ZARIBA - SATURDAY 16th February at Hundred Years Galley, 13 Pearson Street, London E2 8JD - Free Entry - The second DRON Festival performance session features the anarchic Bristol Improvisers’ ZARIBA
occupying Hundred Years Gallery for a continulous six hour process of
music, dance and live art. Personnel on this occassion are Johanna
Fellner - dance, VV - dance and voice, David grundy - laptop, recorder
and percussion, Mark Anthony Whiteford - laptop, voice, tapes,
percussion, painting
Some Context - by Mark Anthony Whiteford:
The Bristol Brighton and Cheltenham Improviser's Zariba was instigated by Mark Anthony Whiteford aka M.A. Yfor?
It was
set up in order to explore free improvisation away from the confines and
defining limitations of the typical us/european performance straight
jacket in which a number of people arrive in a performance space, play a
'piece' which will possibly/probably have nothing to do with how these
people feel or what they are thinking. At the end the audience will
clap. Or, in most instances, the audience will clap when things go quiet
and that will be the end of the 'piece.' People will then go to the bar
and behave pretty much as though nothing just happened and the
performers will be left to pack up and carry on as though nothing just
happened. And maybe, very often, nothing did happen. Another thing I
always found strange was the way musicians would never speak to each
other during a piece, or if they did so they'd whisper as though
speaking to each other wasn't supposed to happen.
I also
hated playing in horrid venues and hanging around for hours on end and
playing on stages where I couldn't hear the music properly and where I
felt the horrendous pressure of giving people something that they ?
[wanted? understood?]
So
Zariba was set up for people to come and explore whatever might happen
for them in a given space. We try to find nice place to play with
heating and a kitchen and nice floors and window with views. Once we
enter this space we are improvising. We move things about. Speak to each
other. Dance make sounds. Make tea. Eat biscuits. Write. Paint. And I
tend to speak about what's on my mind along with all of the above. We
respond to the venue we're in, firstly by enjoying it, and secondly by
incorporating the things that are in the venue. We like village halls
and old-fashioned places with proper old kitchens and proper old tea
pots.For some of us memories are stored in such buildings, for others
it's a glimpse into the memory of the other or a view onto a plane glass
window of now. We often use a lovely old Girl Guide Hut in Bristol, or
Brighton Zariba has met in Rottingdean village hall and a tabernacle out
in the countryside. Sometimes we play outdoors. We let come up what
might come up. People come and go. Some stay for the whole duration
[usually 3 hours] some just a short while. One of our member is a very
ill person so she comes at the end and we all try to be quiet when she
plays because her strength is not always great. We try to be as we
really are. We explore surface spaces within the environment alongside
deep spaces within our memory/psyche. We explore one another and with
another. It's an improvisation on what is I guess maybe, possibly.
Nothing much happens. Nothing major. Just life. We pack away and we take
the story of another process on into the process of life.
We
usually play in the daytime. I don't like to be out at night, and least
of all in music venues; they tend to be a bit noisy and boring for huge
chunks of the evening I feel.
Mark Anthony Whiteford
