Nexus Dance is a collaboration between music, dance and visual art, formed in 2009 and based in London. Their process has a strong emphasis on how it is experienced by the dancers, aiming to create a space in which individual expression and development is a natural part of the whole. Conceptually, their work is focused around the connections between different people's communications of internal experience within a common framework.

Soul Notes

 

‘Soul Notes’ is a collaborative piece of contemporary dance created by dancer andchoreographer Siân Hopkins, and musician and visual artist Tom Kirkpatrick, who together form Nexus Dance. Siân graduated from the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance in 2006, and has since lived and danced in Los Angeles, Munich and London. I (Tom) was brought into the dance world by my mother, former LCDT dancer and later Rambert School teacher Charlotte Kirkpatrick, and have a great passion for involving my art and music with dance. I’m currently employed as an accompanist at the Rambert School, and over the last year have held dance photography exhibitions in Munich and London.

 

Both the title and basis of the piece originate from a collection of poems written by Siân during her time in Munich. Self-reflections and explorations of the various experiences and people encountered through day to day life, they were written for the pleasure of writing, the satisfying of a desire to express, respond, and interpret. Hence being grouped under the name ‘Soul Notes’. The piece is in essence, representations of five of these poems, which we selected for how they individually lend themselves to translation into movement and music. As such, there are five sections to the piece, each for a different poem.

 

It began as poetic fragments of one person’s experience, and will end the same fragments, but layered and intertwined with their reflections in the mirrors of the minds and bodies of others.

 

Choreographed by Siân Hopkins

Dancers: Naomi Hibberd, Siân Hopkins, Carys Staton, Ryu Suzuki, Chiara Vinci