​The Rite of Spring ​

AT THE CENTRE IS A DANCER,
​MULTI-PANEL INSTALLATION, OIL ON CANVAS, FIVE EXTANT PANELS, EACH PANEL 180 X 200CM, 2017

At the Centre is a Dancer  attempts to transcribe the tidal wave of psychological and emotional emergency at the heart of Stravinsky’s final Danse Sacrale. The music of this movement is horrifying, vertiginous, a violent dance to the death – and to the spring. Each panel is intended as a distinct but connected episode in the ‘danse fatale’. Combining organic fluidity with a disquieting mechanical insistency, the series relies on recurring – mutating –  visual ostinatos which flash on to the canvas explosively using a cruelly limited palette. Initially conceived as a multi-panel installation that would encircle – implicate – the viewer, At the Centre... makes dancers of all of us, asking that we contemplate our own position and place in the Rite.

 The Rite of Spring Project Introduction