Questioning the relationship between three dancers and three life-size human sculptures, Still Touch is Richard Chappell Dance's collaboration with internationally renowned sculptor Anna Gillespie. Still Touch emotes the personal and human need for touch to be reciprocated by a living and moving person. Created initially for Royal Opera House’s Month of Sundays Festival, the work explores the sensitive dynamic of touch between performers who are alive in perpetual motion, and individual sculptures of people fixed in time and constant stillness. As RCD’s first interdisciplinary creation, Still Touch dives into the combination of what people can express in motion and what sculpture expresses through image.
Created initially for Royal Opera House’s Month of Sundays Festival, the work explores the sensitive dynamic of touch between performers who are alive in perpetual motion, and individual sculptures of people fixed in time and constant stillness. Following on the success of RCD’s full length work At the end we begin, Still Touch reunites composer Samuel Hall and Dramaturg Neus Gil Cortes for RCD’s first interdisciplinary creation.
Whilst combining Chappell's distinguishable blend of classical ballet, improvisation and contact work with three highly skilled performers, Still Touch embraces an intimate and emotionally sensitive work that explores the weight felt on the body when devoid of touch and the lightness touch can bring from others who are loved. With each performer starting in a place of isolation, the sculptures featured in the work represent the absence and memories of beloved people no longer within touching distance.
Choreographer: Richard Chappell
Sculptor: Anna Gillespie
Composer: Samuel Hall
Dramaturg: Neus Gil Cortes
Rehearsal Director: Louise Bennett
Dancers: Francesco Migliaccio, Iris Borras, Sharol Mackenzie
Lighting Designer: Flora Wilkinson
