Exploring the connections between ‘who they believe themselves to be, and the unconscious parts that make up who they are’.
About the collaboration:
CLAY is really the meeting of Asha Thomas and Yinka Esi Graves. In our conversations we were interested in exploring what it was in Flamenco that makes so much sense to us, specifically for Asha as and African American and for Yinka as a Black British woman of African and Caribbean descent. Following our numerous conversations, we decided to just get into the studio and excavate this idea. We didn’t want to put any pressure on ourselves to turn it into a show, however after our initial period in the studio we felt that we were getting somewhere and subsequently looked for a number of residencies to help us complete the piece. We also teamed up with Guillermo Guillén who has created the complex and unique music to the piece, where both the electric and flamenco guitar are used alongside original soundscapes and loops. Together we were awarded residencies by STUN at Z-arts in the UK, Châteauvallon – Scène Nationale in France and Systems Lab in the UK. Clay has been performed in Mes de Danza 2016 (Seville, Spain) as well as part of the Out of the System programme for Dance Umbrella 2017. This piece will be touring to the Lowry and Bernie Grants Arts Centre in March 2018, as part of a double bill with Alesandra Seutin.
The Clay team
Coproduced by:
Châteauvallon-Scène Nationale (FR), STUN (UK), SystemsLAB with partners conceived by Freddie Opoku-Addaie, The Arts Council England.
Premiere: October 11, 2016 -Châteauvallon- Scène Nationale (Ollioules, France)
Choreographed and performed by Asha Thomas and Yinka Esi Graves / Composer and Guitarist: Guillermo Guillén / Lighting: Manu Majastre / Artistic advisors: Chloé Brulé-Dauphin and ‘Funmi Adewole / Guajira recording – Rocío Márquez.
Clay
It is said that Clay is the matter that we are made of. Buried in that matter are the memories that mould our experiences, our understandings and gestures, memories that seem to belong to a time long before our very thoughts were shaped. Ancient yet familiar, they accompany us from places that only our cells have been. In CLAY Asha Thomas, American contemporary dancer and Yinka Esi Graves, British flamenco dancer, draw from their collective memory and experiences to create a unique language between them. It is their very dancing that goes in search of the past whilst being informed by it. One dancer of half Jamaican and Ghanian descent and the other from a long line of southern baptist preachers, explore the connections between who they believe themselves to be and the unconscious parts that make up who they are. CLAY asks us to locate the parts of ourselves that have formed over long periods of time, surviving the wear of migration to still be found today.