IPAF presents: Eve Stainton: The Joystick and The Reins

Artist and choreographer Eve Stainton presents their new choreographic performance, The Joystick and The Reins, accompanied by Ennio Morricone’s haunting score for The Thing (1982).

The Joystick and The Reins explores who is deemed to be, and those who decide what constitutes a ‘threat’ within society, exploring how marginalised groups have been instrumentalised through systems of oppression and authoritarianism.

Cycling through hyper-emotional states of intensity that never arrive at a fixed point, the solo figure and the scene itself become a site for the audience’s own projections. Referencing ideas of power, dominance, perpetrator, victim, threat and interpretation.

Influences for The Joystick and The Reins include historical reenactments, police and riot arrest imagery, and 1980s ‘Crime Watch’ episodes, examining what it means to reconstruct a theatrical scene that draws on truth, and how societal constructs keep people ‘at risk’ of incarceration in a place of vulnerability.

Morricone’s powerful music finds resonance with Stainton’s mutual exploration of societal suspicion, psychological horror, and the devastating potential of individual isolation.

About the Artist:
Eve Stainton is an artist and choreographer born in Manchester and living in London, UK. They create multi-disciplinary performances that involve movement practices, welded steel/live welding, digital collage, and other invisible forces like drama and suspense. Their research is rooted in community, interested in how differently marginalised people experience and come into relationship with power structures and societal conventions. Often working with codes or tropes of gender, class and threat, revealing ‘behind the scenes’ mechanisms of working together to show a kind of reality that isn’t seamless. 

Notable presentations include: ICA (UK), Tramway (UK), Venice Biennale performance programme in collaboration with Florence Peake (IT), Dansehallerne (DK), Block Universe (UK), Dampfzentrale (CH), Donaufestival (AT), My Wild Flag (SE), Le Guess Who? (NL), Bergen Kunsthall (NO), Bozar (BE), Nottingham Contemporary (UK), Crac Occitanie (FR), LCMF (UK), CCA Glasgow (UK), Tangente (CA), Audra Festival (LT), Rouyn-Noranda Biennale (CA), The Mount Without (UK).

Credits:

Choreography and performance: Eve Stainton
Producer: Michael Kitchin
Creative Producer: Sara Sassanelli
Lighting Designer: Edward Saunders
Rehearsal Director and Steward: Temitope Ajose
Rehearsal Director: Maëva Berthelot
Dramaturg: Florence Peake
Shield design and creation: Eve Stainton

Co-commissioned by Bold Tendencies, Dansehallerne (DK), Transform, The Place and performance, possession + automation (funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council). Supported by Queen Mary University of London, Old Diorama Arts Centre, Den Frie Udstilling (DK), SLUG (DE), L’Ecart Biennial (CA) and Mind Eater (NO). With thanks to The Morricone Estate, Wise Music Classical, Martin O’Brien and Jim Tuck.

Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Godt at vide:
Audience members will be invited to participate in simple tasks during the performance; any invitation can be declined.

IPAF:
IPAF er Warehouse9s internationale performancefestival. Festivalen er en væsentlig udvidelse af organisationens dedikerede arbejde med at støtte og præsentere LGBTQIA+ kunstnere og kulturaktører. IPAF er et dynamisk mødested, der skaber muligheder for kunstnerisk udvikling, liveoptrædener og tilgængeliggør rum til dialog og fællesskab.

I år er festivalen co-produceret med Dansehallerne og præsenterer genre-brydende værker i København, der aktivt engagerer sig i identitetspolitik, seksuelle udtryk og kropsrepræsentationer. IPAF er grundlagt på en stærk overbevisning om, at dans og performance kan tilbyde nye perspektiver og forståelser af virkeligheden, inspirere den kollektive fantasi og kæmpe for bedre og mere retfærdige fremtider.

IPAF muliggøres med støtte fra Statens Kunstfond, Københavns Kommune og Dansehallerne.

Billetter
billetter købes via Dansehallernes hjemmeside: https://dansehallerne.dk/en/public-program/
Bemærk, at der er en glidende skala som mulighed.

Tilgængelighed
Dansehallerne in Copenhagen offers good accessibility with step-free access via an elevator to all floors, accessible and gender-neutral restrooms on the ground floor.