This winter Dumfries and Galloway Dance will be running monthly online watch parties, showcasing short pieces of contemporary dance while bringing together and developing audiences for dance across the region.
Selected by a panel of independent dance experts, Dumfries and Galloway Dance will host a diverse mix of films over the next 12 months.
This month’s watch party includes:
Frenetica e Composta by Glenda Gheller, produced by Scottish Dance Theatre
Scottish Dance Theatre produces high quality dance that is thought provoking and holds resonance in people’s lives. They believe dance can uplift, inspire, tune our sensibilities and enrich lives.
Originally from Asiago, Italy, Glenda began dancing at her local dance school at the age of 6. She has always been interested in studying other styles of dance, training for six years in hip-hop and two of years in Latin American dances, attending various competitions.
About the film:
Like many others, Scottish Dance Theatre Dancer Glenda Gheller has spent a lot of time away from home and her family because of the COVID19 pandemic. Particularly as she’s from a village in northern Italy, one of the hardest hit areas by the virus.
Glenda made this film as a way to feel connected to her beloved country. The music is a version of ‘Bella Ciao’, one of the most famous and meaningful songs in Italian culture which celebrates resistance and freedom. These two words are very important for Italy now, as it continues to fight against the brutality of the pandemic.
Bright Future by Lillian Ross-Millard
Lillian Ross-Millard is a video artist based in both Canada and Scotland. Her innovative practice documents physical research methods adapted from alternative theatre processes. Conducting this research in group situations as well as independently, she directs participants to reflect on symptomatic relationships between experience and the habitual movements of the body. Parodying the scientific, the process is ultimately poetic, and is designed to remap the meanings and narratives we subconsciously assign to our daily gestures and choreographies.
About the film:
BRIGHT FUTURE is the product of Ross-Millard’s physical research aiming to discover the scientific-fictions inhabiting, shaping, and moving her body. Gestures of anticipation glide across the screen, offering new meaning with each subtle development and repetition. The movements portend both personal and collective futures, but also offer themselves as tools of endurance as we move towards the unknown. BRIGHT FUTURE presents a dance choreographed out of a body’s knee-jerk response as it prepares for social isolation, economic hardship, and climate crisis.