festival and premiered in Almeria, Spain, September 2013. Evidence Portfolio includes: Oh Let Me Confess (Swansea, 2013) DVD Landscape of the Bones (Almeria, 2013) DVD Complimentary reflective writing including Photographic images (Almeria, March and September 2013) Costa Contemporanea festival marketing and publicity