THE ADRIAN HOWELLS AWARD FOR INTIMATE PERFORMANCE
Adrian Howells (1962 – 2014) was one of the world’s leading figures in the field of one to one and intimate performance. Over two decades he developed an artistic practice that focused on the transformative possibilities of intimate work, achieved through a profound, immediate and personal connection to his audiences. Through these works and the care he took in every aspect of the experience, he was often able to deeply affect those who participated in these encounters.
The Adrian Howells Award for Intimate Performance is an opportunity for a UK artist to develop and present an early staging of a new performance-based project in Glasgow (Take Me Somewhere / BUZZCUT) and London (Battersea Arts Centre / Something To Aim For). The Award aims to celebrate the intimate work that Adrian pioneered, as well as providing an opportunity to explore new territories in the field of one to one and intimate performance. The Award provides £4,000 project commission towards the awardee’s fee and expenses in the development and presentation of the proposed project.
We are delighted to announce the recipient of the 2021 Adrian Howells Award is Nwando Ebizie. This year the award is co-presented by Take Me Somewhere, Something To Aim For, Battersea Arts Centre & BUZZCUT.
In a year of feeling so disconnected and unable to meet, touch and be together with people, the idea of intimate performance feels a bit of a distant concept, yet more important than ever. Therefore, this year, we framed the award around the idea of creating intimate performance remotely or online. Whilst the award is usually selected via open call, in a time of extreme difficulty and precarity, we wanted to instead offer the Award as a commission, to an artist we have admired and respected for several years.
Nwando Ebizie fabulates live and digital numinous alternate realities, drawing on ritual cultures of the Black Atlantic, the neuroscience of sensory perception, music, immersive technologies, mythopoesis, biophilia, dance and performance art. As an Afrofuturist neurodivergent person, she is focused on proposing neurodiversity as an egalitarian centre for change, whilst resting on the much maligned wisdoms of the Black Atlantic, where the body is a vessel for the spirit to transform the self and the community.
Nwando will develop her ideas throughout 2021, with sharings across the year.
The recipient of the 2019/2020 Adrian Howells Award for Intimate Performance was Zinzi Minott.
Zinzi’s work focuses on the relationship between dance, bodies and politics. Her work explores how dance is perceived through the prisms of race, queer culture, gender and class. In recent years she was Artist in Residence at the Serpentine Gallery, Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Rich Mix and Dance Research Space, resident artist at Somerset House and a One Dance UK Trailblazer. Most recently she was awarded the Arts Council England’s Artist International Development Fund, the Jerwood Micro Bursary and the Live Art UK Diverse Actions Leadership Bursary, and is currently one of two artists commissioned under CONTINUOUS - a four-year partnership between BALTIC (Gateshead) and Siobhan Davies Dance.
Zinzi was struck by Adrian Howells’ understanding of the “Power and transformative possibility that can be achieved through intimate personal connection to his audiences”, and through the award wants to create intimate moments of dance transmission between Black Women (Trans inclusive) as an act of healing, outside of the gaze of whiteness and maleness. Zinzi will develop the work across 2020.
https://www.zinziminott.com/
The recipient of the 2018-2019 Adrian Howells Award was Rhiannon Armstrong, an interdisciplinary artist with over a decade of experience making works with empathy, interaction and dialogue at their core, often with unfiltered audiences in mind. Rhiannon makes work under the lifelong series title Instructions for Empathetic Living. That work often involves one-to-one and intimate encounters, whether it’s live work in public settings (Public Selfcare System and Can I Help You?), or part of web-based and audio pieces (The Slow GIF Movement and The International Archive of Things Left Unsaid).
'‘Receiving The Adrian Howells Award is providing me with the inspiration and opportunity to build a creative process where I will for the first time engage explicitly with my autobiography as a creative force. I hope to bring this process (which I think of as a “live reckoning”) together with other ongoing explorations, such as witnessing intimacy in public space, touch as a form of listening, and the research and performance of lullabies that express a wish to harm. I intend to explore the creation of an immersive performance environment where vulnerability and pain can co-exist with the embodied experiences of safety, rhythm and intimacy that are needed in trauma recovery.”
Image by Ben Gregory.
The 2018 recipient was Amy Rosa, who presented at the 2019 festival.
The 2017 recipient was Nic Green.
The 2017-2019 Adrian Howells Award for Intimate Performance was led by the National Theatre of Scotland, Battersea Arts Centre and Take Me Somewhere Festival with support from the University of Glasgow and the Live Art Development Agency.
The 2019-2020 Adrian Howells Award for Intimate Performance is led by the National Theatre of Scotland, The Sick Of The Fringe, Battersea Arts Centre and Take Me Somewhere Festival with support from the University of Glasgow and the Live Art Development Agency.