Of Cabbages and Queens: Dancing Carrington

This paper is written in response to the Imaginarium project, which explores through contemporary choreographic becomings, the work of English surrealist artist and author Leonora Carrington (1917-2011). It explores the embodied inquiries that draw on the vibrancy and captured energies we find in Carrington’s sketches and paintings, as well as in her often bizarre and contorted literary figures. Choreographed as a series of fleeting metamorphoses, Imaginarium has been developed through felt responses not only to the materiality and textures in her work, but also through a re-imagining of the artist’s physicality and intention in relation to her canvas. An important part of our artistic research took place in Carrington’s childhood home, Crookhey Hall, Lancashire, UK. This unique opportunity of intimate contact with a place that undoubtedly left its mark on the artist’s imagination, has in turn affected our choreographic framings. This two-voiced paper will discuss how seeking embodiment of the transformative potential in Carrington’s images became the core of our choreographic processes. This mode of energized inquiry, that avoids representation, is key to easing Carrington’s work beyond the canvas and translating our felt experiences into performance. In revealing a fascination for Carrington’s cabbages, this paper also proposes an ecology for performing that understands a co-poiesis with vegetable life. It is through the transmutablilty of the dancing body that the alchemy and mythology that abound in Carrington’s painted and literary Imaginarium become agitated and may be brought into palpable existence.