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BOCK & VINCENZI

FOREST DANCES

2000

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 (1995 - 1997)

lighting design Chahine Yavroyan, set & costume design Simon Vincenzi
sound design Ian Hill

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...


Forest Dance no.1 (Once Upon and Ever After) (1995)

performed by Frank Bock & Cosmo Mcmullan
music: Henryk Gorecki

Wearing gold crowns, a tiny boy and giant man dance in a miniature forest of fir trees.
A frenetic fairy tale of scale

Forest Dance No.2 (1996)

performed by Frank Bock & Marcus McLaughlin
music: Transylvanian String

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.

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.

Performances

Forest Dance 1
September 1995
Purcell Room, South Bank Centre, London - part of Rhythm Method

Forest Dance 2
March 1997
Jackson's Lane Theatre, London

May 1997
Powerhouse, Nottingham - part of NOTTDance Festival

Forest Dance 2 & 3
October 1996
a work-in-progress showing at Toynbee Studios 

Three fore (1,2 & 3)
March 1997
Purcell Room, South Bank Centre, London - part of Spring Loaded

May 1997
Phoenix Arts, Leicester 

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