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Call for writers…

Posted on October 3, 2013October 3, 2013 by Camilla

Embedded Journalism is getting a lot of attention at the moment.

With the spread of online critics and citizen journalism (one report suggests that 20% of theatre goers publish their experience online) and the sad loss of more and more newspaper critics (the Independent on Sunday axed their critic and the Evening Standard allows just 220 words), it seems ever harder to find out what a show is like. And then comes the internet! Blogs and self-published articles are a great way for us, as a company, to gauge response to our work. For those that are familiar with us, you’ll know that we love social media engagement during our performances. (Phone) Cameras are strictly allowed!

Having an outsider report on what happens behind the scenes (literally) is a rather delicious appeal. So we thought we’d ask you.

We’re offering two lovely and passionate performance lovers the chance to follow the progress of Joumana Mourad, IJAD’s Artistic Director.

You’ll see each process of the performance unfold and build, culminating in three shows in one night at The Science Museum.

You’ll need to be able to write and be armed with a camera (phone). So long as you can translate your experience into words and publish them shortly after you have them, we’d love to hear from you. If you have your own blog, that’s great. If not, we can set you up a very simple one which you can continue to use after the project finished.

To apply, email Camilla – camilla@ijaddancecompany.com – with a short article (no more than 600 words) about an interesting art experience you had with at least one accompanying image. It can be anything from a piece of graffiti you walked past today, to an awesome theatre show – or some clouds you made with sugar.

All applications need to be in by 10th October and you need to be free during some weekdays to attend rehearsals and meet with the creative team. This is for our show on 30th October so you definitely need to be free in the evening for that one!

I look forward to finding out what art makes you go ‘wow’

Camilla

We need you!

Posted on October 1, 2013October 1, 2013 by admin

Like a bad friend, do you ever feel like everyone is talking on social media, but no one ever listens?

IJAD are.

What you send us over the next month we’ll create a performance around at – drumroll please – The Science Museum. That’s way better than a facebook post saying ‘tell me where you first me me to prove that you read this’.

Yes that’s right – The Science Museum. We’re taking part in their adults only (no, I said adult not ‘adult’) lates series and the theme is Space.

Not only that, it’s also part of the two month long Nour Festival of Arts which reflects the very best in contemporary Middle Eastern and North African arts and culture; a crucial meeting point for East and West.

We want anything you’ve got that relates to Space (and not just outer space) the Middle East or the arts. We’ll be massaging your creative juices over the next month with suggestions on facebook and Twitter so if nothing comes to mind take a look there. #InfiniteReach is the hashtag and we’ll be looking at different Space topics each week.

Poetry? Prose? Painting?
Photography? Food art? Phone messages?
Sound? Video? Bananas?

Whatever you do – fling it at us. We won’t just be holding it up – we’ll be designing the performance around it. We’ll be using your thoughts and artwork and creating a show inspired by and incorporating it because we want our art to reflect life as much as possible – and so we really think it should come from you.

We’ll be creating an installation between 7pm and 9.45pm on 30th October. It’s free to come along and the space will come alive with a multi-media performance at 7.30pm, 8.15pm and 9pm.

Send us the inside of your brain – we will of course credit you on social media and on our website for everything we use.

@IJADdance
IJAD Dance Company – facebook
hello@ijaddancecompany.com

TEDx

Posted on September 24, 2013September 25, 2013 by Joumana

Yesterday Artistic Director, Joumana, went to the TEDx event at the Albert Hall.

‘Inspirational doesn’t come close. Most of the day was based on people who had visions springing from Prince Albert who helped to establish the cultural centre in Kensington & Chelsea or, as we learnt, Albertropolis. The collection of cultural sites and educational institutions would work to support all human progress in culture and science. This TEDx location was an ideal setting for an event that explored art and science and how they fit together in the modern world.

The speakers were a variety but they came together in their belief in their own internal powers and their cutting edge practice in their respective field.
The speaker who blew me away was Jessica Thom. Her creation, Touretteshero is incredible. Nicholas McCarthy’s talk was also a great example of people defeating physical nature in order to be more than functional, to be incredible.

A few of the speakers were inviting people to be creative, to indulge in their hobbies and for me this has never been more relevant. You only have to look at the #TEDx feeds on Twitter to see the conversations that inspirational stories can spark. The use of Twitter at the event made the experience even richer. This is the kind of engagement that we want to encourage through the In-finite Space project at the Science Museum. We are inviting people to be creative through Twitter (we are @IJADdance by the way) in order to provide our artists with a new foundation for their response. Overcoming physical limitations was a theme of TEDx that got me thinking about the existence of a more universal limitation for humans. Does digital interaction lead to richer social and cultural experiences? Can we learn, from these inspirational examples, how to bridge the gaps between the physical and the digital space we inhabit?’

