Photo & Video Exhibition by Maria Falconer & Paul Hill
04 – 26 August (except Mondays)
10:00 – 21:00
Free Admission
The Dance Base team, working with acclaimed dance photographers Maria Falconer and Paul Hill and supported by Assembly Festival and the British Council, invite you to How Do You Dance in a War Zone? at Dance Base this August.
In April 2022 Maria Falconer attended a Dance Base online conversation discussing the war in Ukraine and the future of its artists. Speaking at the event was Viktor Ruban, a choreographer, dancer, and director based in Kyiv, Ukraine. At the end of the discussion, Maria posed the question to Viktor ‘how do you dance in a war zone?’ Before they knew what was happening, Maria and fellow photographer Paul Hill had decided to visit Ukraine, to see for themselves how the Ukrainian dance community are using dance as a form of resistance.
In May 2023 Paul and Maria spent two weeks in Lviv and Kyiv, collaborating with Viktor, a number of dance artists and sound artist Grigory Semenchuk. They were astonished and impressed by the range and depth of responses that they were privileged to witness.
Maria said, “When I first posed the question to Viktor ‘how do you dance in a war zone?’, I really wasn’t prepared for his response. The enormity of the question took him a little by surprise and after a brief attempt to provide a simple explanation for such a complex event, he neatly batted it back to me with an invitation to visit Ukraine to see for myself.
The resulting exhibition is the culmination of two trips to Ukraine (Lviv and Kyiv) by two photographic artists, myself Maria Falconer, and my partner Paul Hill, in collaboration with Viktor Ruban, sound artist Grigory Semenchuk and an amazing group of Ukrainian contemporary dance artists.”
The photographs and video interpret how the dancers responded the question in the exhibition’s title.
At Dance Base 04 – 26 August (except Mondays).
Thanks For The Support
Dance Base is a charity with a mission to encourage and celebrate the potential for dance in everyone. We bring the joy of dance to people in Scotland in an inclusive and non-competitive environment. We simply could not deliver this without the support of our donors.
