Dancing to Remember, Dancing to Forget – Beverly Rhodes

She is not a natural dancer, this lone figure – not young, not a born performer. But alone in an uncluttered room, lost to memory or emotion, she moves her body to an unheard rhythm, sweeping and bending in a physical, intuitive response to personal thought and experience.

In Dancing to Remember, Dancing to Forget Wellington artist Beverly Rhodes presents an intimate series of solitary dancers caught in the moment of spontaneous, sensual, if at time awkward embodiment of unspoken experience and emotion.

Hushed in their muted pallet and spare composition, these works are inspired by Pina Bausch, the late German dancer and choreographer who explored dance as a conduit for deep emotion irrespective of age, gender or dancing ability. They reference too the work of UK dancer/choreographer Miranda Tufnell and installation artist Chris Crickmay in their exploration of the link between art, dance and creativity, using the sensory, moving body as a basis for imaginative activity.

“It is about an ordinary body moving and dancing,” she says. “The emphasis is on the link between thought, emotion, memory and the body. Words are not needed, just movement.”