7pm | Sunday 7 August 2016 | Cubitt Square, Stable Street, King’s Cross, London, N1C 4AB
Gisele Edwards in partnership with Riotous Company
Tête à Tête is delighted to return to King’s Cross for the Cubitt Sessions, a free, outdoor live performance series featuring six days of brand new and improvised pop-up opera.
A concert unravels.
We step inside the sound, entering a playful world of the body, movement and space of the music itself.
A tantalizing playful piece that combines beautiful classical music, aerial and theatre work in an entirely unexpected and original way, Divertimento for Rope & Strings unravels to take us on an journey into the music itself.
Divertimento for Rope and Strings is a playful and unexpected performance collaboration between a prize winning aerial artist and two eminent classical musicians. It looks at how we experience music three dimensionally, not simply aurally but viscerally, physically, spatially. Playing with themes of body, movement and space, it considers at how simple bodies can, through movement, give rise to something as ethereal as music.
The project began 7 years ago when Gisele Edwards, puzzled by the formality and lack of physical movement in classical concerts, invited a director from Jacques Lecoq, the famous theatre school in Paris, and a Baroque cellist, to look at how the rope that she dances on might convey the movement and sound of the music created by the cellist’s strings, and so offer audiences a more visceral experience of live classical and contemporary music.
Gisele is now working in partnership with Riotous Company in bringing the idea to fruition. The aim is to turn this abridged performance for the Cubitt Sessions into a full scale performing piece that will be toured to theatre, music, circus and arts audiences at regional venues and festivals. Please contact Kendall Masson- kendall.masson@yahoo.com for more details.
To find out more about the producer Gisele Edwards, visit her official website: http://www.giseleedwards.com/
To view the full programme for King’s Cross’ Cubitt Sessions, visit: https://www.kingscross.co.uk/event/cubitt-sessions
Photos from our Cubitt Sessions are available below, © Claire Shovelton 2016.
Gisele Edwards Rope
Ken Aiso Violin
Ingrid Schoenlaub Cello
Mia Theil Have Director
Stephano Regueros Savvides Assistant Director
María José Martínez Sánchez and Juan Ayala Spatial Designers
Kendall Masson Producer
Mariana Sastre Assistant Producer
Neck of the Woods Creative Partner
Gisele Edwards Rope
Ken Aiso Violin
Ingrid Schoenlaub Cello
Mia Theil Have Director
Stephano Regueros Savvides Assistant Director
María José Martínez Sánchez and Juan Ayala Spatial Designers
Kendall Masson Producer
Mariana Sastre Assistant Producer
Neck of the Woods Creative Partner
Gisele Edwards Gisele is an experienced award winning performer and aerialist of 15years. She trained at NCCA, Central and Lecoq in Paris. She is winner of the Festival of Firsts (Royal Opera House) and recipient of the Jerwood Prize for Circus. She is a co-founder of Shunt and has worked with Trevor Nunn (The Tempest), Simon McBurney (Theatre de Complicite), Lucy Bailey, Scarabeus, at Anthony Gormley’s Studio, with the Dante and Kosmos Quartets and the Millennium Dome show among others. In 2009 she was awarded Laureat at the Residence au Centre International des Recollets, Paris, where she worked with Jos Houben and four baroque cellists, leading to a commission from London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) and Sound UK to create a piece with violinist Alexander Balenescu and accordinist Evelina Petrova, with sell out performances at St Lukes in 2011 (4-stars The Times). These musical collaborations have been the springboard for her current explorations.
Ken Aiso Ken is internationally recognised as a versatile and virtuoso violinist. Winner of the Long-Thibaud Concours in Paris and the International Music Competition in Japan, Ken Aiso has performed as a soloist with orchestras such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Tokyo Symphony. Ken has a professional interest in the spatial, visceral and therapeutic qualities of music.
