9th
May2009
Covering Letter
Dear LUTSF
The fulfilling of my Lisa Ullmann
Travelling Scholarship Award, which I have titled Derby Dance comprised of two sets of visits to Deda Dance Centre. These
occurred on October22nd, November 5th, 12th.19th, 26th
and December 3rd 2008. My second set of visits was on February 11th,
25th, March 4th, 11th, 18th, 25 and
finally April 1st 2009.
My aim of completing a good collection of
drawings directly observed of dancers with learning difficulties has been
essentially achieved. I regret the two delays the Officer in charge made me
endure. Ten months after formally requesting help to complete my award she had
only been allowed four visits and banned me after the first one, because I sent
in two examples of my paintings unsigned. Stephen Munn, the Director promptly
over turned this decision, but because of her relentless disinterest and
coldness I felt very unwelcome and started to believe I was doing something
wrong.
It was only my patient persistence and
great desire to fulfil my award that resulted in a positive outcome.
When I was eventually allowed to begin
visits I was so relieved that upon contacting Key Travel for some railway
tickets I accepted surprising charges from them which was £10 for the first
ticket followed by a £7 charge for each of my three following tickets.
Consequently for my first four tickets costing £32 each I was charged £31.
Should this method have continued half my award would have been used in
administration charges. However following your advice
I bought the remaining tickets directly from the station and have now returned
the tickets to Mr Boure as requested by you. Naturally any future winner who
has repeat travel plans could ovoid these upsetting charges.
I intend to send a copy of my report to Leicester
City Council supporting my proposal that they employ me as an artist to draw
the athletes of the Special Olympics taking place in
Yours sincerely,
Tim Clarke
The Report of Tim Clarke
Derby
How might dance inform my work as a
painter I asked myself that could satisfy imaginatively, emotionally offering
dynamism and intrigue? My search for images to work from led me to a brochure
for Derby Dance Centre in 2005. Flicking through I was amazed by one photograph
that outshone all others. It showed three dancers quite close, relating in the
most unusual and fascinating way, who were described as having learning
difficulties.
Inspired by the then recent
film Million Dollar Baby that had a poster in the gym scenes saying ‘a
winner is simply someone who will do what a loser will not’. My own diffidence
making these words remarkably significant I wrote to the centre asking if I
might attend their classes and draw them. Their choreographer gave a very
encouraging reply so off I went weekly for three months.
Once I had accumulated a
body of drawings I started to evolve them into paintings that initially took
many attempts. Just after these experiences I found details of The Lisa Ullmann Travelling Scholarship Award and qualifying I sent
off my application and was delighted to be one of the winners. The source of my
satisfaction was the pleasure I gained from knowing a judging panel had shown
belief in me. When I discovered where the destinations of other winners were I
smiled wonderfully seeing my
Learning from my previous
experience where I occasionally asked for dancers to slow down or even stop,
giving me more time to draw I decided I would make no such requests adopting an
attitude of acceptance and non interference, because those previous requests
had been counter productive and inhibited spontaneous expression from them and
me.
On arrival I knew that I
would be meeting new dancers, the group who amazed and inspired me before
having disbanded. Undeterred I was certain the three new dancers would provide
an ocean of intrigue. My main aim was to make rapid drawings of them in unusual
connections, but essentially I drew non-stop for the whole hour of each class.
The teacher organised a series of dance promoting activities following a
regular line dance warm up. These included finding ways to touch a cardboard
tube about a metre long and not touching each other, or on bonfire night
imagining themselves to be fireworks. On other
occasions the dancers were encouraged into movements using the device of a
feather floating between pairs that they might catch with their body or using
musical instruments, played by each dancer to inspire movement. At all other
times a selection of CD music was played. One of my favourites was watching
dance performed to Tchaikovsky’s
After five weeks I shared my
drawings with the tutor before what turned out to be his final class. I was
indebted to his experience by informing me that those described as having
learning difficulties read body language much more readily than ordinary
people do because they are naturally living it all the time. This aliveness
within is so pronounced, he stated that a normal person would have to
rigorously practice dance for five years to reach to same level that a learning
difficulty person possess naturally.
