Opening Program Installation Program 1   Program 2-3  Program 4-5 Program 6 Program 7 Program 8 Program 9   Program 10  Program 11 Program 12 Program 13 Program 14 Closing Ceremony

Program 1: 20 years of collaboration Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie
venue: British Council

photo by Joe Murray

Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie have collaborated for the past twenty five years touring their live and screen work both in the UK and internationally. Their commissioned screen dance work includes: for the BBC Dance for Camera Awards, 'Motion Control' and 'Beethoven in Love': for the Arts Council of England and Capture Award, 'Anarchic Variations', 'Men in the Wall' and 'Doppelganger': and for Channel 4 Dance4 season 'Break'. Aggiss and Cowie's screen dance work has received numerous international awards including: Czech Crystal Prague Golden Film Festival (2002), Honourable Mention Paula Citron Award Toronto 2002, Special Jury Golden Award Houston (2003), Best Woman Film Media Waves Hungary (2003), The Romanian National Office of Cinematography Award (2003), Special Jury Mention "Il Coreografo Elettronico-2004" at Napolidanza 2004. Their book ‘Anarchic Dance’ published by Routledge 2006, (Taylor and Francis in the USA) is now available, comprising a book and three hour DVD-Rom, and is a visual and textual record of their live and screen dance work.

photo by SiIke Mansholt

Liz Aggiss has received numerous awards including the Bonnie Bird Choreography Award (1994) and an Arts Council Dance Fellowship Award (2003). Billy Cowie has composed music performed by Marie McLaughlin, Nicola Hall, Gerard McChrystal, Daphne Scott-Sawyer, Juliet Russell, Rowan Godel, Parmjit Pammi and Naomi Itami, and twelve CDs of his music have been released on the record label Divas Records. He has recently composed music for three BBC Radio projects: Shakespeare's 'The Tempest', Philip Pullman's 'Dark Materials Trilogy' (both dir by David Hunter) and Thinking Earth (dir Pam Marshall) and for film directors Tony Palmer, Chris Rodley, Stephen Frears and Bob Bentley.

Liz Aggiss is a Professor of Visual Performance at the University of Brighton where Billy Cowie is a Principal Research Fellow in the School of Art.

"Hi Jinx" a live performance by Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie

This dance lecture performance is based on the experimental and fictional dancer Heidi Dhinkowska (also known as Hi Jinx) who, according to Liz and Billy, is also the foremother of “cine-dance” (kinotanets) genre . This work parodies the desire to create icons from the past. The work includes film clips and ‘reconstructions’ from Heidi’s artistic catalogue of tips for the young dance filmmakers as well as films created under Heidi’s influence by Liz and Billy themselves.

'It took me a while to realise this was a beautifully fabricated parody of our desire to create icons from the past (complete with original film clips from 1904!)'
- Phillip Beaven Total theatre Magazine

‘splendid performance lecture in which she, with humour and incisiveness, outlined the essence of her craft’
- Lizzie Le Quesne Ballettanz – tanzfilm 2005

Beethoven in Love (15min, 1994)
Choreographed by Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie
Music by Billy Cowie
Directed by Bob Bentley

Shot on 16mm “Beethoven in Love” derives inspiration from the composer’s difficult relationships with woman and explores the nature of the outsider. Black humour and an expressionist dance vocabulary combine with the romantic lyricism of Billy Cowie’ s music to evoke images of the 18th century, though the central questions of the outsider and unrequited love are relevant to contemporary thinking.

Motion Control (10min, 2002)
Devised and choreographed by Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie
Directed by David Anderson

“Motion Control” became an official selection of over 30 festivals around the world including Cannes and Berlin.

Take one glamorous and ageing dancer. Trap her in the real world, then smash into her private reality. Control her movement, contain her emotion. Well you can try but she has already beaten you to it. With hypersound and super smart awareness submit to this bizarre journey of entrapment.

This short film examines the synergy of camera and performer. Shot on 35mm, it explores from the camera’s point of view, the physical and emotional entrapment of the ageing and glamorous dancer in her private and personal spaces. The film is notable for hypersound foley overlaid with text and electro-opera.

'A superb cinematic experiment that starts out from the conventions of video-dance but manages to go beyond’ - Sitges International Festival Oct 2002

'Motion Control is a stunner' - The Globe and Mail Toronto Oct 22 2002

Anarchic Variations (7min, 2002)
Directed and choreographed by Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie
this 7 minute screen dance is a commission by Arts Council Capture 2

Can you fit a spiky, redhaired woman into a plain white cube? Only if you are prepared to distort space, compress time and suspend belief. In six brutally white, glaringly brief episodes, Aggiss battles for survival and compassion against the relentless dissonance of Cowie’s virtuosic piano variations.'

Anarchic Variations aims to confound and disorientate the spectators reality of space, scale and sound based on the choreographic and music idea of theme and variations. The underlying physical concept centres on dislocation and the splitting of the body into independent and separate units. Working with optical illusion, the audience will pro actively engage in the film, problem solving, asking the question who is doing what to whom and how? who is in control?

Break (6min., 2005)
Devised and choreographed by Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie

In the wilderness of Dungeness, where the natural and the nuclear meet for small talk, Master Thomas is taking the air. As he rambles he spies something unusual and decides to investigate. Break (from the Middle English) 1 an interruption of continuity. 2 a short period of recreation or refreshment. 3 a tract of ground of distinct appearance. 4 an opportunity, a chance…

Opening Program Installation Program 1   Program 2-3  Program 4-5 Program 6 Program 7 Program 8 Program 9   Program 10  Program 11 Program 12 Program 13 Program 14 Closing Ceremony

© Kinodance–Russia, 2006
akovgan@kinodance.com