Scratch Night | Sun 29 October | 19:00 – 21:30
After two sell-out performances, the Dance Base Scratch Night returned in October with a brand-new line up of outstanding Scotland-based artists!
The Dance Base Scratch Night is a unique platform in Edinburgh that brings live dance work to audiences and creates a supportive platform for dance and movement artists to try out ideas on the stage, experiment with an audience and share their work with their peers, the sector and the public.
Curated by Artistic Director Tony Mills, the Autumn 2023 edition featured new works by Chewed Pink, Oxana Banshikova & Sanath Kumar Sreedharan, Gwynne Bilski and WAMNAM, showcasing the fantastic breadth of work being made in Scotland today.
Tony Mills hosted the evening, welcoming each performer and creating a safe space for the artists to receive feedback from you the audience through a relaxed facilitated conversations.
Along with space in the theatre for conversation during the show there was also networking drinks in the interval and at the end of the show, providing space for audiences to connect and rejoice in the same physical space.
Things We Say In The Dark by Chewed Pink
Mother, daughter, sisters, lovers, shadows, slugs, beasties, the wild woman, the hag. Hands grasping at hair, feet sinking into soil, ribs flaring, teeth gnashing. Conflict and care ebb and flow as the dancers cut between moments of synchronicity and dissonance; two bodies the same but different, a distorted mirror image. Growing up rurally, the duet is deeply linked to the lands they call home and rooted in the self-referential experiences of their different childhoods in Devon and Scotland. Femininity, folklore and ritual are explored through a queer and contemporary lens; old stories contextualised within our modern day experience. Physical, reflective and intimate, the dancers seize the audience’s attention with theatricality while speaking clearly to shared themes of human experience; hopes and fears for the fate of the Earth combined with a desire to belong and the search for home.
Time matters by Oxana Banshikova & Sanath Kumar Sreedharan
Two Bharatanatyam dancers, Oxana and Sanath, explore the ‘time loop’ idea. What would be the outcome of changing one step, a pose, or the timing of the same dance sequence and what could trigger the change? How would two different dancers approach the same choreography and relationships between dancers through the sequence and triggers for these changes?
I find myself scattered (working title) by Gwynne Bilski
I find myself scattered, is a new work of dance and poetry. This is the first collaboration by artist and choreographer Gwynne Bilski, and poet Alycia Pirmohamed, who share a creative interest in the natural world. Their respective works are deeply rooted in landscape, personal geographies, and the body in relation to its surroundings. Weaving together biological and geographical questions, informed by our own interests in ecology and our personal stories of movement and migration, I find myself scattered examines ideas of seeds and the knowledge they hold.
Alycia Pirmohamed | Poet
Syntheatrics | Sound
The Digital Dance Odyssey by WAMNAM
The Digital Dance Odyssey is a live stage performance that explores the interconnection between digital advancement, social interaction and dance evolution. Through episodic dances, we aim to shine a light on the progression towards “performing for camera,” probing the question of “performing for ?” in the future world. We hope to inspire the audience to reflect on the impact modern digitalisation has had on the way artists create and present their work, while concurrently, how this has affected the way we consume performance art as viewers, and how we interact with each other as a society.
Meet the Artists
Chewed Pink
Catriona O’Connor is a dance artist from Stirling. Her work stems from lived experiences, focusing on themes of identity, queerness and relationships to others and the world around us. She aims to find a sense of freedom and playfulness within her research and enjoys making work that is bold, daring and intimate. She has been working with multidisciplinary artist Ruby De Ville Morel for the last two years after both graduating in 2022 from Trinity Laban Conservatoire. Ruby is drawn to storytelling and much of her creativity is rooted in childhood experiences, particularly linked to growing up on Dartmoor, Devon. She takes inspiration from many sources; the wild natural landscapes of her home on the moors, curious collections of found objects, snippets of text, books and films filled with magic realism. Together, they co-founded Chewed Pink, a queer female-led dance theatre collective. The company premiered their first piece ‘I Can’t Take My Body Off’ to great acclaim at Resolution Festival 2023 in London. Catriona and Ruby would like to thank Dance Base for this opportunity and are excited to introduce their work to the Scottish dance community.
@chewedpink | @catri0na__ | @rbydvmrl
Oxana Banshikova & Sanath Kumar Sreedharan
Gwynne Bilski
Gwynne is a Scottish-based Canadian choreographer and multi-disciplinary artist working primarily in performance, installation. With a focus on place and personal geography, her work centers on the exploration of memory and lived experience. She is interested in how we encounter and experience our surroundings, and how we can use the body to re-contextualise, re-construct, and re-embody a sense of place. Having trained formally in visual arts, creative writing, and dance, Gwynne’s current work is founded in contemporary movement and performance, with strong influence from literary and conceptual art practices.
WAMNAM
WAMNAM is an eclectic and experimental dance group that explores various dance styles, including hip-hop, contemporary and commercial, with a focus on incorporating digital visual arts. We launched in November 2022 and we generate and rehearse dance repertoires weekly, containing both smaller group performances and larger movement pieces. Our aim is to create a modern and cutting-edge dance scene in Scotland, with a collective focal point on delving into novel concepts and producing thought-provoking work through our performances.
Caitlin Charters | Georgia May Green | Max Evans | Monica Echevarria Gomez |Stefani Aleksandrova Chertsova | Wayne Chang | Zoë Hooper
Support Us
Dance Base is a charity with a mission to encourage and celebrate the potential for dance in everyone. We use the power of dance to improve people’s health and wellbeing, and we support professional dance artists at all stages of their careers. We’re grateful for the generous support of out funders and donors.
