Virginia’s film presents a solo investigation into how the experience of time and place was impacted by the quarantine, inspired by a poem by Angela El-Zeind, artistic director of Speak Up! Act Out! This video is no longer available to view.
About the Artist
Virginia Farman creates site-based choreographies across a range of locations, (nightclubs, urban streets, seaside, nature-sites) and situations (festivals, invited audiences, community participation, spontaneous display) and is a researcher and lecturer in choreography and dance at the University of Chichester.
Farman’s work is enthused by an interest in how dance can express human-place connection with humour, sensitivity. She is currently a candidate undertaking a PhD by publication.
The Inspiration
It. All.Stopped.
Amongst the pauses, I started to breathe.
My insides turned out..and warmed to the sun during the days we were tightly locked in.
Counting on my fingers – salty from rubbing my eyes – all the ways I could peel an orange and suck it’s sticky juice before it ran down my arm.
I am here. Breathing in this precise moment. Inhaling the freshness of outside and blocking out the fearful voices desperate to make themselves heard.
Bread anyone? No yeast. No rise. Yet it is all there.
I have stopped and I am looking back. Amongst the green, green, greeness, I am blowing bubbles filled with my new breath.
Dancing alone in a field. Fingertips stroking clouds and heels embraced by soil.
Splitting my insides out again, grappling with the notion of chaos which pleases me and makes me want to SCREAM til I am hoarse.
It’s all very quiet though…A fresh lamb bleats celebrating it’s breath.
Three weeks have passed, or maybe three months. The only thing that has changed are the blossoms on the trees.
And I have stopped making bread.
by Angela El-Zeind, artistic director of Speak Up! Act Out!