The Secret's Out

Secret Garden Party was the party of the summer!  A muddy, rainy first few days gave way to sun baked adventures and way too much fun :)  Here are some of our dancers just before opening ceremonies Thursday night...

And here we are in the festival highlights!  Abstract Disco at The Secret Garden Party 2012


The One Taste Stage was full of delight as people shook, shimmied, and whirled with us.  The music was out of this world!!  And the energy created, shared, and sent forth was absolutely incredible.  Thank you to all!


This coming weekend we open up the main stage Sunday night at Cloud Cuckoo Land Festival :)  Join us if you can!  And wish us well otherwise....  namaste!

Awesome Arrivals

Hello hello!  To tantalise and tease....here's a track mixing up our lovely friend and accomplished musician Emil Khan on the sarangi.  Enjoy!!!


We Have Arrived  (by Matt Kirk at The Abstract Disco)  ;-D

Fields of Light

Buddahfields Festival was a wonderful journey of craziness and sacred silence.  I say sacred silence because the silence at the end of the set, when music stopped for the night, was potent with joyous embrace!  The people sat or stood in complete stillness, and then someone started to ohm.  After a few ohms we all laughed, it had been an amazing offering!  

Here we are outside the tent just before heading down to the venue.  We arrived on site 45 minutes before our set and put ourselves in motion!  


Next week we go to Secret Garden Party where sensory delights wait in store for both techno heads and yoginis alike :)  See you there!!

Rhythmic Complexity

Here is an example of some of the genre bending and blending our musicians are up to.  Working with music from the sacred traditions of Sufi Whirling and Belly Dance, they are layering tribal beats and electronic grooves - ranging from jungle to dark techno - into the music.  In this track, a recent jam in the studio, you get a sense of how different genres mix and move the body to dance!  

After Hours at The Abstract Disco

For weeks we have been making live recordings of musicians from within the Sufi tradition.  This weekend their new mixes premier :)  It promises to be a smashing good time where every body finds a sacred groove, manifesting the sacred core of life within us through the multiple sounds and blends of our wonderful DJs.  

Meet the Dancers

Meet the wonderfully talented, supremely dedicated, sexy and amazing 

dancers of The Prisms of Isis...  :)

Stephanie Britton is an ex-professional dancer, having danced from an early age and taking part in professional productions across the UK from the age of 15. Her passion for dance lies in the Ballet and Street styles, although she loves to discover and explore new styles such as Pole dancing, raving and more recently Whirling and Belly dancing.  At 16 she began teaching Ballet, Tap, Contemporary and Street to 3-18 year olds. She obtained a Distinction in Ballet RAD Advanced level 1 and in ISTD Advanced level 1 Modern Jazz, before leaving dance to travel and pursue a career in Conservation. She holds a BSc in Geography and is about to complete a Masters in Conservation Science. She has continued to dance for the love of it and is really excited about this opportunity to perform as part of The Prisms of Isis!

Lucia Castano was born in Peru, a country full of blood mixtures, dramatic landscapes and ancient wisdom.  She started dancing as a child to the rhythms of salsa, afro dance and pop music, and explored native Peruvian dance lessons throughout her childhood.  Lucia studied Fine Arts in University and became an art teacher, while also creating her own art expression.  In London she discovered contact improvisation and 5Rythms dance, as a way to reconnect with "source" and feel alive.
For Lucia, this dance project is about bringing tradition from ancient cultures and mixing it up with other forms of dance...the dancers experiencing the ecstatic power of movement, the joy of it and spreading it to the people around us...taking them to the joy of their bodies, their temples.

 

Marjo(lein) Kok has a big love for music with roots...since a very young age listening and dancing to traditional music from all over the globe......and so she developed a background in Flamenco, belly dance, African, gypsy and Latin American styles...recently exploring the integration of those with free movement through 5Rythms and ecstatic dance...something that has been a great learning experience for finding liberation and connection with self, others and the sacred. 

Tuuli Manninen has a background in contemporary dance having studied and completed a dance diploma in Kallio School of performing arts in Helsinki. In London, she has experimented with contact improvisation and new dance forms through The Prisms of Isis. It has been a pleasure working with this wonderful group, by improvising and combining very different energies of movement varying from wild rave to meditative turning. Also, performing off-stage relates to Tuuli's on-going interest in dancing in unconventional spaces among the audience.

