Hello everyone!
It’s a beautiful sunny spring day in Manchester and I’m covered in dust putting books into boxes ready to move into a new flat. If next weeks etude is a bit bare or late then don’t worry, I’m just manically carrying flat pack furniture on a tram.
I hope you’re all holding up well and enjoying some great theatre.
Enjoy this weeks selection below!
The Land of My Fathers and Mothers and Some Other People by Rhys Slade-Jones
From 1st March
£3
All proceeds will be donated to help support the efforts of Rhondda Cynon Taff food banks
Celebrate St David's day by getting cwtchy with award-winning Rhys Slade-Jones. Presents an all-singing, all-dancing re-enactment of his Mam’s diary - a frenzied solo cabaret mixing stand-up, dance and good ol’ fashioned singalong, bringing 1977 Treherbert Rugby Club back to life
In Treherbert Rugby Club amongst the fag smoke and the singing, Rhys’s parents fell in love. Rhys has never fallen in love but heard it’s a nice thing to do because that’s what his Mam said. It’s in her diary. And Rhys has read it all.
Award-winning performance artist Rhys Slade-Jones takes their audience to the hot sweaty summer of 1977. By reading his Mam’s diary, Rhys explores the claustrophobic, nosey, loving, loud, beautiful community of the Rhondda Valley, and tells us why dancing in the same spot your parents met is pretty bloody cool. Expect great legs, a one-man pantomime horse and a good ol’ fashioned singalong.
Friday 5th & Saturday 6th March
Free
»These networks of relationships, peculiarly intimate, go far beyond mere use. Instead, they show that choreography is not exclusively a matter of human bodies moving in space: dependence and vulnerability are embedded in every type of body, human and non-human.« Sarah Reva Mohr, passe-avant, 17.02.20
Geumhyung Jeong creates performative assemblages, in which her own body comes into contact with self-made robotic sculptures. In her new piece the South Korean choreographer interacts with machines that have already accompanied her in other performances. The ‘toy robots’ have the disarming charm of amateurs. They are made up of components obtained from specialist medical or technical websites. Jeong puts these elements to new uses in a do-it-yourself mode involving the basic elements of programming. The robots’ action radius is limited. Their movements are ungainly.
Jeong's relationship with the robots is shaped by a constant fluctuation of ‘trial and error’. She tries to upgrade them with new elements and tricks. However, these test runs do not always go according to plan. For the artist, the current ban on cultural events is therefore a welcome excuse not to prove her robots in front of a large audience and to confront the fears of occurring errors in public.
Instead of a successful live test, Jeong invites the audience to follow ›TEST RUN‹ online and shares with them her story of failure and error that brought her to Frankfurt and now to Essen. Presented for the first time in Frankfurt, the work will be further developed in a second rehearsal phase by Geumhyung Jeong in Essen and shown again as an online performance.
A multi-layered, absurd narrative evolves with intimate encounters at its heart rather than dystopic visions or technoid fantasies and this raises questions about the relationship between man and machine: how do we shape the beginning of a technologically-defined future, who is in the lead and who is the dinosaur – the phase-out model?
Minima Moralia by contact Gonzo
Until 3rd March
€10
Since 2006, the Japanese artist collective contact Gonzo has travelled around the world – from Helsinki and Offenbach to Nanking and Seoul to Okinawa and Japan’s Tohoku region, which was catastrophically destroyed by the great earthquake of 2011 – and on the road, their performances and installations addressed the many forms of contact and physical collision between people. Immediately after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, company members began to create a bricolage film from their own documentation in response to the situation. This film defines the image as performance and editing as physical contact, thus birthing a philosophy all of its own, while telling stories that cannot be replaced by language. “Minima Moralia” is a semi-documentary mnemonic remix of performances, cooking, eating, drinking and sleeping that offers the opportunity to reflect on contact in these times.
Until 6th March
Free
In 1969 a rich white guy in the White House rings the moon searching for peace and tranquility. It’s 2021... time to reopen the phoneline. Ring HOTLINE for a lunar adventure where you choose how your quest unfolds. In one phonecall you’ll play truth or dare with ambitious octogenarians, dream with the Almost Astronaut, and hear from time-bending civil rights visionaries. Play the game right and you might just reach the moon herself.
HOTLINE is a free interactive phoneline. You get to choose your own adventure with just your keypad. Softly whisper hope into the cosmos or boldly lead an escape from NASA HQ - HOTLINE is what you need it to be.
Ring HOTLINE - a call that’s out of this world.
The World Makes us Sick presented by bare minimum
March 6th
Free
Join us for a pre-recorded night of readings and reflections about illness, work, care, love and doing nothing to introduce our programme and bare minimum's residency at the ICA.
Participants include Raisa Kabir, D Mortimer, Imani Robinson, and members of SWARM.
bare minimum is 6-person interdisciplinary anti-work arts collective. we hate working, hustling, neoliberal self-improvement, wage labour and surplus value, private property, how work eats into our time, our love, our ability to make things in earnest. we are a group of friends who needed a formal structure to give ourselves the permission to make things. we are lazy, queer & many of us are disabled. members include Diamond Abdulrahim, Vera Chapiro, Christie Costello, Lola Olufemi, Christine Pungong, Martha Summers, and Leo Would.
Raisa Kabir (b. 1989) is an interdisciplinary artist and weaver, who utilises woven text/textiles, sound, video and performance to translate and visualise concepts concerning the politics of cloth, labour and embodied geographies. Her (un)weaving performances comment on power, production, disability and the body as a living archive of collective trauma.
D Mortimer is a writer from London occupied with experimental trans and queer narratives. They are working on ideas of salmon and heartbreak at the moment. Their work (essays, poetry, prose, creative criticism) has been published by The Guardian and Granta Magazine. They are currently doing a practice based PhD in Creative Writing at The University of Roehampton.
Imani Robinson is an artist and interdisciplinary writer who has presented work and facilitated projects internationally; their practice combines performance, oration, collaboration, poetry and critical theory, exploring themes of black geographies, the afterlives of transatlantic slavery, abolition, and radical resistance.
SWARM are sex worker led collective based in the UK. The project was founded in 2009 (under our former name Sex Worker Open University) to advocate for the rights of everyone who sells sexual services. They campaign for the rights and safety of everyone who sells sexual services. Together, they organise skill-shares and support meet-ups just for sex workers, as well as public events.
I’ve been getting a lot of love for etude over the past week and it means the world to me. A lot of people have asked how they can support etude, I don’t know right now but I’d really appriciate it if you supported the wonderful 0161 Community who are providing meals for families throughout Greater Manchester. My partner Akaibi and her friends Kate and Katie have organised a raffle to raise funds. There are loads of extra brilliant prizes to be won! You can pick up a raffle ticket for £5 or two for £9 to win a prize bundle worth up to £100!
To get your raffle ticket please visit Local Hotel Parking
If you buy a raffle ticket then please post about it on twitter and share it to everyone.
You have until the 5th March to get your tickets!
Thanks again for reading etude. Please do share to your mates.
Have a good week
Josh xx