The New Arts & Music Programme at Sutton House

About

“Two Solos" by Rebecca Mackenzie and Seke Chimutengwende 

Novelist and poet Rebecca Mackenzie and choreographer Seke Chimutengwende open the night with improvised solo performance that finds structure and content in a highly original confluence of movement, voice and language.

"Moon Must Animal Food" by artist and musician Jenny Moore.

Composed for five voices talking and singing, Moon Must Animal Food is about jumping through the black hole, up and out of our bodies, trying to escape sexism via alien abduction; a stretch of ambivalence as objection. First performed at Block Universe performance festival, artist Jenny Moore has loosened and re-worked the score with performers Josz Bitelli, Clémentine March, Fay Nicolson and Eleanor Sikorski accompanied by bendy perspex percussion, a log fire and a weather balloon.

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BIOGRAPHIES

Rebecca Mackenzie 

Rebecca Mackenzie is a novelist, poet and performer. Her debut novel IN A LAND OF PAPER GODS, published in 2016, was a Red Magazine Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. She has performed improvised solos across the capital since 2008, and created shows including THIS IS HAMLET and THE DOLLS’ HOUSE. With composer Reynaldo Young she has developed the LEWISHAM IMPROV STATION, a sound-based project harnessing improvisation to create aural worlds combining poetry, song and story. Rebecca is an approved teacher of Action Theater™ and teaches improvisation in both the UK and Europe. She is a visiting tutor on the Royal Holloway Creative Writing MA.

Seke Chimutengwende

Seke Chimutengwende works in dance as a performer, choreographer and teacher. He has performed with companies such as DV8 Physical Theatre, Lost Dog and Fabulous Beast and in gallery based works by Trisha Brown and Tino Sehgal as well as with numerous independent choreographers. For his own company Seke Chimutengwende & Friends he has choreographed four works including The Time Travel Piece for The Place Prize 2012 and King Arthur, which premiered at The Yard Theatre in London, 2015. Seke’s current choreographic project, Black Holes, a duet made in collaboration with Alexandrina Hemsley exploring Afrofuturism, will premiere in spring 2018. Since 2006, Seke has performed over 60 improvised solos internationally and has performed ensemble improvisation with Neat Timothy since 2009. Seke is currently a guest lecturer in improvisation at London Contemporary Dance School, The Rambert School of Ballet & Contemporary Dance, Central School of Speech and Drama and Goldsmiths University.

Jenny Moore

Jenny Moore is a Canadian artist and musician based in London. She plays in the dance-punk band Charismatic Megafauna, leads feminist choir F*Choir, and has recently recorded an album for 10 voices and 2 drummers called Mystic Business originally commissioned by Wysing Arts Centre for Wysing Polyphonic Music Festival. Moore also collaborates with a group of artists as ‘Bedfellows’, leading workshops, performances and talks about consent, desire and lifelong sex education. Jenny Moore has performed nationally and internationally, most recently at Chapter Arts, Cardiff for The Future is Female, Park Nights at the Serpentine Gallery with BBC Late Junction, BFI London with Jarvis Cocker, Barbican with This is Not This Heat, Supernormal festival and has made a series of live interventions for Late at Tate Britain, Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery, Camden Arts Centre and various DIY artist-led spaces in London and abroad. Upcoming performances include ‘What Future? What Female’ at Borealis Music festival in Norway and a performance workshop at the Art Academy in Tallin, Estonia. She went to art school twice, once in Canada, once in England. 

‘Jenny Moore’s band of 12 performers… provided the most immediate thrills with euphoric Meredith Monk-style chants about social unease and feminist sci-fi porn, plus clapping games about premature ejaculation.’ – Ben Beaumont-Thomas for the Guardian

Josh Bitelli

Josh Bitelli is currently working on a performance commission with Nottingham Contemporary and a song book with Jerwood JVA. Recent projects include Stoptober, Union Gallery; Skeleton Argument, Wellcome Collection; All Doors and No Exits, Cell Projects; London Doctors Choir at Chisenhale Gallery as part of their 21st C Programme.

Clémentine March

Clémentine March is a London based musician working in the UK indie scene, in bands like Snapped Ankles, Bamboo or her own solo project, amongst others. Her artistic skills and experience also include filmmaking, performance and theatre.

Fay Zmija Nicolson

Fay Zmija Nicolson is a London based artist working with painting and performance. Recent solo projects include: OVER AND OVER PURE FORM, Kunstraum, London, (2016/17); A Community of Sensation, Jupiter Woods, London, (2017); UN MAKE ME; Galerie Rolando Anselmi, Berlin (2016). 

Eleanor Sikorski

Eleanor Sikorski is a dancer and choreographer. Her solo work spans performance, music and film and is made for both theatres and social spaces. She works as a dancer for several choreographers and co-leads ‘Nora’, a trio of dancers who curate and commission choreographers to make work for them to perform.

Photograph of Jenny Moore copyright of Slyvian Deleu

Curated by I-D.A PROJECTS
Supported by care in the community recordings