Tabula Rasa Dance Company

CLAIRE PENÇAK set up Tabula Rasa Dance Company in 1999, and is the company’s Artistic Director

Mission Statement

At the heart of Tabula Rasa’s practice is the belief in: Dance as a means of expression; Dance an instrument for creativity; Dance as a means of education; Dance as a way of thinking; Dance as a way of living.

Since 2000 it has created and toured dance performances for both adults and children, and since 2004 has been based in Sutherland.

The Crossing Research and Development 2004, Cove Park. Drawing: Brian Hartley. (photo - Jo Clifford)

The principle of collaboration and partnership both with individuals and organisations has strongly influenced our working practice both artistically and organisationally.

The majority of Tabula Rasa’s dance performances have included new music commissions from Scottish composers and musicians, and where possible performances are presented with live music.

Tabula Rasa is currently evolving into an organisation with a wider arts practice than purely modern dance although the body, space and time – key strands of the art of dance – are very much at the centre of these more divergent projects.

But then this potential was always implicit within the company name itself – Tabula Rasa – literally meaning a ‘clean slate’ – which is how we like to come to each new project.

Current Projects

The Crossing: Site – Specific Installation and Performance Project

‘She lays at the Crossing.
The Goddess. Laid at the Crossing.

Where the water is dark
And the currents are strong
And the outlook uncertain.’ Jo Clifford

‘The Crossing’ is an ongoing collaborative project between writer Jo Clifford, landscape architects Lisa Mackenzie and Kenny Fraser, composer Peter Nelson and choreographer Claire Pençak.

‘There is a strange power in bog water which prevents decay. Bodies have been found that must have lain in bog for more than a thousand years….’ Danish Almanack 1837, quoted in The Bog People by P.V.Glob

It takes peat as a poetic image for an exploration of memory: the memory of the earth and the memory of the body. It is also an interpretation of the peat landscape in a spatial and environmental sense.

The Winter Room 2006. Dancer: Brian Hartley. Choreography: Claire Pencak. (photo - Fin Macrae)

The project began during a residency at Cove Park in Argyllshire in 2004, developed during a residency at Lyth Arts Centre, Wick in 2005, and expanded over an extended research period between 2006 and 2007. Each subsequent year another layer accumulates.

We hope it will become a site-specific installation and performance piece for Flanders Moss, in Stirlingshire, in 2008 or 2009.

‘..a small number of small twigs or branches were laid on top of the body and above these again several small sticks laid crosswise, as though to prevent the corpse from floating or from climbing out of the bog’ An account of a peat bog man find in P.V. Glob’s The Bog People.

The research and development of ‘The Crossing’ has been supported by funding from the Scottish Arts Council 2004, HI~Arts in 2005/2006 and 2006/2007 and The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

The Laundry Room: Architectural Project

Tabula Rasa is about to undertake a feasibility and design study to pursue the possibility of creating an arts space in a currently disused building known as The Laundry Room, a listed building in the grounds of Dunrobin Castle, near Golspie in Sutherland.

This is a collaboration with Skye based architects – rural design – and there will be a strong focus on the use of renewables and green energy within the project.

A Long and Winding Road 2003. Choreography: Francoise Dupuy. Dancer: Claire Pencak (photo - Mike Zolker)

The vision for The Laundry Room is to create in short: An artist- led space; A dedicated space; A sustainable space; A collaborative space; A working space; An inspiring space; An open space.

Funding for the feasibility study has come from the National Lottery Awards for All and Caithness and Sutherland Enterprise.

Falling into Sky (Working Title): Dance Piece

A short work commissioned by City Moves, for the Dance Live! Season in Aberdeen.

This piece is being created in collaboration with the visual artist Norman Gibson and dancer Mirav Israel for the gallery space at Peacock Visual Arts, Castlegate, Aberdeen.

The starting point for the work is that as humans we are structurally, vertical beings. We inhabit the space between the ground and the sky. We stand with our feet on the ground but our head in the clouds. The dynamic motion that links these low and high places is rising and sinking: flight and fall.

Where it starts from will probably not be where it arrives at. I always leave this possibility open in the early stages so that the creative process itself can impact on the ideas and for the piece to find the expressive form that it requires.

Two performances, Friday October 5th 2007

Cabbages and Kings: Dance Piece

Ingredients

One dancer
One old step ladder
A small chair
20 stones
20 artificial white flowers
A handful of children’s music boxes
A kitchen timer in the shape of a chicken
A metronome
An alarm clock or two or three
A yellow ball
A lime green cup and straw
A tin flower pot

Method

Mix all the above and bake in a small hall for the summer months.

Result

Some sort of absurdist dance theatre performance for children 5+

Touring late 2007 and Spring 2008

The Crossing Research and Development 2007, Arts in Motion. (photo - Lisa Mackenzie)

Dream Project – Fantasy Theatre

Whatever piece I am working on at the time as this will have been ‘dreamt’ into existence.

Golden Moment

Whenever I am working in the studio.

Not so Golden Moment

There will always be obstacles and so they have to become a golden opportunity, a fortuitous bump, a different path, an improvisational moment or otherwise you would go mad with it all.

© Claire Pençak, 2007