Deloitte Ignite at the Royal Opera House.

I'm just catching up with some of the photographs I've been taking over the last couple of weeks, there seems to have been a lot on this time of year, including the Deloitte Ignite festival at the Royal Opera House. I was drawn to Ignite by the Forest theme, curated by Joanna macGregor and Marina Warner's introductions to a number of short films.
I did find the Opera House, which I hadn't been to before, a bit of a nightmare to navigate, a bit like a smaller version of the Barbican. I did enjoy the amazing costumes on display in the Faded Forest by Richard Williams, David Collis and Janey Gardiner. They used discarded opera costumes, animals, mannequins and a sound track from the Amazonian forest , in the Crush Bar.

Downstairs in the Pit Kathy Hinde had created an installation of One Thousand Birds, origami birds and projections, which was part of a misty forest of tree trunks.

Mark Simmonds had created Fall Forest, which included an installation of colourful balls, that adults and children alike were playing with.

The Floating Forest in the Paul Hamlyn Hall was a series of suspended tree trunks that seemed a little sad to me. On the stage I was lucky enough to watch a couple of performances by Royal Ballet dancers. It was great to be right by the side of the stage, somewhere you'd normally not be in regular performances.

I got to watch Joan Ashworth's How Mermaids Breed, which was funny and engaging, and The Mushroom Thief, which told of the move from childhood to adulthood. It was good to hear about the films from Joan Ashworth herself, interviewed by Marina Warner, and Marina Warner's own response to the films. Joan's site here

5000 Morris Dancers at the South Bank.

The Southbank was filled with Morris Dancing and Folk Music the weekend 4th and 5th Sept.

I managed to see a number of Morris troupes, take some photos and listen to a bit of music while I was there. I have been bringing these aspects of pagan and folk traditions together in my mind and thinking about a body of work in this direction for some years.

The connection to the land or environment is important as well as the aspect of spirituality for me in the folk traditions, somewhere there also needs to be the contemporary political and urban experience too. I am pleased to find this particular focus for part of my art work.

At The Southbank I really enjoyed Boggart's Breakfast. their site here. I liked the rag jackets, or tatters, their semi goth black and blue colours with sparkly bits and the energetic performances with great musicians.
Belles of London City, danced with traditional bells and hankies site here and the Stone Monkeys site here, wove intricate dance steps and swords.
Gog Magog were the Molly Morris Dancers, with fab brightly coloured clothes, hair, faces and shoes.

Buddhist dances and new photographs.

The V&A recently held a day of rare Buddhist dances, I was able to see some of them and sense some of the power in the forms, particularly the Japanese Theater Noh. This piece was called "Kayoi Komachi" and was based on thestory of a wandering priest who encounters the ghost of a ninth century noblewoman who was one of the "Six Immortal Poets" Ono no Komachi. Because she had been a cruel lover she had been unable to escape the wheel of life and death, the priest



offers prayers for liberation and one of Komachi's lovers appears from hell forbidding her enlightenment unless he too can have justice.
After they have re-lived the experience of their relationship, both find liberation though the prayers of the priest and their own understanding of the nature of impermanence.

The acting is extremely stylized and meditative, and I found myself transported into another dimension by the sounds, music and actors performance. I did a handful of sketches and what I thought was 20 minutes turned out to be over an hour and a half of this play. The aim of the Noh theater is the experience of "hana" or flower, the aesthetic name for the buddhist experience of emptyness. This was the first time it has been performed in the west and the ensamble was lead by Shizuka Mikata who is heir to a heridary line of Buddhist priests who became Noh actors.


The Horse Chestnut trees have come into flower, I love these large clusters of flowers.