Friday 1 August 2014, 7pm, OTO Project Space
Cafe OTO presents three evenings of improvised music and visual performance/movement: three duos of one instrumentalist and one physical performer. All 6 performers are affected and inspired by Butoh, the post-war Japanese dance form. The musicians are regular performers at OTO, and all have had enriching experiences developing their music through working with dancers. The dancers come from a range of backgrounds and are all creating exciting original work in London and Europe in various fields including, sculpture, dance, film, and theatre.
Charles Hayward is an English drummer/singer/composer and was a founding member of the experimental rock groups This Heat and Camberwell Now. He also played with early European improv group Mal Dean's Amazing Band and gigged and recorded with Phil Manzanera in Quiet Sun as well as a short stint with Gong. Since the late 80's he has concentrated on solo projects and collaborations including Massacre (with Bill Laswell and Fred Frith), Monkey Puzzle Trio, Albert Newton (with Pat Thomas and John Edwards) and This Is Not This Heat which toured the UK, Europe, USA and Japan between 2016-2019 performing expanded versions of This Heat’s oeuvre to unfaltering critical acclaim. Hayward’s latest group, Abstract Concrete, formed from London players from a diversity of European underground scenes, released it’s self-titled debut album in November 2023.
"I perform with improvisational body movement. However, when I dance, whatever my self image is, I certainly exist in the world. When I dance, I stop watching things and shift my attention to my internal sensation or to different parts of the world. For example, I sense how my muscles and bones move, or I focus on sounds. By doing that, I feel as if I investigate the boundary between myself and the world."
