RMDC plans and a new solo
Russell Maliphant Dance Company (RMDC) is in the process of developing a series of new projects and activities, which broaden community engagement in dance, whilst also focussing on increasing health and well-being of individual participants. Through workshops teaching tools to be able to understand and fix individual participants own body’s pain, posture, coordination issues or movement limitations the focus is on empowerment and understanding what is at the root of the cause of physical issues and taking ownership of your body.
The workshops and engagements will be available to anyone and through the use of progressions (for people with more range and movement experience who are on the advanced side) and regressions (for people with less range and movement experience), all participants can explore and learn within their healthy, pain-free range to experience and understand exactly what’s happening with their body. The focus is on having the tools to understand how to assess what’s wrong and what exercises are best for an individual’s movement challenges and limitations whilst learning what they can do to change that.
On the performance side, there is also an upcoming creative collaboration with Dana Fouras and Panagiotis Tomaras, featuring Russell Maliphant as a performer – now in his 60s and deepening through practical experiential research the topic of “age” and body capabilities through engaging with movement over another decade. Fortified using studies in experiential anatomy, yoga, massage, bio-mechanics, structural integration and integrated kinetic neurology whilst continuing Russell’s exploration of the dynamic interplay between movement, light, and music, – the new solo will be pushing the boundaries of dance aesthetics.
In the new work, the first solo Maliphant has created on himself since 2002, Russell explores a plurality of possibilities and through choosing to be the performer himself, questions stereotypes around age, mature body and the accessibility of dance and movement as a tool for well-being for people at different levels of training whilst creating innovative aesthetics in collaboration with Panagiotis (lighting) and Dana (music). The project will generate new choreographic approaches and performance methodologies that can be adapted for different formats and expand the boundaries of physical movement stimulation and initiative.
Themes of age and dance aesthetics have also been explored by RMDC in the past with the Ipswich-based company EncoreEast (ages 50-80) in a project called “Focus” in 2018. This was a creative collaboration based on the RMDC piece titled Silent Lines and the companies came together to explore the aesthetic performance potential of older dancers alongside the aesthetics in the original work. "Focus" involved a comprehensive ethnographic study that through workshops, discussions, and creative processes examined how older adults relate to and express movement, examining the physical and emotional impacts of dance on aging bodies. The project emphasised that age should not be a limiting factor in artistic expression and that older dancers can bring unique and valuable qualities to the stage. Based on these experiences, one key phase of the upcoming projects includes public workshops that invite participants of all ages and dance experience levels—including non-professionals—to engage with the multi-faceted approach that the experiential work in bodywork and dance can offer which Maliphant has spent many years exploring.
Photos credit: Dana Fouras
