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Forest Dances

Bock and Vincenzi

1995 – 1997

Bock & Vincenzi’s work together has developed into a series of four Forest Dances that take as their conceit the notion of the forest as a state of unconsciousness.

This has allowed for the creation of very different and extreme visual worlds, all grounded in the themes of time, memory, loss and death. Each of these worlds contain its own rules and its own unique dance vocabulary – its own language which speaks directly to the imagination and explains nothing.

Three Forest Dances in a Room of Wood was supported by a Rhythm Method Commission, the Bonnie Bird Choreography Fund, Artsadmin Artist Resource Fund and London Arts

Three Forest Dances in a Room of Wood (1995 – 1997)
three dark dances
three strange meetings of the self
three journeys through imagined forests
three meetings of past and future
three dances of death
three stories that could not be put into words
three clues to a puzzle…

Lighting design: Chahine Yavroyan
Set & costume design: Simon Vincenzi
Sound design: Ian Hill

Forest Dance no.1 (Once Upon and Ever After) (1995)
Wearing gold crowns, a tiny boy and giant man dance in a miniature forest of fir trees.
A frenetic fairy tale of scale

Performed by Frank Bock & Cosmo Mcmullan
Music by Henryk Gorecki

Forest Dance No.2 (1996)
Two sleeping men dance till their feet bleed through a forest
strewn with children’s shoes.
This dance is both ecstatic and fearful.
It evokes a forest in which it is hard not to get lost
a forest to lose oneself in.

Performed by Frank Bock & Marcus McLaughlin
Music by Transylvanian String

Forest Dance No.3 (1997)
Two magicians conjure a story of loss in the memory of a forest.
in which it is hard to breath
A silent dance in a forest where they never meet.

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