Calling all DANCERS – Twitter Flash-Mob is happening at the largest Digital conferences of the year in London!

Posted on May 21, 2013May 23, 2013 by admin

Can you move?

Are you free 11.18am onwards on Friday 24th

Do you have a smart phone?

If so – IJAD Dance Company are giving a talk on how the digital world is revolutionising dance.

We want to demonstrate this to the 15,000 attendees – as part
of our talk we’ll be asking them to tweet #todayimdancing with a piece of inspiration(idea, thought, poem) – we want you to help us flood twitter, by picking one, filming a 6 second or less vine of you dancing in response to one of these and tweeting it back on #ds13.

N.B if you do not have a vine on your make download it from the app mac to obtain a vine app for free go to: http://www.vineapp.com

Last year, #DS12 trended twitter on the first day of the conference so this is going to be big. Even better – the best one will get to work with artistic director of IJAD, Joumana
Mourad and learn in a private lesson the skills behind performing on multiple platforms as well as starring in our all new Twitter Scratch Performances over the summer.

Get excited. Get involved. Follow @IJADdance and tweet at us to let us know you’ll be taking part or if you have any questions.

Missed In-Finite in March? Get behind the scenes at Cambridge University’s Kettle’s Yard May 24th, 6pm

Posted on May 21, 2013May 21, 2013 by admin

Kettle’s Yard will be screening In-Finite as part of their season of Adult Events (oo-eer) called The 
Practice Sessions.

That’s not all though folks. Joumana Mourad will be giving unique insights into the piece so you will 
be able to see the effects of newly developed Sensography and Triple Choreography. These concepts

change the environment and the performer practice so that you will have an experience unlike any 
other streamed performance you’ve seen to date.

Joumana will also be running a twitter workshop as this piece existed on twitter at the same time it 
existed live on the night and over streaming. This isn’t any old ‘look at my sandwich’ tweeting, oh no, 
we look at how twitter can be used as a creative tool for expression and there will be plenty to join 
in with (including movement if you fancy it).

The creative team (designers, dramaturge, dancers et cetera) will be looking out for your tweets on 
the night, so if you want to ask any questions while you watch – tweet away!

Ensure your phone is fully charged, because this is going to be one fully charged night, whether 
you’re a newbie to ‘this whole social media thing’ or a passport holder of the twitterverse. We look

forward to seeing you there.

Find out more here: http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/education/adults/

##NEWS FLASH## 

We’re re-opening our anonymous survey to gather your secrets which will be workshoped on the 
night. You can tweet them privately to @infinite13 or here: survey monkey

IJAD’s done digital in Shoreditch – now we’re doing Digital Shoreditch

Posted on May 21, 2013 by admin

London is positioning itself as the digital capital of the world and Shoreditch is already a thriving hub of tech companies (and the trendy bars that go with it!)

In March, IJAD launched In-Finite at Rich Mix in Shoreditch to the world which ushered in a new way of interacting with dance performance, both streaming video online and creating what one audience member dubbed it as ‘a durational performance’ on twitter. The conversation is still continuing and we’re taking it to Digital Shoreditch.

We’ll be presenting a talk on how the latest technologies are revolutionising the dance world – and in true IJAD style – we’re getting them to contribute to the weave of In-Finite.

The In-Finite Project is rather aptly named – and not because you’ll never hear the end of it! It looks at the infinite spaces within and the infinite nature of the internet and externality. It started its development in 2010 and we’re now booking tour dates into 2014 so you haven’t missed out if you weren’t able to plug in March 2013.

If you want to hear about how performers are adapting to dancing across multiple mediums simulations – direct from the horses mouth, then grab a ticket, take a look at us online and we look forward to seeing you in the audience and sharing your tweets!

Joumana and Camilla will speak on the Mayor’s Parlour at 11.18am on Friday 24

Buy Ticket http://tickets.digitalshoreditch.com/

Watch on twitter: @IJADdance #infinite13 @DigiShoreditch

What are we on about?: http://bit.ly/ZRe8gg

In-Finite Incarnates In Switzerland

Posted on April 16, 2013April 16, 2013 by Camilla

It’s easy when you sell out a show to think that you’ve done everything right. However, as ever, we like to set the bar a little higher. We like to think we’re more concerned with the way you, our audience, experienced the performance. We did something brand new.

