The installation translates the sculptural qualities of the live performance work into a spatial, participatory experience, shifting the work from performance to presence — from something witnessed in time to an environment that holds people in space.
In the lead up to the installation at The NewBridge Project, Lizzie Klotz has connected with artists and community members in Shieldfield. This has included working with artist and ceramicist Megan Randall to host clay workshops with Memory Café, a dementia friendly space NewBridge run with Forum Café. With The NewBridge Project’s Community Facilitator and chef Kaltouma Hassaballah, there was a community feast and dance party led by and for women in the area with a migration background. These connections and ongoing relationships are shaping our summer public programme, which will activate Abundance, the new soft, sculptural installation.
Visitors are invited to walk through, lie down, rest and connect within the installation – to recognise an embodied sense of abundance through moments of stillness, reflection and encounter with soft sculpture. Beneath this stillness lie echoes of effort and fatigue held within the material, creating an atmosphere that is both tender and weighted, both collective and solitary.
The installation includes text-based invitations or scores that encourage visitors to listen and respond physically to the space, drawing on the Creative Captioning developed with a Deaf collaborator for the live performance. The scores act both as access provision and as artistic devices — extending the experience of sound through language and offering invitations that encourage visitors to listen and respond physically to the space.
Lizzie Klotz is a dance artist, choreographer and facilitator based in Gateshead. Rooted in care, play and embodied connection, Klotz’ practice spans work for theatres, outdoors, galleries and film, unfolding across local, national and international contexts. Often made in collaboration with artists and communities, her work is underpinned by inclusive processes that create accessible and meaningful experiences for participants and audiences alike, where people feel seen, valued and connected to their own power. Klotz has worked in collaboration with theatre maker Luca Rutherford since 2018. Together they draw on both of their practices to create work that is playful, vibrant and responsive, spanning dance theatre, public art, installation and socially engaged practice. Across all her work, Klotz champions care as a radical and necessary act – believing that we can be radically soft, and softly radical in our approach to making work, connecting with each other, and moving through the world.
Bethany Wells is an award-winning performance designer working across dance, theatre and installation, with a particular interest in site-specific and devised performance. Trained in architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture and Royal College of Art, she sees all her work as a form of spatial, social and sensory activism and is always looking to expand what can be achieved socially by collective live experiences. She has recently worked with Claire Cunningham Projects (MIF / National Theatre of Scotland), The Grief Series (Leeds 2023) and Nwando Ebizie (ArtsAdmin / London Sinfonietta). She is an Associate Artist with Middle Child (Hull) and a regular collaborator with Polite Rebellion (Leeds).
Abundance is developed in partnership with Dance City, The NewBridge Project & Northumberland Dance Development and includes dance made for theatre in various sites across the UK.
