Charlie and Katye have been dancing This Thing for 5 years. It was born of a shared curiousity to move together and practice inside a set of circumstances that undo old habits in duet works. Here is a synopsis.
This thing that we do is a danced practice that is ongoing and evolving. It is a duet. It keeps happening, over and over again in a series of events/ episodes that seem to remain at once resistant to change or destruction while no two events are the same. Each event or episode tends to exhaust itself after around 20 minutes. Then it begins again.
Here is a link to an article that studies this practice along side that of Deborah Hay. Work(s) and (Non)production in Contemporary Movement Practices is written by Hetty Blades and published in Performance Philosophy Journal.
This is a section of a 2 hour performance of the practice at Vivid Gallery in Birmingham in November 2015. Edited by David Tom and James Colley.
Preparation, a Wildcard at Sadlers Wells happened in April 2015. Katye curated a version of This Thing for this event and invited philosopher Alva Noe and artist Graeme Miller to intervene.
Antonio De La Fe made this response for Bellyflop after seeing Preparation at Sadlers Wells. It is part review and stands also as an art work of itself.
This film clip is a single episode of This Thing, filmed as we prepared for a performance in Leeds in February 2016.
photos: Camilla Greenwell
Katye Coe 