Thank you Anna and Private View invitation!

 

So as many of you know

Anna is our youngest daughter, most of our 5 children have been swung around a dance session, crawled around the floor, been passed on, hugged and generally involved in Shallal from early years until teens...in their teens lending tech and design help and more - thank you Michael https://www.instagram.com/cuthbertwillis/as well as Anna https://www.instagram.com/anna__sophronia/?hl=en for art input.

Anna is now having a show in a community cafe, a favourite venue for me, community, where you come across art in your daily life and it can cheer, inspire you or you ignore it, no big deal.

Anna has danced, performed, created, designed, spooned baby food into Luke, our youngest's, mouth while we are all squashed in the front of our van and answered her phone for me! ( i was dragged reluctantly into mobile phone land rather late ), listened to me, helped me, supported me and inspired us all, her inspiration led to the process behind 'Connecting Forms' performance at The  Tate.

 So tonight we look forward to old friends and new faces at the Private View and i would like to stop and thank her, often she has been the most long term person in Shallal that i can easily access: to check ethos, ideas, and she understands and puts up with me, and i am very grateful.

I love her work and her approach and am, of course, totally biased!

I love the work of all the Shallal artists and believe in it being seen and enjoyed, otherwise i wouldn't still be here.

Thank you to everyone especially Elizabeth Tomos and Sam, and to Fran and all at Growbox Cafe https://thegrowbox.co.uk/cafe/for being so welcoming and supportive.

*Anna and her home ed friends also showed me that you can stay connected to your creativity and playful risk taking from childhood through your ( potentially self conscious) teens when many stop. I learnt a lot from working with them all seeing the Shallal style of work in their age  group and relating together with so many others

Nicky Harvey

Richard, Nicky and Lily

                                                                  zoom Christmas party

In grateful memory.

This year Nicky Harvey died. I was so moved by her story with us. 

I met Nicky through a mutual friend, a chance conversation, led to us chatting about our children, her youngest daughter Lily is an artist living remotely at home in Spain. We chatted about Shallal and Lily and her cross artform creativity work reminded me of Eddie. 

Lily and her family made friends with Eddie and his family, and they visited each other.

When we were starting zooms, Lily joined us, after the pandemic we didn’t want to loose touch so continued the zooms, sometimes Lily is in 3 – 4 Shallal dance or art sessions a week via zoom: Zoom Dance and Art Connection, Express Yourself, Shallal2 and Shallal Sketchbooks.

At the very beginning Nicky was out of sight but in the background supporting Lily's participation. Nicky's creativity quietly supported Lily's amazing work.

https://youtu.be/fMRwgYY7Mhw?si=E6Lt40jeidRkBc49

Lily is a core member of our zoom Art Connection group which wanted to try illustration and so Nicky wrote a childrens short story or two! for them to try to illustrate!

You can see Helens drawings and hear Nicky read the stories on ……

https://youtu.be/moIjkxp2moY?si=HiO9Tj4Hr_jn9Pw7

https://youtu.be/lEsdRcvpdFU?si=zUu-8sDAz2v-3hKR

Lily and her parents would dress up and join in the Christmas party zooms! I think we all enjoy the feeling of reaching out internationally.

We recently had an exhibition which featured many prints of of Lily’s art work firstly at the Community gallery, Falmouth Art Gallery and it is now at Proper Job Café County Hall. 

Lily continues to join us and she and her family support us.

Lily has good friends she has met through Shallal and her creativity has extended into dance sessions with Demelza over Zoom.

Shallal often makes friendships with artists families/support as well as the artist.

In our visioning meetings Nicky thanked everyone for "making Shallal such a safe and inspiring experience" and had dream of  "a Shallal week in the mountains" where they lived.

Sam's exhibition and Shallal summer celebration

What a joy to see so much of Sam's work over many years on display.

Thank you to the venue Grow Box Cafe, Krowji which we highly recommend, delicious food, lovely space, art on the walls! and so friendly and supportive.

It was a lovely evening with many people from across Shallal and Sam with family and friends.

A week or so ago Jo L had sat eating cake with Sam while George helped adjust the art work on the walls and she penned some words which became wonderful spoken pieces that she shared today, we sang a song and more!

Thank you also to Oli who used his climbing skills to put up the highest cardboard pieces!

Most of Sam's work is not for sale, however orders for inkjet prints are being taken, so he can share his work.

More cafe exhibitions to come:

Anna Willis in September and Shallal Studios collective in November.

 

Comments from Known and Unknown

Audience written comments 

Sooo enjoyed the performance

well done to all you are inspiring x

Brilliant improvisating

Very moving work - Thank you

Lots ands Lots of Unknown. I know i know nothing.

