Tessa Wills (UK): Glistening bridge over jarring context

Tessa Wills works with young people in East London, they make urban choreography together. She investigates what it feels like to transport symbols and evidence of these young people, their disembodied shouts and laughter, messages and enjoyment through video and sound into this youth centre in Kuopio. Wills wants to magnify any feelings that she gets from standing in relation to the footage in this new space, through performance. She simply wants to magnify aspects of the three way relation between this youth centre in rural Finland, a youth program in East London, and herself (as someone uncomfortably outside searching, looking, providing. An Artist in a social program). Wills has a hunch that the contexts will jarr, but she will be looking, perhaps futilely for glistening bridges between all of our worlds.

Tessa Wills (UK)

Tessa Wills is a performer working in sound and body based arts, both on commission and in educational community settings. She runs an organization called streetsoul www.streetsoul.org.uk which provides access to dance education for young people. She trained at the university of Birmingham, and P.A.R.T.S in Belgium. She has worked with Tom Plishcke and Kattrin Defeurt (Germany), Random Scream (Belgium), Jurij Konjar (Slovenia) and Robert Paccitti (UK), but the body of her work are her 7 solos, performed in Belgium, London and San Francisco. Her work is about identity, sense of home and reverse culture-shock; striving to arrive somewhere through the body.