SJD Shorts: Shobana Jeyasingh's works online

Published: 26 June 2020
Reporter: Vera Liber

Staging Schiele Credit: Chris Nash

Shobana Jeyasingh has worked with filmmakers Terry Braun and Gary Tanner on new short films for small screens based on raw footage of her original stage works, SJD Shorts.

Jeyasingh and Guardian writer Sanjoy Roy, suitably distanced, introduce each short film then follow it with a conversation about its creation and content. Some episodes will have extra ‘making of’ footage or footage of related projects with schools.

Jeyasingh said, “creating SJD Shorts was an incredibly stimulating process. Together with Sanjoy Roy, I wanted to explore how dance could be enjoyed in the times we find we ourselves in and speak to us about issues that concern us now. We were interested in curation, duration and translation—and creating something new which communicated the essence of the original works.”

  • Until 5 July: TooMortal (director Gary Tanner) sees six women dancing within the pews of a historic church. Are they cast adrift on a wooden sea—or charting a journey from cradle to grave?
  • Monday 6 July: Outlander (director Terry Braun) / études (director Gary Tanner), each created in response to other works of art: Outlander to Paolo Veronese’s 1563 masterpiece The Wedding at Cana and études to Auguste Rodin’s sculptures of dancers and bodies.
  • Monday 20 July: Material Men redux (director Gary Tanner) made for two performers with contrasting dance styles, classical Indian and hip hop, but with a shared history rooted in colonial migration and plantation labour.
  • Monday 3 August: Staging Schiele (director Terry Braun) in which four dancers inhabit Austrian painter Egon Schiele's world with Jeyasingh’s choreography.
  • Monday 17 August: Contagion (director Terry Braun) commemorates the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic which killed more people than the First World War itself.

SJD Shorts will première on the company’s Facebook page and then be available for a further seven days on Facebook and the company’s YouTube channel.

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