Dyslexia

You learn to live with it.

But because of it,

I am who I am and I know what I know.

It was a difficult time to begin with 

But now it’s a part of me that flourishes like a butterfly’s first beats of its wings.

Exploring a familiar world, in a new experience.

I’m a straddler.

A straddler being someone who straddles multiple art forms. My work as a screen dance maker, originally was exclusively physical, due to being anxious of trying something new that I may find particularly hard. It was not until studying at university that my work was allowed to be outside the box: not conforming to a set stimulus or marking criteria. Because of this I discovered how to capture the audience’s attention using my camera skills and artistic eye; channelling the audience’s vision to intricate details in dance film, which they may not necessarily focus on in theatre performance. The ability to adapt my choreography skills to technology was evolutionary for my practice. Now I use edit and camera as a choreographical tool to capture movement.

I love to twist and distort conventions within my practice, such as creating relationships between a performer and the camera, breaking the 4th wall. Currently In my practice the convention I am interested in breaking is making dance footage seem live, with the use of chance. This challenges what is ‘liveness’ with footage. I use chance to bring ‘live’ qualities to film and screen dance and Through the use of chance, I expect no experience to be the same. Through combining dance and digital arts, I like to think that my work excites and engages an audience with this new approach. 

I have danced all my life, in Tesco down the frozen aisle, on stage and on camera. I use dance to express my creativeness and intelligence and battle my frustration with traditional education where I did not thrive. I trained in contemporary dance at De Montfort University and this is where I became interested in philosophical approaches to creating art work, such as screen dance, hence my interest in ‘liveness’ though the work of Roland Barthes. Another influence on my practice is Lloyd Newson, founder of DV8, a physical theatre company that have made dance film for TV. Newson challenges what dance is and what you can actually dance about. I like to use his ethos in my own work when I challenge typical conventions in my practice. 

Laura Bryan