February 17, 2014
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The Audience – Workshop

The Audience – Workshop led by artist Jo Fong

When             1.30 – 4pm 21st February 2014.
Where            The Castle Theatre, Aberystwyth.
How much     £5 This event has been subsidised by Aberystwyth University and Aberystwyth Arts Centre.

Workshop – I have been working on a way to perform The Audience. It is about connection, spontaneity, but also about uncertainty.

The workshop stages a process, the frame is there, we now need to fill it. The Audience appears as though it is being created right now. In places it is. What happens or doesn’t happen is influenced directly by the people in the room. We play the performer. We play the audience. We are the show. Is it now? The original research was strangely playful, alive, joyous and imaginative and therefore weirdly powerful and human. We opened the studio and discovered a profound way of meeting people.

For more information on The Audience click here https://www.jofong.com/portfolios/1049/

“Jo has a truly distinctive practice. It is deceptively simple, yet from simple parameters has managed to generate a potentially radical new interface between performers and audience, one based on empathy, similarity and the everyday rather than on “otherness”, competition or confrontation.” Richard Huw Morgan. Pitch, good cop bad cop.

About JO FONG

I am a director, choreographer and performer working in dance, film, theatre and the visual arts.

As a performer, I have worked for over 20 years including performances with Rosas, DV8 Physical Theatre, Rambert Dance Company, Mark Bruce Company, Nigel Charnock, Igloo and Quarantine Theatre. Current performance projects include Stupid Women at Juncture Festival, Yorkshire Dance – A reworking of Nigel Charnock’s inspired Stupid Men and directed by Wendy Houstoun. I will also be working with Unfinished Business on a new work entitled Change My Mind.

I am Associate Artist with Coreo Cymru and my artistic work is supported by Arts Council Wales and Sherman Cymru. Witness – Portraits of Women Who Dance was presented at British Dance Edition 2014 and is currently touring the UK. Currently I am developing three new live works and an installation all of which are born out of a period of research entitled The Audience. The first; Dialogue – A Double Act will tour internationally with Dance Roads in May and June 2014.

As an independent artist I present work that is thought-provoking and centred around people, dancers or players who translate, reveal or perform. The work is grounded in the idea of honesty in performance and looks under the skin: the psychological drives, motivations or inherent characteristics of an individual or group, creating a shared and considered relationship with an audience. The body is my first language, though text and voice work are regularly a part of the whole. I combine physical technical knowledge, agility and experience with a raw, rebellious and curious spirit. I endeavor to understand further and explore the scope for movement to communicate and to cultivate work that is generous, engaging and embodies an alternative beauty.

Witness Tour 2014
1st February British Dance Edition 2014 Glasgow – Tramway
21st February Aberystwyth Arts Centre
13th March Theatr Brycheiniog (Brecon)
14th June The Place Theatre (London)
Dialogue – A Double Act is new work to be presented at Chapter Arts Centre (Cardiff) on 1st May 2014.

Photo credits John Collingswood and Heloise Godfrey

If you are interested in taking part please get in touch with Louise Ritchie lhr08@aber.ac.uk

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