Last class of 2010 is Friday 17th December.
No class Friday 24th (Christmas Eve) or Friday 31st (New Year's Eve).
Classes resume on Friday 7th January 2011.

Saturday 11th December 2010 - 8pm

Diamond Night 5

view the flyer as a pdf

The fifth in our series of arts evenings, bringing 'uncut performance gems' (ours and others') into the spotlight.

See 'new work' for more general information about Diamond Nights.

Oxford Brookes University Drama Studio map
Headington Hill Campus
Headington Hill, Oxford
Cost: FREE
Time: 8:00pm

Directions... map
...from central Oxford, follow High Street over the river to the roundabout at The Plain, take first exit (St Clements) and continue past traffic lights and straight on up Headington Hill, past the park, and then take the first driveway to the left near the top of the hill. Go past the gatehouse and take the 2nd turning on the right. The Drama Studio is a smallish, squarish building with railings outside the door, set back from the main driveway. Last time I checked, parking was still unrestricted on Saturday evenings.

...from London, buses go every ten minutes and run all night. Catch either the Oxford Tube, or the Oxford Express, then ask the driver to drop you at the stop called 'Gyspy Lane' or 'Brookes University'. Get off the bus and CROSS THE ROAD. There are two campuses, and the one you want is the less obvious one, a few metres further on down the hill and on the other side of the road.

**************************************
PLEASE BE AWARE THAT THE ENTRANCE DOOR OPENS DIRECTLY ONTO THE STAGE. If you are so late that the performance has already begun, there is no way to let you in without disrupting the performance so you may have missed it. If there is an opportunity between performances the door will be opened to check for latecomers, but PLEASE DO NOT KNOCK UNLESS AN INTERVAL IS CLEARLY IN PROGRESS!
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Saturday 6th & Sunday 7th November 2010

Yael Karavan workshop: A Ship of Fools

"And one day looking inside I saw, in that space between the belly and the chest, a little ship from which my inner fools were leading my life"

A chance to discover who the fools are within you! What is their character, their experience, their life-story? Following the success of A Ship of Fools at the Brighton Fringe, Yael Karavan will lead an intensive weekend workshop on this theme, here in Oxford.

The workshop will offer a warm-up consisting of a variety of training tools: stretching, strengthening, centering, spontaneity, imagination, presence, physical awareness, work with objects and rhythm, and will propose a range of creative approaches to discovering your inner fools.

We each have a 'ship of fools' within us. These fools represent the different traits that shape our personality. Each one of them, at any time, captains the ship; the lover, the thinker, the joker... This is a theme that I have been exploring through my dance research for many years, constantly asking 'Who is dancing?' We have so many characters within us that try to express themselves in various ways. I have thus developed methods of finding these 'traits' through the use of character-based work, searching to enable these various fools within us to dance their stories, like a journey within our own archetypes.

Venue: Headington Parish Hall, Dunstan Road, OX3 9BY

Time: 11.00 to 4.30 (Doors open 10.30. Please arrive in time to begin promptly at 11.00)

Cost: £65 full price/£55 concessions. £5 discount for advance payment (by 1 November).

Please contact Ayala (ayala@cafereason.com) to book a place (limited numbers).

About Yael Karavan

Performer and director Yael Karavan was born in Israel and grew up in Florence, Paris, and London. At the age of 13 she began an acting career in the National Theatre, television, and films in Israel. In 1995 she began travelling through Europe, N.Y, Brazil, and Japan, searching to develop a contemporary physical language of expression bridging east and west, dance and acting. Yael has studied with master-teachers and performers from all over the world including: Anton Adassinski and Tanya Khabarova from Russian theatre DEREVO, Philippe Gaulier, Philippe Genty, Monica Pagnieux, Jerzy Winnicki from the Grotowski Centre, Nigel Charnock from DV8, Sue Morrison (North American traditional clown), Ricardo Puccetti from ‘Lume Teatro- Brazil, and butoh masters Kazuo Ohno, Tadashi Endo, Carlotta Ikeda, Yumiko Yoshioka, Akiko Motofuji and more. She has collaborated, amongst others, with Ephia from Djalma primordial science, Linda Remahl, Fran Barbe and Marie Gabriel Rotie.