It is their greatness as
movers that attract me to them where hesitation, repetition or bashful
self-awareness is absent. As people their characters are always cheerful,
friendly, socially skilful, polite, and funny demonstrating an enthusiasm for
life that is to be envied.
Following the first
teacher’s departure, his assistant together with a new teacher took over the
class jointly. Their warm up began with finger movement gradually including
each limb and back. One of these warm ups astonished me by revealing the
subtleness of one dancer who had no problem with the splits or while sitting
legs apart touching the floor between with her trunk and extending her arms
floor flat.
An emphasis on drama
sometimes followed these warm-ups where the dancers were asked to imagine
themselves as a new person. On this occasion only two dancers were present and
chose to be Dead Bride and Dead Gary. Coloured gauze was offered
to aid the characterisation. One interesting development occurred with the
bride wearing bloody red and white gauze was an essential loss of movement,
because she was dead. The following week a similar theme was proposed
and the dancers were asked to adopt new personalities, an idea that was
instantly declined with ‘No, we like who we are’.
Decisiveness was a character
feature of the dancers, one for instance saying she did not want to dance to
the music then playing while on another occasion having listened to the
instructions responded with ‘let’s do it, let’s do it’ before any subsequent
information could be offered. When a tutor asked for a volunteer, always one
dancer in particular would step half a pace forward.
Other ideas stimulating
movement involved the use of a long piece of cloth. Dancers held down the ends
while another went underneath the taught material making a series of body
impressions. The same material was later used for one dancer to wrap up
another. A further fascinating pairing was that of puppets where one dancer
completely controlled the movement of the other.
So the two periods of my visits
evolved. I constantly drew on A2 paper in pencil naturally as quickly as
possible with some improvisation. To indicate the speeds of movement perhaps
imagine a camera capturing the same images. An exposure of a quarter of a
second would surely result in blurring. My drawings took several seconds,
outdoing I hope a camera, by the directness and
humanness of my lines, such that my pencil hand danced at best as they danced.
Too much care was simply impossible whilst too little was meaningless.
At the conclusion of the
sessions of my second visits a few moments were spent with all present
regarding my work of that day. The dancers themselves essentially were not
particularly interested although one always and decisively wanted to know she
had been drawn. On one occasion I showed an accurate drawing of a dancer’s
face, which to my astonishment, was completely beyond their power of
recognition. One teacher was very encouraging at these times by continually
responding positively to my drawings.
From the start I had drawn
both teachers and dancers alike, yet revised this response when I came to
regard my drawings with a view to painting and discovered I did not realise who
was who. I found this very complementary to the learning difficulty dancers who
in my drawings were indistinguishable from the experienced professional
teachers. Consequently I became very fussy, refusing to draw the teachers and
labelling each drawing with the first letter of each dancer’s name. This was
because I wanted to ensure that all who appeared in my paintings were those
with learning difficulty characteristics. When towards the end of my visits a
new dancer appeared I initially refused to draw her, but charmed by her
character I altered my opinion and included her in my drawing. On the final
look at my work she made the simple and acute observation ‘it must be very
difficult because we’re always moving’. In fact it was profoundly difficult.
One of my aims as mentioned
was to produce paintings from these drawings, six of which I include in my
report. Most interesting to me was the unusual connections the dancers made
with each other. Accepting that all art aims to show us life more than it is
perceived in everyday appearance and that all art exaggerates to achieve this
aim I am profoundly grateful to these dancers for providing me with such rich
material to work from. I have taken the dancers from their dance studio and
placed them in ordinary settings to enhance and layer the ordinary suggested as
extraordinary.
I am profoundly grateful to
those who judged me a recipient of this award. The belief in me that they
demonstrated has made a lasting quality in the perception I have of my own
ability. Winning the award and fulfilling it has been a privilege.
I would like to suggest that the realization
that I have been working with those addressed as having learning difficulties
is impossible to discern from my visual work. For me they challenged the idea
of normal, of our learning experience and what it means to be human. For me
they are great teachers of life. I hope such ideas have strayed into my work
without words just as their dance is wordless yet staggeringly communicative in
the highest sense.
The images are examples of
my drawings, all of which are details from my thirty A2 pages of drawings, most
of which are completed on both sides. These scans represent one quarter of a
page and are selected because they are nearly all used in my paintings which
all are shown whole.
Tim Clarke
