 . First Impressions - Artists Zoe partington Zollinger in Collabortaion with SDC
DAO ACCENTUATE Review (excerpt)
....The setting did afford an outing for the collaboration that has taken place between Signdance Collective and Zoe Partington. Signdance worked with performing arts students from New Bucks University to interpret ‘the journey’.
Signdance do this kind of work so well –
and conveyed an energetic sense of connection with what Zoe was trying to do.
In a twenty minute piece, all dressed in white, the performers described what the journey was like for them. They conveyed a host of feelings and associations, which occasionally had echoes of the blind narrator. One student, who really stood out, used repetitive words and movement to describe poetically, his sense of connection and disconnection as he made his way through the shopping centre, past seats that looked like sculptures and slippery floors. What impressed me about this piece was the way it got the students to think about audio-description as an intuitive part of theatrical performance. It’s a subtle process, but so much writing for theatre could be revolutionised by incorporating description into the dialogue; allowing the audience to have a picture of what’s in the frame through hints implanted in the speech. Several characters took the limelight during this performance. Their descriptions took on a mix of the inner and the outer world. They got into the spirit of ‘First Impressions’ and would be a great asset as a performative element to the work, wherever it is shown. Colin Hambrook Disability Arts On Line July 2012
On
Friday 13th, I had the privilege of going to East Croydon to watch the
world renowned SignDance Collective's New Gold, at the Warehouse
Theatre. .... The work – because it is great has “mass” appeal speaks for itself and that is what is fantastic Esther Appleyard Accentuate  from your show. Keep me in touch with anything new. Sue Roberts - Executive Producer BBC Drama North  Artistic director David Bower may be familiar to moviegoers as Hugh Grant’s deaf, and wonderfully honest, brother in Four Weddings and a Funeral, and with this company he is no less honest, in fact almost ruthlessly so. What he sets out to achieve in the most compelling of these four pieces is an expression of the inner journey he had to make in order to reconcile himself to “the Noise” - the tinnitus he has suffered since 1986 following an Indie gig. In this uncompromising performance he seems to become the sounds in his own head at the same time as trying to cast them out. It is as if a devil has taken root behind his eyes and he is determined not to be driven mad. Unforgettable. Providing a dizzying background to this is some excellent live rock music (courtesy of Luke Barlow) and in the first half of the evening singer/songwriter Alex Ward also performs several splendidly abrasive songs of his own, accompanied by his own electric guitar and “sign theatre” from Isolte Avila ......Whats On Stage In London  |
