Live Performance
Orbital Asymmetries (2023), Rich Mix
When is it possible to be both in solidarity and in dissonance? How do we retain non-conformity within a community? Can we build kinship in conflict? This work offers up a visually rich and rhythmically playful place to orbit these universal questions.
Lead Artist: Shivaangee Agrawal
Visual Artist, Filmmaker, Projection Design: Tom Shennan
Performers: Jane Chan, Takeshi Matsumoto, Meera Patel, Shivaangee Agrawal
Rehearsal Director: Meera Patel
Production Manager: Alex Anzemberger
Production: Metal & Water / Lucia Fortune-Ely, Elsabet Yonas, Lauren Wright, Nancy May Roberts
Supporting Partners: Kala Sangam, Strike A Light, Talawa Theatre Company, Ugly Duck, Shoreditch Town Hall, Arts Council England
Points of Orientation (2021 - 2022), Kala Sangam
A new folk dance that straddles the tensions of wanting to be alone and wanting to be together, and all the feelings of confusion, responsibility, boredom, intimacy and freedom in between. The dancers use a nine-beat rhythmic cycle to build a non-linear narrative of what it means to be in collectivity.
Photography: Karol Wyszynski
Choreographer: Shivaangee Agrawal
Collaborators / Performers: Jane Chan, Takeshi Matsumoto, Meera Patel and Shivaangee Agrawal
Live Music: Tom Shennan
Production: Nancy May Roberts
Supporting Partners: Kala Sangam, Streatham Space Project, Akademi, People Dancing, Arts Council England
Dislocated / Displaced / Disembodied (2021), The Place
A site-specific durational performance that invited the audience to sit, stand, wander and play as the performers negotiated multiple modes of orientation and disorientation, using projection, film, mirrors and movement. Developed as part of Choreodrome Residency Programme at The Place.
Lead Artists: Shivaangee Agrawal & Tom Shennan
Performers / Researchers : Jane Chan and Shivaangee Agrawal
Soundscape & Wider Team: Takeshi Matsumoto, Meera Patel, Jane Chan, Shivaangee Agrawal
Supporting Partners: The Place, Kala Sangam, Streatham Space Project, Arts Council England
Community-Engaged Facilitation Methodology
Our workshops treat participants as a community, and introduce frameworks for dancing, moving, feeling and reflecting together that each create specific experiences of collectivity. In one framework, the group may feel more inclined to work together towards a shared composition, and in another framework, the group may feel more discordant, opting to follow more individualistic curiosities. Most often, our frameworks offer individuals a nuanced experience of being in the group.
Our facilitation practice is rooted in naming what is felt, and making transparent what is often not acknowledged. Each framework centers a carefully held reflection, in which participants can discuss their experiences in terms of freedom, power, desire and pressure. By enabling people to process their experiences in these terms, we want to empower them to advocate for their felt experience, first off in the purposefully held studio environment but ultimately across the different realms of their lives. Each workshop series also invites participants to begin locating themselves in each of their communities. In giving permission for these locations to be shifting, uncertain or unknown, we acknowledge that those around us only ever understand / see a fraction of our own complexities.
We draw on the same material whether we are working with artists, professional dancers, or members of the public; the use of rhythm, repetition, body percussion and voice offers participants the opportunity to complexify their explorations if they are so inclined without excluding those who enjoy simplicity. We use folk dance frameworks as a basis with which to experiment with dancing together, as it invites different abilities and styles of moving and is often simple to pick up.
By grounding our frameworks in practices that use repetition and duration, we allow time to shift the same material, and use that to examine the effects of time on our behaviour, relationships and levels of motivation.
Ultimately, we endeavour to offer participants extreme permission to be themselves, in the hope that these embodied experiences of liberation can be used as reference points for moving through life.
“I feel connected, held, felt, understood, allowed and healed...”
“A moment of being and existing in a community with so much ease.”
“I really enjoyed the tasks, simple but also as intricate as you want.”
“Expression of liberation without any restrictions. Real, and collective."
Facilitation (2021 - Ongoing)
Velocities - Weekly Series, Commissioned by The Albany
6 weekly sessions with participants of Meet Me at The Albany, a group of over-65 adults to rekindle their love for dancing collectively and reflect on past experiences of dancing.
“Moving Together at Different Speeds” - Artist Led Lab, Commissioned by The Place
A 3-day lab for professional artists offering frameworks with which to play with experiences of disorientation, isolation, fatigue and restlessness across our personal, creative and professional lives. This lab was intentionally intricate, carefully developed and embraced rituals of eating and resting together.
Guest Tutoring - MA Expanded Dance Practice and MA Participation, Communities, Activism at London Contemporary Dance School
Half-day and Full-day sessions introducing MA students to Velocities’ exploration of folk dance frameworks, and their potential to address urgent questions of autonomy
“Shared Worlds” - Weekly Sessions at Body & Soul Charity
A 6-week course for members of the Body & Soul community exploring the dance, sounds and environments we hold in our bodies, using the Velocities practice of sound-making and creative improvisation.
Guest Tutoring - BA Contemporary Dance at London Contemporary Dance School
A term of teaching and mentoring BA2 students, to introduce them to community dance practice through Velocities facilitation methodology. We took the students to co-facilitate weekly sessions at regular collaborating partner Body & Soul Charity, on themes of ritual and co-creation.
Velocities - Full Day Workshop, Commissioned by Pro Dance Oxford
A 1-day workshop delving into the collective experience of speed, disorientation and sound-making using Velocities’ improvisational frameworks.
“On Practice, Participation, Disorientation” - Artist Resourcing Day Commissioned by Akademi
A 1-day course to professional dance artists working with South Asian Dance forms, using embodied tasks to address the questions:
How to negotiate the unfortunate hierarchy between 'community' and 'artistic' work
How to use artistic frameworks to broaden the idea of 'inclusivity' and 'participation'
How to ensure personal wellbeing while holding community spaces
“Wellbeing in Practice - Your Needs, My Needs, Our Needs” - Summer School Course, Commissioned by People Dancing UK
A 1-day course for dance professionals working in the community context, exploring the tensions between autonomy and collectivity in community dance settings, to address:
Where do you locate yourself in your practice? How do you locate your practice in our landscape?
How does community feel to you?
How do we attend to ourselves and others at the same time?
Guest Tutoring - Next Choreography course at Siobhan Davies Studios
An evening session for participants aged 18-25, sharing Velocities’ approach to entangling choreography and activism.
“Myself & Us” - Community Programme, Commissioned by Streatham Space Project
A 8-week community programme exploring themes of community, agency and identity, welcoming disabled and non-disabled adults of all ages.
“Here Together” - Hosted by Displace Yourself Theatre
An evening workshop with adults experiencing displacement, to exploring themes of community, memory and witnessing through creative movement, sound-making and chorus.
“Collective Living” - Hosted by Radical Acts, Common Wealth Theatre
An afternoon workshop with an inter-generational group of women exploring themes of ritual by weaving together creative movement, chorus, touch and eating.
