Artist Bio
emilyn claid’s career stretches back to the 1960s when she was a ballet dancer with the National Ballet of Canada and the 1970s when she was co-founder of experimental collective X6 Dance Space in London, a pioneering organisation for New Dance. In the 1980s she was artistic director of Extemporary Dance Theatre and in the 1990s choreographed for companies such as Phoenix and CandoCo. Working as an independent dance artist emilyn made and performed a series of iconic solo works in which she found an authentic voice as a lesbian-queer artist. emilyn is also an emeritus professor and a Gestalt psychotherapist and has recently published FALLING Through Dance and Life, (Bloomsbury 2021), a book that re- thinks Western culture’s physical, metaphorical, and psychological relationship to gravity. Working between live art and dance theatre, emilyn is currently touring a solo show ‘emilyn claid, UNTITLED’. @emilynclaid
SKINNED
SKINNED (2022) is choreographed in collaboration with Heidi Rustgaard (H2Dance) and performed by emilyn claid. The piece has a commissioned score by queer electro-pop composer Planningtorock. The starting points for emilyn and Heidi's collaboration include queering, as a movement of transformation, unfixing identity, in/visibility, becoming, not being. In the performance emilyn works from a score and intensely relates to an immense piece of fur and latex skin, which acts as camouflage, a cloak, an animal hide. She embodies notions of hunting and being hunted, cruising and crumbling. Set in a night club or gallery, emilyn moves close to spectators who watch from within the space, interacting with them, while maintaining a performing presence. SKINNED also forms part of emilyn's full length work UNTITLED.
Crediting
Commissioned & Performed by Emilyn Claid
Choreographed: Heidi Rustgaard & Emilyn Claid
Designer: Shanti Freed
Dramaturgy: Martin Hargreaves
Music: ‘Visible’, PLANNINGTOROCK (commissioned score)
Funded by: Arts Council England
Co-production: The Place Choreodrome
Photos: Henri T
