TRACEWORKS PROJECTSMuseums, Galleries & Collections
2017-PRESENT
Dance in museums provides a unique opportunity to blend movement art with historical and cultural spaces. By bringing dance into museums, audiences are invited to experience a multidimensional artistic encounter that transcends the boundaries of a traditional performance space. This innovative approach not only breathes new life into the museum environment but also opens up avenues for collaboration between dance artists, visual artists and curators.
By exploring artefacts, paintings, and historical items, a dance artist can uncover narratives, emotions, and visual motifs to translate into captivating movement for choreographic exploration. At Traceworks, we’re interested in engaging with museum collections to delve into diverse themes, explore new movement vocabularies, and create work that resonates with history, culture, and creativity.
Photo | Museum of Bath at Work
Portsmouth Museums
2023-Present
August 2023 saw the pilot project for a new relationship between Traceworks Dance and Portsmouth Museums, to increase social engagement with their museums and heritage spaces through the co-creation of onsite dance activities.
Across 3 days, Traceworks Co-Director Julian Lewis and workshop leader Ellyn Hebron delivered workshops for families in several locations, inspired by both the Ocean at the End of the Lane: Discovering Portsmouth’s Coastline exhibition and the butterfly house at Cumberland House Natural History Museum.
Opposite
2017
In May 2017, following the success of a previous collaboration with curator Fiona Costelloe, Traceworks co-director Julian Lewis joined another creative discussion with Fiona and her fellow students of MA Culture, Criticism and Curation. It culminated in a performance at Central Saint Martins (University of the Arts London) as part of the opening of Invocation: Jo Ann Kaplan.
Invocation: Jo Ann Kaplan was a site-specific exhibition curated by MA Culture, Criticism and Curation students. Inspired by archive materials belonging to the Jo Ann Kaplan Archive and informed by wider research, the exhibition explores concepts of sexuality, identity and transience in relation to Kaplan’s practice. The methods of display and imagery produced aimed to convey the sense of uneasiness running through her work and its dream-like quality.
To mark the exhibition opening and to reflect Kaplan’s interest in dance, we presented an impulsive and spontaneous contemporary dance performance inspired by the exhibition. The work, Opposite, was performed by Traceworks Co-Directors, Julian Lewis & James Aiden Kay alongside final-year degree students of London Contemporary Dance School, Charlotte Mclean & Isobel Ripley.
Book The Company
Do you work for, or know a museum, gallery or curator who would be interested in booking the company to collaborate on a new project, or deliver a workshop or performance? We’d love to hear from you! We are excited by all aspects of heritage so we also look forward to hearing from those working with archaeological sites, historic buildings, natural environments and archives.
For more information & to discuss packages, please send us an enquiry below.
