Talking Moves Series 3 Episode 2: Making Work for the Outdoors

Talking Moves | 14 May 2021

In this episode, we talk to Frauke Requardt and Luca Silvestrini about making work for the outdoors.

Artists have long been making work to animate places and spaces and there is much for them to consider when they do. The work has to sit within the setting, engage with passersby who perhaps are not expecting, or even asking, to be engaged with. But with the pandemic having closed theatres down for the best part of 2020 and now into 2021, many artists and venues are looking to the outdoors as part of our road to recovery.

Frauke and Luca reflect back on over 15 years of making work for the outdoors and talk about the differences in both developing work for particular spaces as well as touring with pop-up sets and ‘venues’. They speak about the experiences of the audience member – of drawing them into the narrative without having the tools at their disposal such as dimming lights and swishing curtains which are often used to create the atmosphere for the performance within traditional theatre settings. They talk about the audience who buy a ticket for and choose to see work in non-theatrical settings and those that stumble across it – and how both the performers and the choreographer prepare for those eventualities.

Coincidentally at time of recording, both artists were about to go into the studio the very next week to start work on new outdoor productions. Each gave us a sneak preview of what we can expect from their exciting new shows… and shared with us their own processes of making work in a pandemic for a world tentatively emerging from it.

View trailer:

Who's Who

Frauke Requardt headshot

Frauke Requardt

Frauke Requardt trained in Germany, New York and London. As well as directing dance and performance, she has also worked as one of Lea Anderson’s Cholmondeleys. Frauke is currently a Work Place artist at The Place. Her full-evening works to date include Jammy Dodgers, a fantastical world, with a rolling line up of bands from the London contemporary Jazz scene; the Lynch-esque Roadkill Cafe; and Pequenas Delicias, an absurdist site-specific piece, Episode premiered at The Place (June 2011) and most recently Mothers (2017) an anarchic response to her experience of being a new parent.

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Future Cargo
Luca Silvestrini by Alicia Clarke

Luca Silvestrini

Luca Silvestrini is Protein’s Artistic Director. He is known for his unique style of dance theatre combining choreography, text, humour and social commentary to present the everyday in revealing and subversive ways, on- and off-stage. Protein’s work, including Dear Body, LOL (lots of love), Border Tales, The Little Prince or the short film The Sun Inside, has toured the world, from the USA to Russia, Columbia to China. Ahead of Protein’s move to Woolwich Works in Greenwich, Luca is creating a new outdoor piece, En Route, that will open a new chapter in the life of the company as the world re-emerges from the pandemic.

Through Protein’s Real Life Real Dance programme, Luca has created ground-breaking participatory performance opportunities for disadvantaged and disengaged people, including young people in alternative provision schools, hospitals, refugees, asylum seekers and migrants.

He has created full-length intergenerational productions including the acclaimed (In)visible Dancing; and has taught and presented Protein’s participatory work at schools and conferences in Singapore, Spain, Italy and Canada. He’s a regular guest teacher in Community Dance Practice at Corso per Danzeducatore in Bologna and at Danzatori per la Comunità in Turin, Italy.

He has won a Jerwood Choreography Award, a Bonnie Bird New Choreography Award, The Place Prize Audience Award and received a Rayne Fellowship and in 2020, he was awarded the prestigious Premio della Critica by the Italian Associazione Nazionale Critici di Teatro for his work in dance. Luca is Affiliate Artist at The Place.

Photo: Alicia Clarke

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