Karen Christopher & Sophie Grodin

We’ve got a rope and a pulley. We think we are navigating the cliffs, we are pausing for the skin to grow back on the tips of our fingers. The piece is a reflection on moving forward in spite of uncertainty.

sound design by Boris Hauf
lighting design by Martin Langthorne
dramaturgy by Litó Walkey

miles & miles is a performance positioned at the edge of a landscape. It asks the questions: How do we continue once we’ve lost our position? How do we accommodate ourselves on shaky ground and prepare for the uncertainty still to come? How do we become intimate with the inevitable fall?

Looking to a world of arctic blankness, flying leaps, and shear cliff face climbs (assisted by the able minds and faces of Ingrid Bergman and Alfred Hitchcock, and including the dance moves of a scientist) the performers stumble through the artifice that distracts them from the fears of what is still to come.

Christopher and Grodin, tied to opposite ends of a 100-metre rope, hop, skip, cajole, and reminisce about other people’s lives. The more they know, the greater our sense of uncertainty. They are suspended above the ground. They are heading for the horizon. We know they will never get there. Still, they need a destination.

From Diana Damian’s review for Exeunt of our work-in-progress at The Yard Theatre (April 2015):

. . . miles & miles is falling; it is groundlessness. It is also friendship, and working something from the unknown, and gently excavating the collective and individual memories that make up a theatrical encounter. It is to me, about what we might bring to this gathering, and what we might leave with; about being together in that exchange.

Christopher and Grodin always invite us to wander, then bring us back, and we enjoy watching them find their way back to us. In ropes, a ladder, water and a pulley, we jump from mountains together, feel the cold air brushing against our cheeks, pinches of water on our hands.

miles & miles is the second duet performance by Karen Christopher and Sophie Grodin. The first was Control Signal (2013).

Sophie Grodin is a Danish performance maker, based in Copenhagen. Through performance, she wants to bring new importance to spaces, create collective memory, and discover alternative ways of learning through collaborative methods. She graduated from Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, has worked with Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects since 2011, and is part of the collective and self-run school FUKK.

miles & miles forms part of The Difference Between Home and Poem: a duet series. Each project in the series is jointly made, directed and performed by Karen Christopher and another artist.

Performance History

26 April 2017, The House, Plymouth University

10th & 16th March 2017, Chisenhale Dance Space as part of TWOFOLD

2 December 2016, preview Hay Studio, Cornwall

24 November 2016, preview Live Art Bistro, Leeds

9 November 2016, preview Performing House, York St. John

7th & 8th July 2016, preview performances Chisenhale Dance Space, London

April 21-25, 2015, The Yard Theatre, London (work-in-progress)
see review Exeunt Magazine

March 2015, Buzzcut, Glasgow (work-in-progress)
see review Glasgow Herald

Video

Video documentation from July 2016 preview performances at
Chisenhale Dance Space (London)
trailer:

full length: AVAILABLE BY REQUEST

Written reponse

See Mary Paterson's response here.

Find audience leaflet image sources not published on leaflet here.