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.
Good to know:
Audience members will be invited to participate in simple tasks during the performance; any invitation can be declined.
IPAF:
IPAF is Warehouse9’s international performance festival. The festival is a vital extension of the organisation’s dedicated work to support and present LGBTQIA+ artists and cultural practitioners. IPAF is a dynamic meeting place that creates opportunities for artistic development, live performances, and facilitates spaces for dialogue and community.
This year, the festival is co-produced with Dansehallerne and presents genre-bending work in Copenhagen that actively engages with identity politics, sexual expressions, and body representations. IPAF is founded on the strong belief that dance and performance can offer new perspectives and understandings of reality, inspire collective imagination, and advocate for better and more just futures.
IPAF is made possible with support from the Danish Arts Foundations, the City of Copenhagen and Dansehallerne.
Tickets:
tickets are purchased via Dansehallernes website: https://dansehallerne.dk/en/public-program/
Note that there is a sliding scale option.
Accessability:
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.
Jasmin has a master’s degree in English and cultural communications from the University of Copenhagen and has worked with several fields within the cultural sphere. She has worked with executing and communicating films, festivals, art fairs, and literature, and has now embarked upon queer performance art at Warehouse9.
Emma (they/she) has been a core member since 2012 and a leading effort in driving organisational development. They have helped shape WH9’s artistic profile, initiated national and international collaborations and consolidated WH9 through fundraising strategies, and insisting on production methods centering care and accessiblility.
In addition, Emma works as an independent curator, e.g. through the curatorial duo osborn&møller, where they have acted as guest curator at the Wellcome Collection (UK) and curated part of City of Women’s 25 year anniversary festival in 2019 (SL). Emma has experience as a freelance producer in the UK, where they worked with artists such as Poppy Jackson, Manuel Vason and SPILL Festival. Emma holds a MA in Theater and Performance from Queen Mary, University of London and a BA (Hons) in Drama, Applied Theatre & Education from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.
Jørgen Callesen (They/He) is co-founder and co-director of Warehouse9.
For the past 17 years, they have been an integral part of developing Warehouse9 to become a leading organisation for cross-aesthetic queer art, including international festivals and socially engaged projects. He holds a Ph.D. in information & media science from Aarhus University (2005) and has an artistic practice with the performance figure “miss fish”. They have presented solo work in Denmark and internationally since 2002 and work in collaboration with numerous queer artists as well as in lager scale productions.
