Work by Angela Kennedy
I want to challenge and examine the notion of what Women’s Work is and what it might be by offering two pieces of work.
Firstly, a piece of Performance Poetry I made in March this year, called ‘Women’s Work’, which is about 5 minutes in length and challenges the many facts and preconceived ideas regarding what ‘Women’s Work’ is, looks like or can be. The piece is direct and plays with rhythm and repetition.
The second piece is a solo performance of around 20-30 minutes long, called ‘Horizontal’. This piece explores movement through rolling, very slowly, across the wooden floor of one of the galleries. As an inveterate Improviser I will use principles of Body Mind Centering or BMC, to focus on moving from the Skeleton and Organ system.
This slow movement piece, purely for the sake of, challenges our western obsession with ‘the body beautiful’ – I am a mature mover and performer – and the western work ethic regarding speed and what ‘work’ is? So the piece is also a political act, as well as a celebration of being fully present: the beauty of embodied movement, whether it be through “rest” or “reverie”, and the articulation of the body in an unconventional way, from a mature dancer.
Firstly, a piece of Performance Poetry I made in March this year, called ‘Women’s Work’, which is about 5 minutes in length and challenges the many facts and preconceived ideas regarding what ‘Women’s Work’ is, looks like or can be. The piece is direct and plays with rhythm and repetition.
The second piece is a solo performance of around 20-30 minutes long, called ‘Horizontal’. This piece explores movement through rolling, very slowly, across the wooden floor of one of the galleries. As an inveterate Improviser I will use principles of Body Mind Centering or BMC, to focus on moving from the Skeleton and Organ system.
This slow movement piece, purely for the sake of, challenges our western obsession with ‘the body beautiful’ – I am a mature mover and performer – and the western work ethic regarding speed and what ‘work’ is? So the piece is also a political act, as well as a celebration of being fully present: the beauty of embodied movement, whether it be through “rest” or “reverie”, and the articulation of the body in an unconventional way, from a mature dancer.
Angela Kennedy is an artist, activist, somatic dance practitioner and Mother. Her inherently choreographic practice manifests through performance installation, poetry, movement, spoken word, drawing and video. Her work is about embodied processes and the body, made through a process of investigations and responses arising from specific contexts or places, which are then translated into installations and performances often with a live audience. Angela Kennedy’s practice of thirty years continues to explore issues of equality, feminism, identity, class and social justice.