Budapest: Brody House: Brody Studios: Brody Artyard

Budapest has the faded glamour, grace and grandeur of Paris with the cultural and creative vibe of an old Eastern bloc city emerging from its dark and secret past.  And in the Pest side of the city, rubbing shoulders with Art Nouveau and Belle Epoque town houses, within walking distance of the Jewish quarter, 'ruined' pubs and Gellert thermal baths is Brody House. 

Brody House dates from the 1850s.  Neglected during the Communist regime, Brody House was founded in 2009 to provide forums for creativity and to support artistic talent in: visual art, film, music, graphic novels, literature, dance, design, photography...

The eight guest rooms are huge light spaces with paraquet floors and very high ceilings, imaginatively decorated and named after Brody House's cutting-edge artists whose work lines the distressed walls.
An honesty bar operates after dark when the staff have gone home and visitors are free to wander from room to room, reading art books, listening to ambient music, whilst enjoying the arts works and photographs.  I especially enjoyed the black and white photos taken by Tibor Papp (www.darklight.co.hu) of Krisztina Pazar of the Hungarian National Ballet.  Indeed, to visit Brody House is the most unique and inspiring experience.
brodyhouse.com

Walking Into Art: Challenging Traditional Artistic Ideas

Artist, Richard Long was thrown out of art school for the experimental nature of his work, and yet, in 1989, he won the Turner Prize? !  Long uses walking in the landscape as the medium of time and distance in his work.    The photographs of his maps, sculptures and text, act as records of his travels. He's walked as far as Japan, Alaska, Nepal and Iceland in the pursuit of his creative practice. I only went as far as Hanley: The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery to view his art, but it was well worth the visit.  The exhibition is in The Artist Room until 2nd March.

Creative Writing & Dance relationships

Lecturer in dance, Rachel Rimmer, and I, have been collaborating for some time now.  There are a number of similar lines of enquiry within our practices.  We meet in the dance studio at MMU Cheshire where we work, and explore creative writing/dance relationships.  As a result, Rachel has written an article and I have produced a word/text score in response to her dance improvisation.  The research has been accepted by choreograph.net online journal; the 'raw thinking' page is the space where we share our writing.  For anyone interested, the links are:

http://choreograph.net/articles/lead-article-the-speaking-body-in-space-documenting-the-dancing-moment

http://choreograph.ne/raw/to-create-the-path-of-dance-improvisation-and-wordtext-score