She's Lost Control
An immersive dance installation looking at epilepsy, and the control behaviours
involved in the avoidance of an epileptic seizure.
She's Lost Control (2010) is the second in a trilogy of works exploring conceptual
and physical interfaces between dance, epilepsy and drug research. It concerns itself
with the healthy body, the body which is not in an epileptic state, and behaviours of
avoidance or control which may keep the body in that state. It addresses both Marcalo's
experience as an epilepsy sufferer and that of other well known sufferers such as Joy
Division's singer Ian Curtis.
Created by award-winning choreographer Rita Marcalo, in collaboration with filmmaker
Lucy Barker and scenography by Matt Sykes-Hooban and James Harrison, and poet Ryan Ormonde, She's Lost Control
is an immersive dance installation. The audience takes an active role in choosing how to
experience the work, by navigating a labyrinth of enclosures.
The first in this trilogy of works (Involuntary Dances, 2009) explored the exact opposite:
the epileptic body, the body in a state of illness, and all the behaviours that may bring that
state on. Involuntary Dances was one of the most talked about live art works of 2009. Footage
of Involuntary Dances integrates She's Lost Control. The last in the trilogy (Sem Corpo, 2011),
will integrate footage from both preceding works, and will explore the drug (the anti-convulsant
medication), and questions around the drug research process.
The through line linking all three works is an act of bodily disappearance. The first work is
very visceral, it is body, it is flesh, it is presence. The second presents the seizure only on
film, therefore removing some of the viscerality, but still presents the live performer alongside
the film work. The third work is purely film: the performer's flesh has completely disappeared and
there is nothing left but a filmic representation.
Tour Dates
Documentation film
TV, Radio and Press
Press quotes and audience response
The Kindness of Strangers
A commission for York St John University first year dance students. This is a 30 minute-long piece incorporating
text, props and movement, and playing with some of the narrative conventions usually employed by detective novels in
the process of unrolling a murder mystery.
Tour Dates
Documentation film
Press quotes and audience response
Aemilius Sense
Aemilius Sense is a dance for the camera work, premiered at in 2006 at York City Screen (UK), and later showcased
at Yorkshire Dance in Leeds (UK). The work was commissioned as part of the Arts Council-funded Alter Images project.
The work traces the journey of a 'mermaid' who desperately wants to be part of a group of women, but ultimately fails
to do so. With choreography by Rita Marcalo, the work explores notions of womanhood, playfulness, friendship, and ghosts
of suppressed desires, creating beautiful and romantic images of womanhood.
Community Dance York is a group of adult community dance participants. The group's desire to move beyond weekly technique
classes and to engage with dance as a creative art form led them to devise the Alter Images project: an 18-month programme
of creative work with a choreographer, a filmmaker and two digital artists.
Marcalo was invited to join the project as a choreographer, and the other artists involved were filmmaker Lucy Barker and
digital arts company Bright White. Music is by Puccini, A. Squires, Osymyso and Kate Bush.
Tour Dates
Film
Article
Audience response