On March 8th we had three different audiences:

– A live audience in London (did we mention we sold out?)
– An online audience – watching from 11 confirmed countries
– A twitter audience – from the 20% of people tweeting (in the auditorium, and many more of you from home), over 400 people had an experience of the show through a twitter feed

After a month of research collecting feedback and opinion from you (please continue to let us know what you thought) we’ve noticed some interesting things.

One recurring piece of feedback is that the latter part of the performance was so engaging all the way through and changed quite rapidly that you felt you were missing things if you stopped to tweet or take a picture. Also, there was little time to absorb what was going on, decide what you think till after the show.

We’re very happy to announce that ArtCorps who run the Antilope Festival in Switzerland was so intruiged with what we did on the 8th that they have invited us to perform as part of their 2013 Festival. On the 24th April In-Finite with incarnate as a twitter performance and live showing. We wont be streaming it – but, you will be able to watch the performance through the eyes of those gathered. To get the most enriching experience possible we’re breaking up the performance in to three parts. This will give 4 scheduled opportunities (one before, two intervals and after the show) for the viewers to watch, digest, interpret and share their ideas over twitter.

Antilope are very excited about the way we’re integrating social media with dance to the point where our very own Joumana Mourad has been anointed their Twitter Ambassador for the festival and will be spreading the exciting opportunities Twitter has to performers and audiences who attend the festival from the 22nd April.

Be prepared to watch #infinite13 as we think you’ll find some delightfully creative thoughts appearing as well as a never before seen insight into what’s happening at the festival and in the minds of the creatives involved.

The performance is at 8.30pm CEST (7.30pm BST) so if you can’t make it in the flesh (book here if you can) you can experience for the very first time a twitter only dance performance. We’d love to hear what you think as well – so, follow @IJADdance and we’ll let you know all about it as it fast approaches!

In-Finite at Rich Mix [Review]

Posted on March 17, 2013April 17, 2013 by admin

Charlotte Goodhart is 23 studying Museum Studies at UCL and interested in the way that cultural organisations communicate with their audiences, through exhibition, engagement and digital marketing. She tweets @CharGoodhart

Having absolutely no experience or knowledge of contemporary dance, I was intrigued about what a night with IJAD would entail. All I knew prior to the night was that they are based in London, that use mutlimedia approaches throughout their performances and will let me tweet while I’m actually watching.

The event was held at Rich Mix in Bethnal Green on the 8th March and the venue was perfect, as a space that holds a variety of different cultural, musical and other events regularly. On the night itself, we entered the space by lift in groups of ten and came straight into the dancers and the performance space. The room resembled something out of a very surreal dream, or at least a Tim Burton film. Spools of plastic were scattered and hung around the room, looking like the innards of cassette tapes, whilst the lights, which were low, flickered: first impressions, very eerie but very intriguing. At the front of the room, a majestically dressed performer was reading out secrets that had been submitted prior to the event by 100 strangers. These varied from the obvious ‘I stole from the corner shop when I was 10 and I’ve never stopped feeling guilty about it’ to the more extreme, something about poisoning your dog with Class A drug. This only added to the intimate, spooky atmosphere and I couldn’t help but that I had secretly snuck into someone else’s unconscious whilst they slept.

Meanwhile, at the back of the room there was a screen, where tweet deck was showing everything being said on twitter about the performance. At first it was obvious that people involved in the performance were just trying to keep numbers up, by tweeting about the room itself, or how the dancers looked. But within about ten minutes, as the guests relaxed, the page became a flurry of messages, thoughts and feelings and as you looked round the room, almost all the faces were lit by their phones, as they typed away. In what worked as a wonderful contrast to the intimiate intensity of the secrets, we were all viewing a different performance; our own livetweeting.

It was a strange experience, it felt rude to get my phone out and write about what I was seeing rather than watching it. But is this much different to what we do on a day-to-day basis? Most twitter pages, regardless of who owns them, read like an internal monologue. Sure, some are more interesting than others, I would probably rather read the twitter of a journalist whose life centres around keeping people up to date with what’s happening, than that of a 15 year old in a small town near Birmingham whose priorities are boozing and avoiding school work. But if you strip away what they’re writing, the intention is the same, to broadcast what’s on your mind. So it was a novel experience to literally live tweet what we were seeing. And it clearly wasn’t just me who enjoyed it.

