Performance & Live Art
burning black
South Hill Park, Berkshire, June 2010
Devised and performed by Katherina Radeva and Alister Lownie
Play is not always playful. You light a match and watch it burn. It is about enjoying the smallest, almost imaginary, danger. It can be about the transformative event, an experience shared amongst those present at one unique moment. Burning Black is a journey through the mysteries of fire. Working with memory and ritual, it draws the viewer into an ephemeral community. From those moments together, what do the flames destroy? What endures? Bring your past, your dreams, and together we'll forge the present.
Photos by Outi Remes
fallen fruit- now you are here- now you are gone
The Bluecoat, Liverpool as part of Poolside Emergency , May 2010
Fallen Fruit- now you are here- now you are gone is a piece about building and destroying the walls that are between us and the walls that are imposed onto us. Loosely based on last year's 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall a female performer enacts simple actions using a chair, a microphone and 200 mall boxes. She takes the audience on a journey about love, childhood and breaking free.
Photos by Tim Jeeves
Kitty has no pity- the art of not giving up
Rules & Regs Residency at South Hill Park, Bracknell, Bracknell September- October 2009
Devised, written and performed by Katherina Radeva
This piece looks at some fun and games methods of keeping fit whilst remembering one's childhood and fullfilling unfullfilled dreams.
I remember I must have been about four. I remember running down the street at one hundred miles an hour. I remember falling down at the bottom of the street. I remember my knees bleeding. I remember it did not hurt after a while.
Photos by Arnoud Moinet and Stuart Rodda
Fallen fruit
a work in progress showing
at Chester's Up the Wall outdoor performance event- October 2009
Devised and written by Katherina Radeva/ performed by Steven Loader and Katherina Radeva
A western man and an Eastern woman engage in measuring, deviding and separating land. When the land is devided a wall is build between them. As the wall becomes part of their everyday life , their lack of communication leads to alienation until one day, the wall falls apart.
Photos by Chris Smith
native birds
a work in progress showing
Theatre, Toynbee Studios, London/6 May 2009
Devised and performed by Katherina Radeva/ Lighting design by Huw Llewellyn/ Lighting operation by Jacob Patterson/ Video editing by Ronit Meranda
Native Birds examines what is to be free. Based loosely on the story of the five Bulgarian medics who were wrongly imprisoned in Libya from 1999-2007 for allegedly infecting children with HIV, this work also presents a personal journey of a yaoung Eastern European woman living in the west. Native Birds is a performance using elements of Bulgarian folklore, simple actions, movement, text and video in a space filled with thousands of paper birds.
Native Birds was created at Watermill Centre- a laboratory for performance 2009
Photos by Benjamin Jenner
native birds
an open rehersal showing
Watermill Centre for Performance, New York, USA/ 27th March 2009/ A devised performance by Katherina Radeva/ Performed by Katherina Radeva
Native Birds was created at Watermill Centre- a laboratory for performance 2009
Photos by James Caputo and Katherina Radeva
you might like it (heated amsterdam)
devised performance by Katherina Radeva, Alister Lownie, Nina Wyllie, Benedict Hitchins and second year design students at Wimbledon College of Art/// february 2010
birds behind bars - part two
work in progress
Salisbury Art Centre/ 2009/ A devised performance by Katherina Radeva/Performed by Tyrone Landau and Katherina Radeva
Photos by Benjamin Jenner
birds behind bars- part one
work in progress
Battersea Arts Centre, London/ Greenroom, Manchester/ Easton Community Centre, Bristol/ September- October 2008/ Performed by Katherina Radeva and featuring Jordan Gogov/ A devised performance by Katherina Radeva
Birds behind bars is a short piece about few freed humans
http://youandyourwork.blogspot.com
Photos by Benjamin Jenner, Simon Bowes and Katherina Radeva
Part & Parcel
Toynbee Studios | Artsadmin | London, November 2007 | Performed by Boyko Andonov (dancer), Jordan Gogov (voice), Petia Krushovenska (dancer) and Katherina Radeva (performer) | A devised performance by Katherina Radeva
Part & Parcel is an amalgamation of dance, ritual and music, forming a quiet piece that opens a window onto that traditional way of Bulgarian life. The piece engages with the audience through a mixture of endurance, a reverence for, and a joy in presenting and transcribing traditional Bulgarian forms of performance.
