Category: music & song

Too Close to the Sun

Anchored

a performance lecture about class, witnessing, and who gets left out of “history”

“I think you are astutely funny on stage, but what I really enjoy is how you make it ok for us to go deeply into something serious, long enough to be thoughtful and reflecting and thankful, actually.” – Dr. Simon Bowes, commissioner.

Anchored was initially made for the conference ‘Hold Everything Dear: John Berger and performance’ at the University of Greenwich in April 2018.
 
We are performance makers: we are looking ever closer at the detail of where we are now so that we may lose our bearings. 
 
“Surrounded by so many abstractions, they have to invent and share their own transient landmarks.”
 
We hope to come back, to find ourselves elsewhere.

This performance meditates on achorlessness across three threads:
  • performative writing gathered around autobiographical reflections on place and silence
  • field recordings and lullabies from Alan Lomax’s archive
  • footage of everyday materials magnified by a factor of 400

Text, song and image weave together exploring what remains when we lose our anchors of place and time.

The Lullaby Directory

An exploration of the history of lullabies, their beauty, and darkness: The Lullaby Directory explores the human need to be held, and how we use song to hold ourselves against the unpredictability of existence.

“Rhiannon Armstrong can sing […] the most luscious of anti-capitalist protest songs” Megan Vaughan

“mesmerisingly beautiful songs” Clare Qualmann, audience member