Tereza Silonova's most famous dance performance was probably the invocation of a fox at the age of four. This started her use of dance as the most truthful, transgressive and empowering art/life form. Since she has never received professional training, with styles from Latin-American to jazz and expressive to freestyle, the biggest teacher remained the people and music she danced with and for. She left the Czech Republic in 2009 to live and study in Italy. In September 2011 she moved to London to start her degree, to continue the journey and… to dance.

'Rma Sanchez-Bell has a Fine Art background, having studied at University of the Arts London. Exploration of narrative form in sculpture and installation pieces created a tactile and emotional relationship with materials, as well as a deeply embodied experience through the making process, which became art to her in itself. With the view that everything is connected, the art of movement is in the continual process of intersecting between every level of matter and spirit, weaving a rich tapestry embedded with myth, ritual, art and the truths of transformation.
She has since been exploring these themes of story and movement with performance art, dance improvisation, butoh, clowning, belly dance, anthropology, creative writing and textile jewellery... Currently part of the Earth Angels collective, performing with various musicians and artists including the conscious sounds collective and the live Fun N bass act clim8shift. Here to spread love, peace, and a conscious message of hope, sent to emerge from the foliage of festivals, parties and protests ready to bring blessings, music, dances, actions and spoken word cyphers.

People

This project began as an idea between Matt Kirk and Hannah McClure in November of 2011, as a way of working with their artistic disciplines in a way that would appeal to people of all backgrounds.  In the winter of 2012 James Carey joined the project and it was decided to take it to festival locations.  Fusing the club vibe and sacred experience the project aims to create an atmosphere of holy chaos for festival goers, music lovers, and dancers alike.  

Matt Kirk is a composer and producer, graduating in music from University Arts London in 2011. Writing dance music, film scores and contemporary ballet, he has performed at major venues in the UK, Europe and America as a DJ in a band or as a classical musician. Matt is co founder of Abstract Studios London and a DJ and promotor in London. www.soundcloud.com/mattkirk

James Carey is a sound engineer and producer. Based in London, he is co founder of Abstract Studios London. James is currently engineering live gigs around the UK including venues at the 02 arena, battersea power station and major London clubs, as well as producing remixes for clients including Snoop Dogg. 

Hannah McClure Chalut is a professional dancer/performance artist with a penchant for the spiritual.  She was a founding member of the internationally acclaimed Shen Wei Dance Arts and later founded and then directed her own company, Open Air Dance, for eight years.  Her work has been shown in New York City and across the United States, with a UK premier in July of 2010.  She has since staged her work at Cambridge University June 2011 and July 2012.  In 2009 Hannah was initiated as a whirling dervish, and nothing has been left untouched by this!  She holds a BFA in Dance and Performance, an MA in Dance Anthropology and is working on her PhD in ritual practice at The University of East London. http://shamansway.blogspot.com/ 

Barny Marshall joins us for the live venues.

Barny and drums go together like peas and carrots. The cheeky chap from Bucks has been forever breaking beats since entering the world in 1987. After receiving his first set of drums at the age of four, he hasn’t looked back. He taught himself for the first eight years until receiving his first drum lesson at the age of twelve. At the fine age of 24, Barny has notched up an impressive tally of experience that would make the musician in us all jealous. Barny has been the heart and soul of an eclectic mix of bands from Jazz, Rock, Soul and Funk. His claim to fame is supporting Feeder at Swansea University’s Summer Ball 2009. And if that’s not enough to dazzle your taste buds, Barny also has a BSC in Economics. Instead of ruling the world, Barny has decided to follow his dream to rule the drumming world.

Dancers join us as well, to perform in moments of synthesised cohesion throughout the set, and move in between and with the crowd, dancing as a single unit of joyous expression.

dancer bios to come....

Summer Dates

This summer we open the project with five festival dates!

Friday July 13th 9pm The Big Top - Buddahfields Festival
Sunday July 15th 12:30pm The Big Top - Buddahfields Festival

          Buddahfields  

Thursday July 19th 6pm One Taste Stage - Secret Garden Party

Friday July 20th 8pm One Taste Stage - Secret Garden Party

         Secret Garden Party

Sunday August 5th 5:30pm The Shearing Barn - Cloud Cuckoo Land Festival

          Cloud Cuckoo Land

Come and experience the magic of ritual, sacred traditions, and driving techno with us.  We can't wait to share our sounds, our visions, with you!  Come dance.