Exchanging stories at the museum

I was lucky to be invited to join the DEC group in rehearsals and perform with them at the Story Museum last week.  The Story Museum is slowly launching itself (actual opening in 2014); it has taken possession of its new home, and is currently showcasing a number of installations. A very neat exhibition called "Other Worlds" if you get a chance to go (until 27th May 2012), do step into these bubbles of evoked stories, and strange and magical worlds.
We occupied the 'Story Exchange room', a perfect place to improvise collaboratively across art forms: visual artists Clare Bassett, Kassandra Isaacson, and Suzie Moxley doing life drawing, simultaneously projected to the wall behind the dancers, musicians Bruno Guastalla and Malcolm Atkins improvising, and dancers Susie Crow, Ana Barbour and myself also improvising, all of us continually responding to each others' stories.
It was strange and fascinating, yet not entirely unexpected, how collaborative work across the arts encounters the same "vocabulary" problems as I've experienced in academia. There's always so much to learn from how people with a different perspective approach things!

I was very grateful for the opportunity to join them, it was a real eye opener at so many levels! I loved every second of it all.

I love stories, I enjoy museums, I breathe dance... so this event was an absolutely perfect combination, both inspiring and fulfilling! :)

Here are some photos taken during rehearsals:

More photos of the whole group at work here.