Ingrid Schoenlaub Ingrid is an accomplished and prize-winning chamber and orchestral musician whose practice is strongly influenced by choreography, notably the “flexible bars” dance method, which she studied with Wilfride Piollet, prima ballerina of the Paris Opera. Ingrid studied under Philippe Muller and Christian Ivaldi at the Paris National Conservatory, Frans Helmerson at the Musikhochschule-Köln and the Ysaÿe quartet at the Paris Regional Conservatory. She has also taken part in numerous master-classes with Walter Levin, Brian Manker, Paul Katz, Janos Starker, Joseph Weilerstein, Anner Bylsmar, Michel Strauss, the Hagen and Amadeus quartets. Ingrid collaborated with Gisele Edwards as part of her residency at the Centre International des Recollets, Paris.
Mia Theil Have Mia is the founder and Artistic Director of Riotous Company. Her directing credits include: Penelope X (National Opera and Ballet of Macedonia); Sarha (Guimaraes 2012 European Capital of Culture and The Freedom Theatre Palestine); Bodas de Sangre (Havana International Theatre Festival, Cuba); Carnival over the Rainbow and Feast Kakhulu (Hilton Arts Festival, South Africa), The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Aarohan Theatre, Kathmandu and 14th Bharat Rang Mahotsav Festival, Delhi); White Suit (GDIF 2012 Greenwich Festival); The Third Man (Secret Cinema, Farmiloe Building) and the RPS Award-winning We are Shadows for Spitalfields Music Festival, 5* The Times. Mia worked as an associate director to Kathryn Hunter on Told by an Idiot’s ‘My Perfect Mind’ and associate director to Walter Meierjohann on ‘Kafka’s Monkey’ and an associate director to Tage Larsen on ‘Insomnia’. Mia was an actor in the core ensemble at Odin Teatret in Denmark and formed part of ISTA (International School of Theatre Anthropology) directed by Eugenio Barba from 2002-2007. Mia was latest seen on stage this summer acting for Katie Mitchell as Melisande Double in Pelleas et Melisande at the Aix-en-Provence Festival.
Stephano Regueros Savvides Stephano was born in Cyprus. He studied at RADA and Goldsmiths College, University of London (Drama and Theatre Arts). He is the director of Milk + Honey Theatre Company and has founded the charity Familia Mundi: A Global Performance Collective. He has worked with Odin Teatret since 2007 (and has collaborated on numerous projects and performances either as performer or producer. Notable performances include ‘The Marriage of Medea’ (2008), ‘Ur-Hamlet’ (2009), ‘Ageless Love’ for Holstebro Festuge (2011). He produced Odin Teatret’s first tour in London with ‘The Chronic Life’ (2014) bringing the performance to Sadler’s Well’s (and organising workshops at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama). Stephano is an associate of Riotous Company currently assisting on ‘Blixen’.
Riotous Company Riotous Company is a crossover theatre of stories, music, pictures, poetry and dance founded by artistic director Mia Theil Have in close collaboration with patron Kathryn Hunter, composer Nikola Kodjabashia, designer Luis F. Carvalho, director Tage Larsen and a team of associate artists. Riotous Company is a registered UK charity. Upcoming productions include‘SCHERZO for piano and stick’ in co-production with Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium/Odin Teatret, performing at Print Room London 17-20 October and Orbit Festival HOME Manchester 13th October, 2016, and ‘BLIXEN’ directed by Kathryn Hunter in co-production with Print Room at the Coronet spring 2017.
Neck of the Woods Neck of the Woods, founded by María José Martínez Sánchez (PhD Architect) and Mariana Sastre (Producer), specialises in producing performance, events and spatial design. Neck of the Woods have previously worked with Gisele Edwards to produce and design an artistic residency for Duet at Trinity Laban Conservatoire and Mobile at Proteus Creation Space and Circus Gallery London. Recent work also includes designing exhibition space for the Relapse Collective at the Peltz Gallery, producing street performance and academic research platform Wooosh!, being awarded an artistic residency at Mitos Performing Arts Centre in Cyprus for Strings and lecturing at Rey Juan Carlos I University in Madrid. Juan Ayala (co-Spatial Designer) is a director, performer, dramaturg and set designer based between London and Madrid. He is the artistic director of Decollage and co-director of Mirage Teatro.