Pop-up dance for GoMA exhibition
Sculpture inspires ECA students’ costumes & choreography
Dancers with Louise Bourgeois’ Spider. Photo © Edd McCracken
By Thom Dibdin
Pop-up ballet is to take place this weekend at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art on Belford Road, with EPISODES, an hour-long piece, honouring the confessional art of Louise Bourgeois.
Performers in fantastical, abstract costumes will dance among the sculptures and sketches of the show: Louise Bourgeois, A Woman Without Secrets.
Highlighting the French-American artist’s later work, made in the decades before her death in 2010, the exhibition is a first showing of a collection now on loan to the national ARTIST ROOMS programme.
The event on Saturday is a collaboration between the galleries, Edinburgh College BA Honours Dance course and Edinburgh College of Art’s Performance Costume course.
The galleries provide the space and art, which third year ECA students used as inspiration for their design of the outfits for the dancers from Edinburgh College, who will interpret both the art and the costumes through movement and dance.
Megan Baker, director of performance costume at ECA, said: “our students have collaborated to interpret the depth and honesty of Louise Bourgeois’s work through movement and affecting costume pieces. The process has been an inspiring and rewarding journey for everyone involved and it promises to be a fascinating performance.”
“Our BA Honours Dance students have worked incredibly hard to bring the costumes to life through expressive movement and dance,” Ethelinda Lashley, dance lecturer at Edinburgh College, added. “It has been a brilliant experience for them.”
Siobhan McConnachie, Head of Education at the National Galleries of Scotland, said: “This exciting collaboration offers a unique way to experience the work of Louise Bourgeois. It has been an enormous pleasure working with the students and we’re delighted with the final performance.”
EPISODES
Sat 22 March 2014, 11am and 2pm. Entry free. Unticketed
Running time 1 hour.
Modern One (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art), 75 Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3DR
Details online:www.nationalgalleries.org
Louise Bourgeois, A Woman Without Secrets
Daily 10am-5pm. Entry free.
Modern One (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art), 75 Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3DR
Details online: www.nationalgalleries.org
