Scratch Night | Sunday 27 October | 19:00 – 21:00 | £10/8 | Book Now
Our Scratch Night is back for Autumn 2024 with a brand-new line up of incredible dance artists.
The Dance Base Scratch Night is a unique platform in Edinburgh which 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.
Our Autumn Scratch Night will feature new work by Scotland-based artists Nancy Jacinto (Nancy Ahmar); Nomoss and Alex Rigg; Damara Velázquez Pastrana; and Jack Webb.
The evening will be hosted by Dance Base Artistic Director Tony Mills, who will create a safe space for 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 will also be drinks in the interval and at the end of the show, providing space for audiences and artists to connect.
Let’s move. Book now.
The Journey (name in process) by Nancy Jacinto
How do we heal? How can we reconnect with our ancestry and ourselves? How do we celebrate our bodies and origins? How can we dance together?
Following the exploration of ideas of migration, belonging but also self love and identity, this piece comes from Nancy’s narrative and experiences of being a person of colour with Black heritage in her own country and now in Scotland.
Bringing together Belly Dance and social dances such as Salsa dance and footwork to sketch out, the piece is divided into three stages: intimate but sharing moments spotlighting, love, pain and reconnection – healing with a demonstration of empowerment, acceptance and self-love. Bringing the idea and inspiration to give up people pleasing and to stop trying to be who others want you to be.
Image Credit: Jiayi Chen
More about Nancy Jacinto (Nancy Ahmar)
A Mexican dance artist and performer with a multidisciplinary background specializing in Middle Eastern Dance performance, Nancy Jacinto is well trained in Latin American dances such as Cumbia, Salsa, and Merengue, with a degree in Drama Literature and Theatre performance. Her artistic work focuses on representing her cultural background, embodying female expression and empowerment through the art of Belly Dance. Her work highlights the migrant experience of belonging and the feeling of being comfortable in her own-coloured skin and body. She is keen to explore ways of bringing multiple disciplines together in her dance.
Skin Piel by Nomoss and Alex Rigg
Skin Piel is a new project collaboration between Nomoss (Suzi Cunningham, Lucie Yavruturk and Ruairidh Morrison) and Alex Rigg.
A dissection of humanity shown using dance, spoken word and live music. The human figure will be presented, depicting the body in views both posterior and anterior. It demonstrates the human condition using compositions, butoh dance and captions in the landscape. There is a stirring soundscape. It shows a figure at the end of their life, caught between the pages of a book.
Skin Piel is based upon the story of The Hanged Man, how a condemned life became used for medical science, and how we would have understood the body. It is his voice and with his own words and how he became seen. The elements of Paper, Wood, Rope and Metal (representing the anatomical drawings on parchment, and the tools by which they were hung and cut). These are represented in poetry and materialised in the body. We imagine Medieval morality players looking on (like a crowd at a hanging), or as if choosing formica tables at MFI; the inquisition as a quiz show. The work becomes a part of its surroundings, and there is playful interaction with the audience.
Image Credit: Emily Nicholl
More about Nomoss and Alex Rigg
Nomoss are a performance art collective comprising of Suzi Cunningham, Ruairidh Morrison and Lucie Yavruturk. Through Butoh dance, evocative stirring guitar, playful vocals and natural costume, they bring ancient stories to life and seek to bring attention to the unseen and vital connections of all organic matter. Their work is responsive and unique to each environment, revelling in outdoor and unusual settings.
Suzi Cunningham is a Scottish live-performance artist and Butoh dancer. Her solo work is highly physical, political, ecological and enriched with her sense of design. She makes embodied connections to her environment and materials in a way that borders transformation.
Ruairidh Morrison has been an active bass player for over 15 years. His live work mixes art forms with music and pushes the boundaries of his instruments to make soundscapes with the aid of experimentation in effects and loop stations.
Lucie Yavruturk is a sound and foley artist with a specific interest in ecology and the natural world. She is a workshop facilitator with a specialism in Drama and draws inspiration from the sounds and textures of nature’s impermanent journey, and humanity’s role within it.
Alex Rigg has been making live events since 1982. His work pushes boundaries and plays with concepts of art outside its accepted form. He trained as an archaeological illustrator, drystone dyker, blacksmith, fine-artist, dancer, timber-framer and costume maker/designer. Performances are often linked to global and philosophical concerns and encourages its audience to look harder at who and what they are.
Shall we…? by Damara Velázquez Pastrana
Shall we…? is a captivating dance performance that invites you to rethink the way we communicate. Combining contemporary dance with different sign language systems, this piece delves into the power of the body as the ultimate tool for expression, breaking free from the confines of spoken language.
Through movement, it explores themes of connection and understanding, highlighting how we can communicate across cultures and experiences without relying on words. The piece challenges the dominance of verbal communication in today’s world. It offers an approach where the body takes centre stage, revealing how signs, gestures and physical expression can convey deeper meanings and emotions.
Audience warning: the piece features glitch noises at the beginning that may be uncomfortable for some people.
Image credit: Freddie Rainbow
More about Damara Velázquez Pastrana
Damara Velázquez Pastrana is a contemporary dance artist from Mexico City whose work delves into themes of equity, equality, and social justice. A distinctive element of her practice is her integrating of bold movement with playful and intimate expressions. Throughout her career, Damara has collaborated with multidisciplinary artists and has participated in numerous international festivals, mainly in Latinoamerica. In 2022, she co-led an artistic residency in Bogotá, creating a collective choreography for the XV Festival de Danza en la Ciudad, where she addressed issues of social inequality and injustice. Her work has been recognized for its emotional depth and its ability to spark dialogue and inspire action. Currently based in the UK, she continues to explore new avenues of creative expression, always with the goal of provoking thought, inspiring action, and bringing people closer through the transformative power of art.
In Endless Edge by Jack Webb
In Endless Edge is a work centred around the concept of desire – the desire between two bodies to listen deeply to physical and choreographic longings and to say yes to and give in to movement impulses, rhythms and textures that are rumbling under the surface. In Endless Edge considers the two bodies as edges – edges where physical desires are never fully realised, edges where endless space and flow start and end, and edges where everything and nothing happens between. It will explore the spaces between bodies and people, the things that go unsaid and unexpressed between people and bodies and the endless search for clarity, communication and connection when two edges meet, or don’t.
Danced by by Melissa Heywood and Catriona O’Connor
Image credit: Jack Webb.
More about Jack Webb
Jack Webb is an award-winning choreographer, movement director, dancer and teacher working across dance, theatre, opera and film. He is based in Edinburgh, Scotland, and has been working internationally for the past 17 years. Within his independent contemporary choreographic practice he creates evocative and compelling dance performance that is strongly rooted in the dancing and moving body. Jack creates dance that is bold, rigorous and detailed, bouncing between the abstract and theatrical whilst always connecting and reflecting on the human condition. His work is often influenced by and attempts to connect to the goings on in nature and in society, is of an existential nature and attempts to zoom in on the interior and emotional landscapes of the performer and audience. Jack’s current enquiries are focused on finding choreographic languages that hone in on the human experience, purity of movement and image, life and movement in the in between spaces and themes of belonging, loneliness and place that explore the longing for connection and meaning that exists within all of us.
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.
