Haitian Voodoo Ritual Dance workshop | 14th March

voodoo_ritualAnatum’s Abode is pleased to announce a whole day workshop exploring the world of Voodoo Ritual dance. Led by Zsuzsa Parrag.

We will embark on a journey of physical and metaphysical opening in movement. Through vibrance of sound and rhythm that enables a deeper connection to a mystical tradition as well as an aesthetic. We will also be introduced into the context of Voodoo ritual dance, symbols, some elements of its history and tradition;

Zsuzsa has been teaching dance for over 20 years. She has studied Haitian dance for over 10 years at the leading dance schools in Port-au-Prince. One of her most influential teachers is Florencia Pierre, a dancer and vodou priestess who accepted Zsuzsa as a private student and initiated her into the ritual origins of the dances. Florencia teaches that you can only get to the essence of the dances when you abandon pure technique and understand the spiritual function of the dances in vodou. In response to this realisation, Zsuzsa has undertaken extensive Haitian travel and research into the vodou religion in the context of dance.

Haitian dance is a beautiful, ecstatic and intense Caribbean dance form. There are many different types and styles of Haitian dance, each with its own particular significance, reflecting certain Vodou rituals.

For this workshop Zsusza will teach 4 dances that focus on liberation: Yanvalou, Ibo, Petwo and Banda. Yanvalou has a meditative and harmonious character that takes the form of flowing snakelike movements that imitate flowing water. Yanvalou is associated with various spirits within the Vodou tradition such as Erzuli Freda, the Goddess of Love, and Damballa, the cosmic snake. Ibo is a very dynamic liberation dance with lots of jumping movements. The heartbeat of Ibo is its upper chest bounces and strong, cutting arm movements, which symbolise breaking chains, representing freedom.

Petwo is the dance of revolution; it has immense energy, impressive ecstatic body movements and lightning quick steps.

And finally Banda is the dance of Gèdé. The Gèdé family combines the strangest figures of the Haitian spirit world. Due to its emphasized pelvic movements and provocative gestures the Gèdé has a very high entertainment value, both for the dancers and for the audience. You will definitely leave this workshop in a great mood.

 

The workshop will take place on 14th March at Anatum’s Abode, 613 Commercial road, E14 7NT. 12pm to 6pm with a lunch break in between.

Contribution: 30 pounds, 25 pounds concession.

Lunch included.

Please register and buy tickets beforehand by following this link!

RELATIONAL IN ESSENCE | 1st February

Anatum’s is inviting you to a multidisciplinary live showcase of 3 international artists

sound, performance and drawing acts in one evening at our Abodesunday, the 1st of february at 7 pm

sliding scale donation for our artists is encouraged
communicate
RELATIONAL IN ESSENCE
drawing performance along field recordings informed by the theme of transportationby AMIT, recent arrival from israelas an illustrator and sound artist taking over human skin and walls of da city

he is joining us to be expanding onto large scale paper suspended in space sharing his intuitive mono-coloured formulations in real timeADRIAN SCHULL aka ‘HELMUT’ from Berlin, in concert

expect live sound of signals working their way from guitar pick ups and mic through the loop of da pedal

combined with tribal poly rhythms http://helmut.bandcamp.com/

his harmonic use of voice-layering and a delicate touch of distortion and noise forms his contribution that night

PIOTR BOCKOWSKI, video/body performer who lived 2012-2014 around HongKong and had developed his haunted act ‘Phantom Limbs’http://neofung.info/phantomlimbs to which he takes refference at Anatums, inspired by its location
he is calling the ghosts of original London Chinatown & phantasms of Limehouse opium dens.the XXI century Chinese ritual of paper electronics burning will be simulated by trance-like performance & video projection on the body.At the end of the show the audience will be invited for a half a mile walk to a XIX century location of an opium den

donations at the door

phantom limbs

After the Residency. Michael Harding

What happened, what did I learn, what will I do next?