In the foreground, a figure enacts a ritual of cleansing. The figure occupies a symbolic space of an outside, washing face and hands with wine (a metaphor in Bulgarian folklore representing blood, equally so a liquid which gives life to the all things that spring out of the land).
In the background there is structure made from two vertical rods, holding a taut length of red wool in the shape of a gate. Throughout the duration of the piece this metaphorical gate is dismantled by a second performer. As the performer finishes gathering the wool, they symbolically remove the border/division and another performer moves into the picture to dance. Together they perform a short folk-dance, accompanied by live-singing from the fourth performer in the midst of the audience. The dancing couple then exit through the open structure, leaving the foreground performer bowed in silence.
Part & Parcel was developed as part of an Artsadmin bursary received in 2006. Huge thanks to Frances Scott for her immense support.
Photos by Benjamin Jenner
Water into Wine
National Review of Live Art | Glasgow 2007 | Curated by Nikki Milican | Performers - Petia Krushovinska, Boyko Andonov, Katherina Radeva | A devised performance by Katherina Radeva
I am Bulgarian. Bulgaria is due to join the European Union in 2007, which will on the surface be fantastic for the Bulgarian economy, but what will it mean for the small producers?
Wine is a product, a manufactured product. It is a product one consumes. It is made from the grape that is picked from the vine that grows from the earth. It is nourished by water that falls from the sky, which falls on our mountains, that sustains a way of life. Wine flows from as well as through Bulgaria like a river. It sustains micro economies, the growers/makers whilst permeating macro economies, the world wine market. Wine is the blood of Christ and is revered for it nurtures, purifies, gives life and provides a livelihood. Water into Wine is a performance for the land; it is a ritual celebrating the traditions of a tiny country on the verge of economic inclusion. It is a performance about that which comes from the earth, is sustained by the earth and is protected by the earth. It will take Bulgarian traditions, some of which are attached to the climate/environment, such as wine growing, and some of which are grounded in localised mythology, such as ritualistic dance, and use them as a means of celebrating this way of life as distinct from all others, as something that like the earth should be cherished, nourished and preserved in order for it to yield anything at all.
The research for the project has been supported by Arts Admin.
Photos by Benjamin Jenner
Wine with a difference
Nolias Gallery, London, May 2006 | Keeping it Live, Hertford, May 2008. Curated by Holly Darton | A devised performance by Katherina Radeva
Wine with a difference is a durational piece of two hours. In it, I wash my body with wine while wearing a necklace of garlic. Both raw materials - wine and garlic - have a huge significance in Bulgarian folklore. The garlic symbolises health and protection of ‘evil' and the wine is a product from the land with religious connotations. Wine with a difference is a piece about decontamination, taking something off, before putting something new on. The piece combines notions of ritual on the background of live voice.
Photos by Benjamin Jenner and Claire Blundell Jones
http://www.courtyardarts.org.uk
Settling Dirt
East End Collaborations, Queen Mary University, London- November 2004 | Curated by Live Art Development Agency and Queen Mary University | Insomnia, an exhibition of visual art, performance and writing, part of Refugee Week 2005, Barge House, South Bank- June 2005 | Curated by Dijana Racovic and Almir Koldzic | EXPO, Nottingham, November 2005 Curated by graft+ | A devised performance by Katherina Radeva
I am sitting on the edge of a bath eating an apple. To my left, there is a back projection of a house in Bulgaria that is slowly sinking in a local lake. The piece is about abandonment, displaced comfort, unfulfilled desire and loss of past times and spaces. It is about a girl wrapped up in her fantasy of idealistic representation of love and sex presented by an act of eating an apple and how this fantasy was shattered, beauty and innocence - lost and abused. The video projection of the house in the water is a mirror of the girl in the bath. The house is a metaphor for the struggle of the body and its "performance" in the face of suffering.
Photos by Benjamin Jenner
http://www.thisisliveart.co.uk
Deferral
Wimbledon School of Art, London - May 2003 |
A devised performance by Katherina Radeva
The work expresses the struggle of a girl (myself) against the economic and bureaucratic restrictions of my nation's politics and it's relation to European politics.
Bulgaria falls outside of the E.U. The girl is seated on an uncomfortable chair, which resembles a bicycle seat. She struggles to cycle the miles, a metaphor for inability to reach her destination. The action is an attempt to shorten the very real distance between the E.U. countries and Bulgaria. The projection depicts the same girl in a dream like quality, cycling a real bicycle in a green lawn park in London.
Photos by John Davide and Hannah Roche