Billy Maxwell Taylor / Eira Dance Theatre

This research started during my Masters studies at London Contemporary Dance School through my final research project Streams of Gentle Yesterday. Inspired by 2 weeks of site-inspired work with streams in the Forest of Dean and the continual presence of the Thames in London (particularly when the train slows into London Blackfriars), this project explored our relationship to time, bending it and considering the moments of sanctuary we strive to cultivate. Sanctuaries in which we dance between the glimmer of the present moment and the traces of yesterday.

The initial research for this work was part of my first inquiry into ambient dance, a philosophy of practice in which we consider how theatre can act as a space for spaciousness and can be experienced up close or with a diffused gaze. Where drifting is okay.

The project started as a quartet with Mei-Ting Fang performing centre stage with a textual score of three poetic lines. Yung Chih Teng and Marta Guerra Doblas then join, travelling from one side of the space to the other through a contact improvisation score guided by the phrase ‘spend time together’. The final part of this constellation was Xinyi Du who acted as a counterpoint, exploring fragmentation and the dynamic rushing of time through the body and through space. Like stone cracking into sand and releasing into the stream.