Her work is often described as visual poetry, drawing on elements of butoh, dance, mime, clown, physical and visual theatre. She explores the themes of memory, ‘presence’, metamorphoses, rhythm, intention, imagery and counterpoint as well as how to relate creatively to material, objects and space, whilst constantly balancing on the fine line between the tragic and the comic. She has created and performed five solo shows, touring worldwide, and in 2006 was awarded the TEATRONETO prize for best performance with her solo The Way Home directed by Naomi Silman (Lume teatro- Brazil). She has been a member of Derevo physical theatre company, Mamu Dance Theatre of Tadashi Endo, Ten-Pen Chi of Yumiko Yoshioka and Adapt- Theatre Picture Collision as well as collaborating with various artists, actors and Dancers internationally.

In 2010 Yael created the Karavan Ensemble, an international dance/ physical theatre company based in Brighton, with which she created A Ship of Fools for the Brighton Fringe.

Saturday 25th September 2010 - 8pm

Diamond Night 4

view the flyer as a pdf

The fourth in our series of arts evenings, bringing 'uncut performance gems' (ours and others') into the spotlight.

This Saturday features, butoh, contemporary dance, live video/sound, and improvisation! Contributers include: Café Reason, Malcolm Atkins, Jo Lott and Firefly Dance, Dariusz Dziala, Efthymios Chatzigiannis, Adam Murphy, Paul Mackilligin, Paulette Mae and dancers.

See 'new work' for more general information about Diamond Nights.

Oxford Brookes University Drama Studio map
Headington Hill Campus
Headington Hill, Oxford
Cost: FREE
Time: 8:00pm

Directions... map
...from central Oxford, follow High Street over the river to the roundabout at The Plain, take first exit (St Clements) and continue past traffic lights and straight on up Headington Hill, past the park, and then take the first driveway to the left near the top of the hill. Go past the gatehouse and take the 2nd turning on the right. The Drama Studio is a smallish, squarish building with railings outside the door, set back from the main driveway. Last time I checked, parking was still unrestricted on Saturday evenings.

...from London, buses go every ten minutes and run all night. Catch either the Oxford Tube, or the Oxford Express, then ask the driver to drop you at the stop called 'Gyspy Lane' or 'Brookes University'. Get off the bus and CROSS THE ROAD. There are two campuses, and the one you want is the less obvious one, a few metres further on down the hill and on the other side of the road.

**************************************
PLEASE BE AWARE THAT THE ENTRANCE DOOR OPENS DIRECTLY ONTO THE STAGE. If you are so late that the performance has already begun, there is no way to let you in without disrupting the performance so you may have missed it. If there is an opportunity between performances the door will be opened to check for latecomers, but PLEASE DO NOT KNOCK UNLESS AN INTERVAL IS CLEARLY IN PROGRESS!
**************************************

Saturday 19th June 2010 - 8pm

Diamond Night 3

The third in our series of arts evenings, bringing 'uncut performance gems' (ours and others') into the spotlight.

See 'new work' for more general information about Diamond Nights, or view the flyer as a pdf

Oxford Brookes University Drama Studio map
Headington Hill Campus
Headington Hill, Oxford
Cost: FREE
Time: 8:00pm

Directions... map
...from central Oxford, follow High Street over the river to the roundabout at The Plain, take first exit (St Clements) and continue past traffic lights and straight on up Headington Hill, past the park, and then take the first driveway to the left near the top of the hill. Go past the gatehouse and take the 2nd turning on the right. The Drama Studio is a smallish, squarish building with railings outside the door, set back from the main driveway. Last time I checked, parking was still unrestricted on Saturday evenings.

...from London, buses go every ten minutes and run all night. Catch either the Oxford Tube, or the Oxford Express, then ask the driver to drop you at the stop called 'Gyspy Lane' or 'Brookes University'. Get off the bus and CROSS THE ROAD. There are two campuses, and the one you want is the less obvious one, a few metres further on down the hill and on the other side of the road.

**************************************
PLEASE BE AWARE THAT THE ENTRANCE DOOR OPENS DIRECTLY ONTO THE STAGE. If you are so late that the performance has already begun, there is no way to let you in without disrupting the performance so you may have missed it. If there is an opportunity between performances the door will be opened to check for latecomers, but PLEASE DO NOT KNOCK UNLESS AN INTERVAL IS CLEARLY IN PROGRESS!
***************************************

Saturday 1st May 2010 - May Day

May Day Celebrations in Oxford

(Two butoh events happening this Saturday...)