You help me love it. Thanks

The thought 'inclusion' kept coming to me

the love and trust shone through

Wonderful to watch and to be a part of

Inspiring me to show myself more alone and in contact

Spoken 

Brilliant

'Known and Unknown' credits and chat

 Running order

Credits:

KNOWN

Who lights the sun                        Rene Aubry

Wellerman - Ragtime Version     Scott Bradlee

Telephone                                          Martynas

Viola Saga: Movement 2               Joe Hisaishi, Weiner Symphoniker

UNKNOWN

Tides - Catrin Finch

Storm Front

Barometer Rising

Reflection

Utopian Dreams

Gwlaskor  Vol 1                    Matthew Thomason ( grateful thanks )

Carn Brea

Keunyjek Prelude

Keunyjek

Resrudh

Porthleven

Known and Unknown by Shallal Dance Theatre Friday 7pm 12 July @thecentrenewlyn

We are keen to keep progressing our 'spontaneous response' style performances.

Free admission / donate if you can.

'Known' has music the dancers have moved to before and 'Unknown' is new to them.

We aim to make work that's "Relevant" as we are in an era of change and upheaval, 

some things we know will happen ( predicted/ Known ) some/many are Unknown.

Come along and tell us what you think, leave a note, have a chat.

We will have a Questions and Answers session afterwards.

Accessible venue, drop off limited parking

Background chat:

As always, risk and change are daunting and exciting at the same time.

As an artist the work always speaks to you, is a dialogue, and this morning while rummaging around for more music for today, at the end i realised it had themes i love: the land i grew up and live in my Cornish Heritage, Gwlaskor  Vol 1     and the roots of my mothers heritage  Wales Tides - Catrin Finch.

Both sections by amazing contemporary composers very grateful to Matt as i fell in love with this music at a recent concert, and its still only on CD! a challenge to my tech today - thank you to Anna for help.

We love this work and so far, so have our audiences, so here we go again (and on the 31st July we dive in even deeper with improvised grand piano for 7 minutes on the Hall for Cornwall stage.)

Do come and see us here or there!

There are so many strands to the creative life of Shallal and i can feel us needing to embrace humour and themes again soon. However for now my favourite place: the body and space Dance, with Music and Others, and Audience.

A joyful mix! 

and we look again at the themes of: 

Person and Community - the 'politics' of being

and 

Ecstasy, Enthusiasm and Encouragement - why do we dance?

Diary dates

23 July Tuesday 5-7.30pm Grow Box Cafe Krowji Sam's exhibition and Shallal summer end of term celebration

31 July Hall for Cornwall 7.30pm Let's Create Showcase

https://www.hallforcornwall.co.uk/whats-on/lets-create-showcase/#Details_in

As always nearly forget the most important thing

THANK YOU to all the amazing dancers and artists who make up our Shallal family and especially to those sharing their gifts today.

Thank you to all the carers, family, trustees and others who make it work and support it in the background

Farewell to Lou and Phoebe

Phoebe pointing to studio door when we first opened
Lou and i are there and somewhere, i have the full photo,
 but that needs another archiving session to find quickly! 

 

NEWS

Farewells - many thanks to Lou Brett and Phoebe Barnicoat for their hard work, inspiration, creativity and support for all, while establishing Shallal's Studio at Krowji, and for all the extra behind the scenes work. We will miss them and are sad to see them go, but wish them all the best for their new ventures which include  https://www.comotionprojects.org/ and we hope to continue working together. Checkout Janet Hollands amazing Hospital Rooms commission that they organised and supported. https://www.instagram.com/p/C6I2XH-oekF/

Studio Use We are trialling opening out access to our Studio space this summer, encouraging artists who can work without support or bring their own support,  to enable artists to develop their own practice, as well as expanding collaborations and explorations across art forms, do contact us if you are interested at present Mondays, Fridays, weekends and evenings are available. to discuss this contact Jo Willis via admin@shallal.org.uk

 Lots going on as ever

 "it was wonderful to have Shallal as a key part of the Winter Festival and I absolutely loved the performance and the artworks involved.

....it was really nice to hear that you had such a good experience with George and Cassie; I know how much working with you and Shallal meant to them and we all look forward to collaborating more in the future!"

needing to share nice email that came in a while ago from Tate StIves .

We had a fun AGM , yes they can be fun!... see our post...https://www.instagram.com/p/C8AqgwlCfNZ/?img_index=1https://www.instagram.com/p/C8AqgwlCfNZ/?img_index=1

Last week I in started at the Studio with the Thursday group a real pleasure to be there.

Kyle is offering to create wonderful bespoke merchandise, bags and tea towels, when he works with Tony Minnion ( Eddies Dad, Redruth Press)

Colin has had his hip operation and should be hopping back soon, meanwhile it's also a joy to cover Friends and Dancing for him and see old friends.

We have a performance coming up on 12 June @ 5.15pm if the weather is fine

some of Shallal 2 and friends 

and a stall there with art work for sale, as the exhibition came down today.

Janice is installing art work from a project at Curnow School.

We have new 'show' coming soon 

and hope to be at Mazey Day, Penzance, Blue Light Day and more!