Performance and Artist Q&A: 'Spin Down Sky' by Megan Rooney
5 October, 6–8.15pm
Join us to experience Spin Down Sky, a new dance performance by Megan Rooney commissioned specially for Echoes & Hours. This performance will be followed by an informal in-conversation with Megan Rooney, and reception.
Director: Megan Rooney
Performers: Temi Ajose and Leah Marojevic
Choreography: Temi Ajose
Music: tyroneisaacstuart
About the Performance
Spin Down Sky was developed by Megan Rooney, Temi Ajose and Tyrone Issac-Stuart in close collaboration. Rooney has described the process as a feedback loop, in which Issac-Stuart visited Rooney’s studio, recording incidental sound while she painted and later his own saxophone improvisations. Ajose and Rooney then worked with the soundtrack to develop aspects of the story of the Bolas spider and Night Butterfly who are the protagonists of Spin Down Sky. Rooney also made a series of works on paper – on display in the Research Space – whilst Issac-Stuart played, these also provided source material for Ajose’s cheorgraphy, performed by Ajose and Leah Marajevic. Each collaborator brings their own knowledge and experience of painting, dance and music to the performance, exploring a shared idea across different media.
Spin Down Sky is a love story in which the night butterfly finds herself exploring the boundaries of a forbidden space where she is ensnared by the spider. However, it does not proceed from a beginning to an end, instead the two dancers make contact and part ways a number of times, their movements mirror the different ways we relate to each other, as well as to the precarious ecological systems of the world around us.
Gallery
Photos: Camilla Greenwell
About the Collaborators
Megan Rooney has been working with Temi Ajose and Leah Marojevic since 2017. Their performance-based practice oriented around movement and colour has been part of Serpentine Park Night, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art.
tyroneisaacstuart
tyroneisaacstuart is an interdisciplinary, concept driven artist whose skills originate from Jazz and Hip-Hop Theatre. He has worked with established artists within the Hip hop sector, contemporary dance and with many of the artists now shaping the Jazz scene. Commissions include a full length theatre work for the Barbican ‘An Earnest Life’, a duet for Dance Umbrella, Beyond Words & an international Solo work for Hayley Matthews Ensemble. He is a Steve Reid Innovation Award 2019-2020 recipient, and a 2020 Artist in Residence at Clarence Mews Space.
Temi Ajose
Temi Ajose has created and staged works for venues such as Royal Opera House and ROH2. Her works have been performed at DanceXchange, RichMix, Dancebase in Edinburgh, Swindon Dance and the Soho Joyce (New York). She has been part of the performance team restaging Joan Jonas retrospective at the Tate Modern, working with choreographer and curator Nefeli Skarmea for artist Megan Rooney at the Serpentine Pavilion and collaborated with Megan Rooney for her solo shows at Kunsthalle Germany and the Lyon Bianale. Temi continues to make her own work, producing a work at The Southbank in collaboration with writer Jay Bernard My Name is my Own 2019, and the creation of her solo work Lady M (at home with Lady Macbeth) Choreodrome 2021.
Leah Marojevic
Leah is a contemporary dance artist who performs, makes performance, writes, teaches, directs and artistically supports other dance makers. Leah collaborates regularly with Theo Clinkard and Colette Sadler, and has worked with choreographers, visual artists and companies; Sarah Browne, Pauilina Olowska, Joe Moran, Sam Williams, Megan Rooney, Candoco Dance Company, Clod Ensemble, Darcy Wallace, Skånes Dansteater, Seke Chimutengwende, and Becky Hilton among others. Leah has worked for and within Greenwich Dance since 2014 and in the last years has been leading Open Professional Classes and Workshops for anyone who enjoys moving.
Megan Rooney: Echoes & Hours
This is the first major solo exhibition in the UK of work by Megan Rooney (b. 1985, South Africa). Her paintings have an irresistible life and energy, renewing the potential of abstraction to embody the richness of the visual world.
In June 2024, Rooney will spend three weeks making a new ‘mural’, painting directly on the walls of one of Kettle’s Yard’s two galleries. In the other gallery a group of new paintings will be exhibited for the first time.
Created in ‘family groups’, the size of the canvases she uses are determined by the reach of her outstretched arms. Vibrant colour and line appear boundless, capturing the ebb and flow of their making, from the use of abrasives to remove pigment to repeated overpainting. Each work tells a compelling story, poetically recalling the real, the remembered and the imagined – inviting visitors into their restless and pleasurable worlds.
Access
- The galleries, where exhibitions are shown, and all areas of the Clore Learning Studio (level -1) and Ede Room (level 2) are fully accessible.
- We have wheelchair accessible toilets on the lower ground, ground and first floor.
- There is a lift giving access to all floors located past the galleries, just beside the Clore Learning Studio on the ground floor.
- Kettle’s Yard welcomes assistance and service dogs in all areas.
- We have large-print versions of the wall text available.
- We can lend visitors small folding seats for taking around exhibitions or using at non-seated events. Please ask a Visitor Assistant for help finding a seat.