May 1st, May Morning, sees Oxford's creative underworld (and some of its establishment overworld too) crawling out from beneath flat stones (or from behind imposing stone walls) wandering into town after celebrating all night at college balls or around fires on the Meadow or on Shotover Hill, to celebrate the re-emergence of vibrant life from the dead hand of Winter.

From 6am, at various points in the city centre, artists of all kinds will sing, dance, recite poetry and so on. Music generally happens on the steps of the Bodlian Library in Broad Street, and Morris dancers tend to commit their tomfoolery nearby. Café Reason will be performing some kind of butoh in or near Radcliffe Square at about 9am, or whenever the Morris dancers move on.

Then in the afternoon, a group of butoh dancers from the London Butoh Asylum will begin walking in a purposeful yet strangely disconcerting fashion from the Head of the River, upstream on the bank of the river Thames, out towards Port Meadow and on to the ruined 12th Century former nunnery known as Godstow Abbey. There, at 5pm, within the grounds of the Abbey, they will give an improvised performance to the accompaniment of improvised music.

Godstow Abbey is on the road between Wolvercote and Wytham, close to Godstow Bridge. There is a public carpark on that same road at the Northern End of Port Meadow. If driving, get to Wolvercote and continue on towards the river (along the obvious main road) until you see a public car park on your left which overlooks the Meadow (not the pub car park on the right). Park there, and continue on foot, past the Trout Inn on your left, on over the river bridge and you'll see the stone walls of the ruined Abbey on your left. The performance is free.

Saturday 20th February 2010, 7:30pm

!!! Now a Double Bill with SichtLautTrio !!!

Café Reason presents - A Double Bill featuring

GooSayTen + SichtLautTrio

Oxford Brookes University Drama Studio map
Headington Hill Campus
Headington Hill, Oxford
Cost: FREE (Donations will be requested towards artists' travel costs.)
Time: 7:30pm

An open 'jam session' will follow at around 9pm for musicians and dancers.

GooSayTen means "a contingently realised heaven" and is a butoh dance partnership between Itto Morita and Mika Takeuchi. Following their recent performances in London, Itto and Mika will give one last butoh performance in Oxford before Mika returns to Japan. This may be the last chance for quite a while to see these renowned butoh dancers perform together outside Japan.

"I've seen Itto perform a few times but never with his usual butoh partner Mika, so I'm very much looking forward to it myself. We are very fortunate to have had Itto here in the UK for the last several months and I for one have been inspired by his teaching and have learnt a lot from the few classes and workshops that I have been able to attend."
(Paul Mackilligin)

SichtLautTrio is made up of dancer Geraldo Si (ex Pina Bausch), Kent-based musician David Leahy and his double bass. They have been performing around Europe together for over three years. Their performances are totally improvised, full of life, spontaneity and humour. With the two experienced artists constantly switching roles, this is not your typical dance or music performance. Instead it could easily be described as a live sound installation that moves.

Directions... map
...from Oxford, follow High Street over the river to the roundabout at The Plain, take first exit (St Clements) and continue past traffic lights and straight on up Headington Hill, past the park, and then take the first driveway to the left near the top of the hill. Go past the gatehouse and take the 2nd turning on the right. The Drama Studio is a smallish, squarish building with railings outside the door, set back from the main driveway. Last time I checked, parking was still unrestricted on Saturday evenings.

...from London, catch a bus from Victoria (buses go every ten minutes or so) then get off either in Headington and walk down the hill, or in St Clements and walk up the hill. The bus passes the campus gateway. Check with the driver and check with Tiff (see below) for further details.

**************************************
PLEASE BE AWARE THAT THE ENTRANCE DOOR OPENS DIRECTLY ONTO THE STAGE. If you are so late that the performance has already begun, there is no way to let you in without disrupting the performance so you may have missed it! If there is an opportunity between performances the door will be opened to check for latecomers, but PLEASE DO NOT KNOCK UNLESS AN INTERVAL IS CLEARLY IN PROGRESS!
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For further details please contact either Paul Mackilligin on 07796 691013 / 01865 377013, or Tiff Chan on 07767 703452.