It Will Come Later

An interventional stage design for the collaborative choreographic work It Will Come Later by iCoDaCo (International Contemporary Dance Collective) – an intercultural project bringing together choreographers and artists from Hong Kong, Wales, Sweden, Hungary and Poland. The project was produced in the UK by Gwyn Emberton Dance; and supported by the Creative Europe programme for the EU, Arts Council of Wales, Wales Arts International and the Swedish Arts Council.

The resulting performance and stage design was realised within in a 10m x 10m square stage space, delineated on all sides by a single row of seated spectators. Banham’s scenography introduces a 7m wide and 4m high curtain of string, revolving constantly and almost imperceptibly throughout the space and event, as a visual manifestation and delineation of both space and time. This proposition embodies part of the author’s ongoing public investigations into scenographic dramaturgies and the ontology of objects within performance. It proposes and realises a dynamic performance space in which the scenography directly informs the activities of others inhabiting the space, including audiences and performers. It frames and directs the gaze, while itself performing a root physical and spatial progression – that, with the agreement of the performers, becomes an active co-player within the work as a whole.