Kitty Graham

Part of Works Ahead 2013 — booking details + information

####In Brief You stand before a bed of earth. Perhaps it is empty, still, peaceful — perhaps it is not.

Using a bed of earth — the place of death and decay, as well as creation and growth, and continual transformer of one into the other — this piece explores what might emerge when unconscious contents are freed in liminal ritual, and how these contents may be transformed by contact with consciousness.

####More The Bare Earth was inspired by research into the personal transformation that can occur in the liminal phase of tribal initiation rituals, where those being initiated are secluded from the rest of society. They exist in a hinterland — dead to their former selves but not yet re-born into a new phase of life.

####Who is she?
Kitty had M.E for 19 years and pretty much completely missed secondary school, so was educated mostly by daytime TV. When she was 21 she went back to school (with the 15 year olds — socially quite an odd experience) to do some GCSEs and A levels, but after two years decided to go to Laban and study dance full time, which is what she’d wanted to do all along really. She spent five years at Laban all together, read a lot of Jung, and became especially interested in making work that explores ideas connected with Paganism and movement as an expression of nature, as well as in Butoh practice. In the end, although inspired by research into Victor Turner’s writing and by Butoh, The Bare Earth came about as a result of dream image.

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image by Bob France