WRITTEN IN THE BODY
- PERFORMANCE
A duet about memory and touch and consent.
Two women delve into their personal and shared memories. They reveal their histories of tactile encounters with people, places and environments - the funny ones, the weird ones. The really not so good ones.
It’s a sometimes joyful, sometimes confronting experience as we go on a journey with the performers. Sometimes their words come tumbling out and connect with our own stories. Sometimes there is nothing to say. Then their bodies do the speaking.
Physical contact holds communities together. What do we lose when this disappears?
This new dance piece will bathe you in sensation, washing over you and through you - in focus, or drifting. It was imagined long before Covid-19 changed our understanding of touch and how people connect with each other. And yet, here we are, re-learning how to relate socially, physically and emotionally. Rebuilding our sense of ourselves.
This work was created in Spring 2022. It was first presented at ACCA, Brighton as part of Brighton Festival and subsequently at Lilian Baylis Theatre, Sadler’s Wells.
Written in the Body is available for touring from Autumn 2023. Please get in touch if you are interested in programming.
CREDITS:
Creation 2022
Concept & Direction: Charlotte Spencer
Performance: Petra Söör and Louise Tanoto
Sound: Alberto Ruiz Soler
Dramaturgy: Orrow Amy Bell
Design: Bethany Wells
Costume: Shanti Freed
Lighting: Marty Langthorne
Producing support: Pip Sayers & Lou Rogers
Photography & Film: Rosie Powell
Audio Description: Shivaangee Agrawal
BSL: Katie Fenwick
Research 2020-22
Concept & Direction: Charlotte Spencer
Performance: Dan Daw, Louise Tanoto
Photography: Zoe Manders
PARTNERS:
Creation 2022: Co-commissioned by Brighton Festival, Sadler’s Wells and South East Dance with funding from Arts Council England. Additional support from University of Sussex. Co-presented for Brighton Festival with Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts.
Research 2020-22 was supported by The Place through their Choreodrome Research Residency programme, Siobhan Davies Dance as part of their Percolate Programme, Wellcome Collection, a Bonnie Bird Choreographic Development Award, South East Dance and Arts Council England.
Rehearsal trailer
Press & Audience Quotes
“Written in the Body is a gentle, quietly intelligent probing of our experience of the world via our bodies, skin and hands.”
★★★★ Guardian
“I felt like I was watching a piece about my future - two women with more experiences than me, coming to terms with their stories and sharing them with us. Frank and open and beautiful.”
— Audience Member
“I really felt something click within me. This performance was truly a visceral experience.”
— Audience Member
TOUCH IN 2020
In April 2020 in the midst of the first national coronavirus lockdown, we invited people to tell us about how social distancing and isolation was affecting their experience of touch. We were very moved by the responses that we received from many people that we have never met before.
Chloe Cunliffe, 21
Rosendale, Lancashire
ALONE
On a beautiful sunny morning during late April 2020 my husband who had been suffering from Melanoma, died peacefully at home.
For two weeks before he died every morning and evening, and sometimes midday, two Sue Ryder nurses would call to wash him and make him comfortable…
Jill Izzard, 78
Brickhill, Bedford
Time Drags
Over six weeks now. Over six weeks and how time drags. Locked down, burnt out, I curse the sun for shining through my curtains on my morose little face.
I'm a professional critic. Or rather, was? Who knows. Usually, I write articles and reviews , today I can hardly lift my head off the pillow…
Lorna Irvine, 47
Mayhill, Glasgow
Hug Me
Hug me
Hold me
Squeeze me
Tickle me
Kiss
Push pull press pat and polish me
Poke me
Stroke me
Bundle me up and heavy handle me
Nestle into me
Mary Eddowes
Bristol
Lockdown in Lyon, France
The (shared) flat is cramped but has a large balcony. At one end: a small space for art (ancient metal table…
Mary Rigby
Lyon, France
6th May 2020
Today would have been my wife’s birthday – she would have been gathering our grown up children to her…
Mike
Shoreham-by-Sea
The Hug
I am a Celebrant and have been doing funerals for many years. Helping families at the lowest point in their life to come to terms with their loss; to give them the opportunity of saying goodbye in the way they choose…
Lesley Mitchell
Aberdeen, Scotland
Not deprived per se
I may well be out of step with many other people because I haven’t felt deprived of ‘touch’ per se. I miss the variety of activities I was doing before lockdown, and I miss the socialising with other people…
Rachel French, 68
Soreham, Kent
Theorist or Practitioner of Touch
My housemate and I rarely touch, just accidentally or a pat on the back. I think of family members with whom I’ve only shaken hands yet love, and strangers with whom I’ve danced or been in crowded places with. I think and write about touch every day…
Ben McEwen
London
Hug.2
Locked down, face down
I’m lying face down on the river bank
Looking at the plants in close up vision
Swallows dart above and steer swiftly above silky ripples
And there you are…
Mary Eddowes
Bristol
Lydia talking about her experience
Lydia (30)
Leeds