Motionhouse

Motionhouse is a dance company based in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. It operates under the direction of Husband and Wife team Louise Richards and Kevin Finnan and it aims to utilise imagery, theatricality and immediate impact in modern dance with a focus on accessibility.

Motionhouse seeks to explore the links between dance and visual/physical theatre, to produce accessible work and engage in middle scale touring, with shorter festival pieces for performance in a wide range of public places and spaces and large-scale dance spectacles and site-specific events. With this focus on accessibility, Motionhouse has been critically acclaimed; having won the Audience Award in the National Dance Awards 2005,^[1] as well as winning the Audience Prize for the MiramirO Festival in 2009.

Motionhouse has produced 18 full-length, middle-scale touring productions and a series of dance spectacles in sites and spaces throughout the UK. The 2005 production Perfect won critical acclaim^[2] and is currently on the GCSE syllabus for dance in England and Wales. The structure of Perfect is thematic rather than narrative and explores the concept of time.^[3]

Motionhouse currently employs eight professional dancers and in 2010 it toured in seven different countries.

Motionhouse's current full-length production, Scattered, premiered its tour on 2nd October 2009 at the Warwick Arts Centre and has since performed across the UK, as well as having opened the 2010 Sibiu International Theatre Festival in Romania. Performed on a half-pipe with video projection integrated into the dance, Scattered has won high critical acclaim.^[4][5] The tour is set to continue into 2011 at various venues in the UK, Europe and China.

As well as touring full-length productions, Motionhouse also tours to festivals around the UK and Europe. Their festival pieces are typically shorter and utilise more portable sets (forgoing the use of film, harnesses etc) in order to perform more than once a day and in more locations. Motionhouse currently tours three festival pieces: Cascade, Underground, and Chaser.^[6]

Furthermore, Motionhouse sometimes engages in large scale performances and spectacles, often with other dance companies. These have included performances on a tidal Cornish beach, a stately home, the wings of a maximum security prison, a multi-storey car park and Copenhagen police headquarters. Motionhouse's most recent large scale spectacle was at the Queen’s House in Greenwich for the Greenwich+Docklands International Festival in 2008. This large scale performing often involves hundreds of performers – with workshop participants frequently performing alongside professionals – and collaborations with visual artists, composers, musicians and aerialists, this type of work has featured cranes, diggers, pyrotechnics, giant sandcastles, huge fairytale ball-gowns, live opera and a hot air balloon.^[7]

Motionhouse provides community education programs, as well as outreach and community work in its campaign for wider and more accessible dance education.^[8]

Funding

Motionhouse is one of Arts Council England's Regularly Funded Organisations in the West Midlands. Following the 2010 Coalition Government's Comprehensive Spending Review Motionhouse have seen their funding cut from around £270k to £250k.^[9]

On 30th March 2011 further funding decisions were announced by Arts Council England. In this round Motionhouse received a further cut to their funding of around 11% whereas 4 other West Midlands based dace organisations all received significant uplifts and another Warwickshire based arts organisation, Live and Local, became part of the National Portfolio with a rise in funding of 80%. ^[10]

Productions

• Cascade (2010) - Festival piece exploring flooding. Premiered 3rd July 2010 at Greenwich + Docklands International Festival.
• Scattered (2009) - Combining dance with film technology, Scattered explores our relationship with water. Music by Sophie Smith and film by Logela Multimedia; with a set by Simon Dormon and lighting by Natasha Chivers.
• Underground (2008) - Commissioned by Birmingham Hippodrome, Fierce! Festival and Without Walls, Underground is a festival piece exploring the modern realities of train travel.
• Run! (2008) - A large scale spectacle for Greenwich + Docklands International Festival which explored sport and dance. Music by Errolyn Wallen.
• Driven (2007) - Explored love and loss, jealousy and desire, ambition, socialising and isolation.
• Chaser (2005) - Motionhouse's festival performance exploring the modern social rituals and challenges stemming from meeting strangers. Created with the support of Lichfield Garrick, mac, Solihull Arts Complex and Birmingham Hippodrome.
• Dreams and Ruin (2005) - Site specific performance at Witley Court in Worcestershire with 250 local performers developed in partnership with DanceFest, Worcester Arts Workshop, ACE Dance and Music and Angela Woodhouse.
• Perfect (2005) - Performed on a bed of sand and on bungee harnesses, Perfect was the third in a trilogy (following Fearless and Volatile) about the human relationship with time.
• Renaissance (2005) - Performed on waste land in London's East End featuring cranes, diggers (Machine Dance), pyrotechnics and aerial work.
• Road To The Beach: The Edge (2004) - Large scale production with visual performance, giant sand castles, dancing diggers in a performance called Machine Dance, and extreme sports performed on the beach at Watergate Bay, Cornwall along with 1000 children and adults from the local community.
• Dancing Inside (2004) - Therapeutic project designed and run by Motionhouse with nine residents of HMP Dovegate in Staffordshire. A twenty month project ending with a performance by the inmates to the prison community.
• Volatile (2002) - Explored the mystery and struggle involved in trying to communicate truthfully with someone else. Music by Sophie Smith and Tim Dickinson.
• Fearless (2001) - Large scale touring piece which examined phobias such as falling or flying and open or closed spaces. Performed on a massive steel tubular structure created by Simon Dormon.
• Atomic (2000) - Explored tiny worlds and shared spaces. Motionhouse's first festival piece for multi scale touring.
• Twisted (1999) - Explored the news that something had been released into the atmosphere. Examines whether knowledge can be established without sight or smell.
• Faking It (1998) - Motionhouse's tenth anniversary piece about power games and theatrical illusion.
• Delicate (1996) - Examined the dark side of human need and desire with a script by A.L Kennedy and music composed by Howard Skempton, performed by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.
• Geisha (1995) - A commission by Warwick Arts Centre for its 20th anniversary, a dance about role play and identity choreographed by Louise Richards and Kevin Finnan.
• Flying (1994) - Performed on, in and around a giant steel set created by Simon Dormon and steel artist Davey Boyle. Music by Alain Bauman.
• Punch (1994) - Three men struggle on a totem of male imagery with music by Jesus Jones, Kronos Quartet, Curve and Sundial.
• Arcadio/Déjà Vu (1993) - Featured a set by Spanish installation artist Rosa Sanchez
• The Curtsy Play (1992) - Choreographed by Louise Richards, this piece examined the plight of female psychiatric patients. Created with a Bonnie Bird British Choreography Award.
• Speed and Light (1992) - First of Motionhouse's combinations of theatre and film. Film by Christopher Gowans and music by Ray Lee and Harry Dawes.
• House of Bones (1991) - A study of victims of ancient and modern plague and our attitudes towards them. Music by Paul Newham.
• The Ticking Man (1990) - Explored the mechanics deception and the nature of truth and lies. Set created by Simon Dormon, music by Harry Dawes and Ray Lee.
• A Curious Day (1989) - Motionhouse's first major project, Southern Arts Board's first dance and education project, toured to schools before being invited to London and the Far East. Music by Harry Dawes and Simon Prince.

References

External links

• Motionhouse
  • Films of Motionhouse performances