There’s a huge preoccupation with turning off your phone when you enter a cultural space, be it an exhibition, a museum or a play. And it’s true that it can be very distracting for others, particularly if you’re in the cinema or if you have a godawful ringtone that keeps going off in an exhibition.

However, visiting an exhibition, or watching a play is an experience that you will interpret and understand in a way totally different to another viewer. Being able to look up other people’s thoughts on what you’ve just seen is fascinating and might make you look at something in a totally different way. So long as you aren’t disturbing someone else’s experience, using your phone to tweet about your experience actually does a lot more good than it is harm. I certainly felt it softened my introduction to contemporary dance. Lets start a conversation, open it up, debate and say what we really mean. And please, when I enter the space, let me turn on my phone!

Live Streaming

Posted on March 7, 2013March 7, 2013 by Camilla

Streaming in performance is a loaded area. While the obvious access opportunities are great, there are lots of issues around what, where, how much and what we even call this digital addition that is becoming so important to live art.

First the practical, what exactly do we mean by live streaming? Options include the use of static cameras on tripods versus using a live camera crew. Besides the relative costing differences, there are hundreds of reasons why we might choose one method over another, each one with even more alternatives. How and where should static cameras be placed? How many cameras should be used? Do the camera crew become part of the performance itself?

Many of these issues come down to whether we should be treating an online audience as equal to the physical audience. If so are we not obliged to strive to provide the same experience? And then how does the streaming impact on the expeience of the physical audience? When does streaming equipment begin to change what the present audience experience? With online audiences potentailly outnumbering the physical audience might we lose something of the feel of a live performance, as if we’re inviting them to a filmset?

So does the thought of a less committed audience offend us? An online audience will inevitably watch differently. The experience of a recorded or streamed performance can arguably never be as powerful as the live version. There are aspects of a performance beyond the visual and as technology develops, we’re seeing ever more innovative and performance practice… – sensography. Are we therefore offering our online audiences a reduced performance? Does live streaming cut people off even further? What about those with no internet connection or a generation that are not ‘digital natives’? Are we doing enough to introduce new audiences to the possibility?
At the same time, it could be said that live streaming is in fact more powerful. As we’ve said before, digital interaction may well be the answer to audience participation that performance art needs.

If we can achieve more online, or at least achieve something different, are we talking about the emergence of a new artform? Possibly, who are the curators of this new space? Working with a venue is one thing but what about curating a space where your viewers can adjust the volume, dim the lights, switch cameras or get up and go and make a cup of tea?

The implications on the more traditional audience are huge! Does an online audience encourage people to come and see a live show or make them feel like they’ve seen it? People who buy a DVD won’t then go see it in the cinema (usually). People who buy an album will go and see a band live. What role does mystery have in the arts? The industry is scared of losing business and artistis are scared of giving everything away…

But, we do know that live streaming promotes more access to the arts…Undoubtedly, streaming allows access to performances to those that might have had none but is potential the key word here? Certainly the possibility of access is there but are we really seeing larger audiences from around the world, disadvantaged people and the less able taking a new interest in dance and performance or are we just transferring our current audiences?

In-Finite is being live streamed on Friday from 8pm (http://bit.ly/ZkfEEe). Or attend in person at Rich Mix from 7.30pm (http://bit.ly/XUjRfI)

Bio: Lou Cope

Posted on March 6, 2013 by admin

Lou Cope is a lecturer, writer and coach and has currently joined IJAD as dramaturg for the In-Finite project. Having discussed creative director and choreographer Joumana’s ideas and intentions over skype in the past few weeks, Lou comes in now to help the company see how the material is working and whether it is communicating what they hope it will. She works with Joumana and the dancers on the structure and tries to help them all find consistency and coherency in the movement and relationships. She is here to consider what the audience will experience, more objectively than Joumana and the others are able.

Of being part of the In-Finite project, Lou says;

‘Joining joumana and the others in this murky world of secrets has been really interesting. Dramaturgically speaking, a secret has its own energy and its own desire to break out and be heard. Playing with this has been fascinating. And confronting our own relationships with secrets, and exploring the question ‘would it really be so bad if we relieved ourselves of the burden of carrying this secret’ has been eye opening. Of course with IJAD this is then placed in a social media context, where sharing is everything and anonymity a possibility, and this allows an extra element of truth, unburdening and revelation. What fun!’

Lou is on twitter @loucope1 and the In-Finite project comes to London this Friday.