Eve Stainton

Dykegeist, a newly commissioned choreographic work from Manchester-born London-based artist and performance maker Eve Stainton. With a live sound score conceived and performed by musician Mica Levi.

 

Dykegeist is interested in unravelling and complicating the archetypal narratives assigned to the lesbian predator creature. 

 

During the current of the evening, aesthetics will shift between a supernatural gothic thriller, a 90’s sci-fi spider lair, a haunted Manchester club scene, an abstract and warping horror-scape, a social situation to discuss threat/the phobic/ consent/ otherness, choreography and suspended encounters, gateways gravel grunge, emptiness and charged-ness.

 

Stainton understands the audience as active agents contributing to what will become the world of Dykegeist over the duration of the event and beyond- in flux and dependent on what/ who is in the room. The audience is asked to transition through different modes of presence: participant, onlooker, listener, collaborator, consensual prey. 

 

Extra attention and care will be given to make it comfortable to decline any invitation offered.

 

This new commission has brought Stainton back into connection with Manchester’s club scene, specifically tracking their affinity with Speed Garage sounds, originating in African American soul and exploding in the North of England in the 90’s. These spaces, sounds, dances were formative to Stainton’s current research into the power of the queer somatic encounter mediated through frequencies, vibrations, grotty-ness and subversive necessity.

 

Continuing their formal concerns with clashing and co-occurrence, Stainton has created new collage pieces and welded steel sculptures that further load the multi-disciplinary world between Stainton, Levi and audience. 

 

 

Credits

 

Concept, choreography, performance: Eve Stainton

Sound performance: Mica Levi

Curator: Sara Sassanelli

Producer: Michael Kitchin

Digital collage and steel sculptures: Eve Stainton

3D typography: Pauline Canavesio aka BORA

Costume: Sophie Donaldson

Dramaturgical support: Jamila Johnson-Small & Zara Truss-Giles
Photography: Anne Tetzlaff, Lisanne Lentink, Lesley Martin

Tech support: Patrick Brett & Daniele Crespini

 

Supported and commissioned by ICA, The Place, South East Dance and Metal. Supported using public funds from Arts Council England.

 

With thanks to London Sculpture Workshop.