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New work from a Trinity Laban creative team will be performed at Senate House this month as part of Being Human Festival. Movement/Architecture from Beautiful Confusion Collective responds to the building itself in all its vastness, historical context and complexity.

The University of London’s iconic art deco Senate House has a past that includes fatal building accidents and a war-time stint as the Ministry of Information that inspired the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

It was built, in the words of William Beveridge, “to give London at its heart not just more streets and shops… but a great architectural feature… an academic island in swirling tides of traffic, a world of learning in a world of affairs.”

81 years after Senate House opened, Beautiful Confusion Collective brings its international site-responsive performance project Movement/Architecture to the building, and asks a number of questions: How does the body (female, human) interface with the monumental? What’s the way in? If Senate House feels a bit of a fortress, how do we breach / occupy / dwell in this space?

Beautiful Confusion Collective was formed by Dr Becka McFadden, Programme Leader, MA/MFA Creative Practice at Trinity Laban.

Movement/Architecture is a collaborative project between Trinity Laban alumnus and Summer School choreology teacher Sylvie Robaldo and Mary Ann Hushlak, who teaches with Dr McFadden on the ‘Writing the Body’ module on Trinity Laban’s MA/MFA Creative Practice.

It will be performed by dancers Dr McFadden, Sílvia Almeida and Roxani-Eleni Garefalaki.

Describing their site-specific practice, Beautiful Confusion Collective say –

“[We are] forging a close collaboration between performer and place. We engage the space not as frame, but as partner and in relationship, entering into a multi-sensorial duet with its textures, surfaces, sounds and proxemics. Through this process, we unlock the specific rhythms of each environment, teasing out its particular way of moving.”

Tickets are free for the performances at 5pm and 7pm on 23 November but booking is required. 

Each performance will be followed by a short talk with the Beautiful Confusion team.

Location: The Court Room, First Floor, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

Beautiful Confusion’s appearance at Being Human 2018 is supported by University of London’s Leading Women platform and organised in collaboration with the School of Advanced Studies.

To learn more about this event and other work, visit the Beautiful Confusion Collective website or follow on Instagram.

(Image credit: Becka McFadden by Ludovic des Cognets)