Following the successful launch of the Cohan Collective pilot in 2015, last year’s Cohan Collective, hosted by Middlesex University, engaged four choreographers and four composers working with a pool of sixteen dancers and four musicians. The residency was overseen by founding directors Robert Cohan and Eleanor Alberga while choreographer Kim Bandstrup and composer Gary Carpenter mentored the artists. The two-week residency was a remarkable success, offering participants a rare opportunity to explore the choreographer/composer relationship in an environment focused entirely on process and not on product.
This year we are launching the Cohan Collective Development Week, a seven-day residency for which three of the four pairs of choreographers and composers, plus dancers and musicians, from the 2016 residency have been invited to participate. The artists will spend a week focusing on a single collaboration initiated at last year’s Cohan Collective. The Development Week will offer the collaborative teams time and space to steep themselves in one partnership, creating material as they work towards a single finished piece. All collaborators will be mentored by Robert Cohan and Eleanor Alberga.
At the end of the residency, the artists will present their work at an informal sharing for an invited audience at Lilian Baylis theatre at Sadler’s Wells.