emilyn claid, UNTITLED

UNTITLED is emilyn’s first solo work in 20 years. As a performing artist in her 8th decade, emilyn welcomes the fears of endings, teasing with what it means to bow out, the irony of living in an old body and what’s real and what’s imagined. Combining movement and theatre, staged choreography, and playful, improvised interactions, emilyn faces queering and ageing with dark humour, undercut with moments of pathos. As she transforms between hunter and creature, therapist and diva, cruising and crumbling, a collage of personal stories and self-directed choreography emerges, interwoven with devised material created collaboratively with Heidi Rustgaard, Florence Peake and Joseph Mercier.

emilyn claid’s career stretches back to the 1960s when she was a ballet dancer with the National Ballet of Canada and the 1970s when she was co-founder of experimental collective X6 Dance Space in London, a pioneering organization for New Dance. In the 1980s she was artistic director of Extemporary Dance Theatre and in the 1990s choreographed for companies such as Phoenix and CandoCo. Working between live art and dance as an independent artist, emilyn made and performed a series of iconic solos in which she found an authentic voice as a lesbian-queer artist. emilyn is also an emeritus professor and a Gestalt psychotherapist and has recently published FALLING Through Dance and Life, (Bloomsbury 2021), a book that re-thinks Western culture’s physical, metaphorical and psychological relationship to gravity.

“In 2021, after a 22 year break from performing, I decided to get on stage again. Much had changed in the independent dance world since the 1990s so I asked three vibrant figures from the current choreographic scene to collaborate with me: Heidi Rustgaard, Florence Peake and Joseph Mercier. We investigated how I might like to perform now.

We found shared interest in ideas of queering, ageing, transformation and presence. Although I am performing solo, the choreographic voices of Heidi, Florence and Joseph are layered into the performance and interwoven with material of my own. The music track by Planningtorock, Visible, used in this show, was specially commissioned.

I first performed UNTITLED in 2022 and for this year I have added some new scenes. I am joined by two guest performers: Glitterbomb dancers, Aiden Taylor and Jack Warren”.

emilyn claid

Conceived and performed by: emilyn claid
Choreographer: emilyn claid in collaboration with Heidi Rustgaard, Florence Peake & Joseph Mercier
Guest artists: Aiden Taylor & Jack Warren
Designer: Shanti Freed
Lighting: Rachel Shipp
Music: Planningtorock, Prokofiev and Jimmy Webb
Headdress: Shanti Freed & Antonio Psaila
Dramaturgy: Martin Hargreaves
Producer: Sarah Trist
Production Manager: Rachel Shipp
Marketing and social media consultant: Upright Fools
Video Documentation: Ros Chesher
Marketing: Upright Fools

Thanks to Luke Pell, Timothy Spain, Orrow Bell, Lucy Cash, Ulrike Steven, Lauren Wright, Henrietta Hale, Chi Roberts, Josephine Leask and all who have supported me through the process of making this show.

emilyn claid UNTITLED, is commissioned by The Place with support from Siobhan Davies Dance. Funded by Arts Council England.

Tickets £18 | £15 Members