Florence Peake and Scottish Dance Theatre Live Performance

Information

Tickets are now available for a special one-off performance, part of Florence Peake’s exhibition Your Meaning Not Your Materiality.

On 16 August from 2 – 4pm, a live performance created in collaboration between Peake and Scotland’s flagship contemporary dance company, Scottish Dance Theatre, will take place in the Picture Gallery at Hospitalfield. Together with Peake, dancers from the company will devise this new work in the days running up to the performance specifically for the site. Tickets are free but limited, book here.

Your Meaning Not Your Materiality (YMNYM) examines themes of loss and the human desire to grasp the intangible in the face of grief through sculptural forms, painting, community collaboration and performance. In this one-off event, these themes will be further explored through collective movement, with choreography developed between Florence Peake and Scottish Dance Theatre. Texts and vocal arrangements will form a starting point for the process; becoming written scores in response to the objects in the Picture Gallery.

The performance will consider the absence of light, based on the dance practice ‘dancing in the dark’. Similarly to the sculptural works that make tangible the area between bodies during various forms of embrace or touch, seeking to contain the physical chasm in an object, the performance will explore absence of light and darkness as a container to hold space, highlighting the layers of meaning that transitory spaces can hold. In the performance, the distance held transforms into an area of presence, energy transference and chemistry.

For people that are blind or visually impaired there will be live audio description available, please let us know if you require this when booking.

Florence Peake (b. 1973, based in London) works internationally and across the UK in galleries, theatres and the public realm.

Recent exhibitions and performances have been presented at: British Art Show 9, a Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition shown across 12 venues in the cities of Aberdeen, Wolverhampton, Manchester and Plymouth (2021-22); National Gallery, London (2021); Arsenic Theatre and Sudpol Theatre, Switzerland (2020); 58th Venice Biennale (2019); CRAC Occitanie, Sète, France (2018); London Contemporary Music Festival (2018); Bosse & Baum, London (2019); De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea (2018); Palais De Tokyo, Paris, France (2018); Hayward Gallery, London (2018); Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2017); Studio Leigh, London (2017); Sara Zanin Gallery, Rome, Italy (2017); Serpentine, London (2016); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2016); ICA, London (2016); Modern Art Oxford (2016); BALTIC, Newcastle (2013); Frieze, London (2013); and Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2012).

Peake has an Advanced Teaching Certificate in Skinner Releasing Technique (2011); an MA in Contemporary Performance Making, (Distinction), Brunel University (2007-09); and Diploma in Dance, Lewisham College (1992-94).

Scottish Dance Theatre

Founded in 1986, Scottish Dance Theatre is an international repertory dance company based at Dundee Rep theatre. The company’s artistic vision is driven by artistic exploration, learning and a desire to connect with others.

Led by Artistic Director Joan Clevillé since 2019, the company is one of the few full-time ensembles in the UK and is made up of a group of inquisitive and versatile dancers who have come from all over the world to work and create in our home at Dundee Rep. Working at the forefront of the art form, Scottish Dance Theatre collaborates with internationally acclaimed choreographers and artists, supports the development of emerging and homegrown talent and promotes a plurality of voices.

For the past four decades, the company has brought unique dance experiences to audiences and communities across Scotland, the UK and abroad, presenting our work in a wide range of contexts: from remote village halls in the Scottish Highlands to opera houses in South America. From art festivals in Europe to local schools, prisons and shopping centres. As well as performing, the company has an extensive engagement and participation programme both at home and on tour.

Scottish Dance Theatre has received multiple awards (including the UK Critics’ Circle National Dance Award for Outstanding Company Repertoire) and has built a strong international profile, performing extensively in venues and festivals across four continents and becoming Scotland’s flagship dance company and a creative ambassador of Dundee.

For more information, visit www.scottishdancetheatre.com