I got the residency on Christmas Day when I sent Anatum a text message saying “yes sounds interesting” – this appeals to me because of a concern about the effects of rendering my ‘practice’ into constant application forms, a concern which I am making a musical about, called Removal Men. When I met up with her for the interview, I said I would use the fortnight to interview people and turn the result into lyrics, which I would then perform for an audience.

The residency had some beautiful qualities – the option to train in brutal Systema methods, the sauna which gets the fire-brigade over when it’s lit, the greasy dildo which had multiple applications, not least supporting the projector during the final presentation I gave on Thursday night, in the old meat freezing room next to the kitchen (did you know Anatum’s was a butcher once?)

Lyrics. Lyric poetry focuses on the first person, on the experiences of the I in an emotional storm. In the Removal Men, the security officer Moses has his I gouged out by various workshop leaders, and sings of his transformation over live house music. What I needed to find was how lyrics can work over house music – not rap or song lyrics, but words in rhythms of speaking so the audience understand what is going on. I ended up researching methods of melodic talking.

Because some people had been to hospital or were feeling shaky I ended up doing some interviews off-site; because they weren’t ready for an audience I saved some of the lyrics for later; and I gave a talk rather than a performance. The talk was about how tick-box forms fail to document what happens in detention centres; how poetry does capture reality but doesn’t make sense without hard work; how to escape from the limitations of two-handed plays and also some recordings of lyrical improvisations I recorded with Nick Owen and his drum machine.

Thank you Anatum for being so warm, so open – it felt so rustic in the kitchen with the peeling walls, the jam jar cups, the garden; a pastoral escape just off the A13. It’s important that the work I’m doing has its roots in a culture of defiance, and what I found at Anatum’s was defiance as an act of love.

Michael Harding

TANK ISOLATION

Schedule an appointment with Justin Tyler Tate, on the 28th and 29th of January, at Anatum’s Abode for an intimate experience of art and sensory isolation. The installation will allow viewers to pardon themselves from the confines of gravity, light and sound so that only their mind is left as a tool of perception. The artist presents a situation and ritual to induce the subject to receive the art experience as that which happens inside the isolation tank. Through the confines of the installation, the viewer is removed from observing scale, material and therefor being absolved in the perceptual certainty of time and space.

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Participants agree to enter the isolation tank nude or wearing a bathing suit, to be filmed/photographed at any point during their experience (except when enclosed in the tank) and interviewed afterwards. Please email Justin Tyler Tate at anatumsabode@gmail.com with your preferred date (28th or 29th), the duration you would like to spend in the tank (45min – 2hours) as well as your preferred starting time (scheduling will happen between the hours of 9am and 8pm).

SMOKE | SOUND

aura pearl first fog anatums

Friday 16th

8 pm -00 at Anatums Abode

SMOKE | SOUND
touch and self perception rules over sight
and sound is on the forefront of influence
hosting your moves, breath and time
durational performance up to 6hours, with diy do it yourself instruments, micro – bio – synthesizers
deep listening and capturing audiences impulses, signal & wave composition
will be screening videos, using smoke machines, and flickering lights
at Anatums Abode, 613 commercial rd, e14 7nt
Dlr Limehouse

Residency by Michael Harding

Michael Harding (b.1985) is a London dramatist with a background in hardcore underground music and anthropology. He is making a musical called Removal Men about a security officer from an immigration removal centre who has his life transformed through taking part in therapeutic art workshops after a riot. The musical is set to live house and techno. Below this post you will find a test shot, filmed last November with Jonah Brody of Super Best Friends Club.

For his residency at Anatum’s Abode, Michael is inviting specialists in musical theatre, dramaturgy, radical politics and electronic music to sit down for interviews and improvisation sessions. The purpose is to find out what kind of dramatic expression works over a backdrop of house music – particular rhythms of speech, melodies, lyrics and passages of dialogue. At the same time, he is developing the story – the encounter between a musician and a security officer in a maximum security I.R.C.

On Thursday 15th January, Michael will share some of this research with an audience at Anatum’s, starting at 19.00.