In the week that would have followed Edinburgh Fringe 2020 together with invited practice companions Lucy Cash, Annabel Cooper and Kirsty Biff, Ruairí Ó’Donnabháin, Kate Marsh, Claricia Parinussa, Farah Saleh and Lucy Suggate, I had been working towards hosting a free International Artist’s Lab – Thinking Through Practice, at Dance Base.

 The Covid-complicated world meant that this wasn’t possible. So, instead we came together for the first time - since lockdown - to explore what it was to gently be alongside each other again. Working in the garden there – and from respective studios in Scotland, Ireland and England - we were in conversation, through practice, across time and space. Drawing on choreographic and dramaturgical thinking to tend to a return to care-full touch. Arriving at a small collection of choreographic propositions for other artists and folx - intended as salves for future selves – to soothe, stay, speak and move with what happens in the wakes of the past months. 

Salves for Future Selves are currently installed to be with - either on your own or alongside a companion - in the Dance Base garden. There you can pick up a free sheet, scan a QR code to listen to, or read, a welcome note - which gives you information about how to navigate the garden, the objects in the garden and access to all of the Salves. Or, you can pick up an MP3 player from reception and return it afterwards. We hope these salves will be companions in practice to all the other artists working in the Dance Base building in more solitary ways from 2020-2021.

Salves

a preparation - for a physically distanced love seat a score and visual-poem from Phos’ (Lucy Cash & Luke Pell)

 snoz: an invitation to be more dog  a score from Lucy Suggate and Molly 

a score to play with – a pair of drag clowns invite you to find pleasure in failure from Biff and Cooper  

care harder a poem from Luke Pell

digging in – to past, present, future archives a score from Farah Saleh 

in the knowing that's felt an interview with Claricia Parinussa and Rhubaba committee members Khadea Kuchenmeister, Natasha Ruwona and Laura Tully, and some words from Claricia from this week 

Distance of Far a Not week Far a visual-poem postcard to take away with you from Lucy Cash  

aistear riachtanach / necessary journey* a score and long visual-poem from Ruairí Ó’Donnabháin

*Le tacaíocht ó / with support from Ealaín na Gaeltachta, Salves for Future Selves, Tipperary Dance Platform, Kirkos Ensemble and Skibbereen Arts Festival

Salves Design Valerie Reid