Our Oceans Are Drowning was made for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2011 supported by Dancebase. It was inspired by current environmental issues surrounding the melting of the polar ice-caps due to global warming.
Now in this moment, the smallest gesture can have the biggest consequence. Never has information flown so quickly and yet it is possible that we have never been less aware.
Our Oceans has been performed at Yorkshire Dance, Bodysurf Scotland, the Platform and at Unfix festival.
‘Rosalind Masson is a young Scottish dance-maker who constantly pushes herself to explore different styles, context, issues. There’s a visual poetry in Our Oceans Are Drowning , a thoughtful quality in Masson’s movement that lends subtlety and eloquence to her eco- sensitive message.’ – Mary Brennan
‘Masson’s style is always elegant: the severity of her message is tempered by the fluidity and finesse of her movement. Harsh sections of the soundtrack – using the sounds of planets, recorded by NASA, as a techno assualt – are matched by frantic, repetitious gestures. Like a re-imagining of voguing as post-modern dance, or a new version of Indian dance’s stylised poses, her urgent sequences capture the neurotic activity of a creature preparing to destroy its own home.’ Posted by Gareth K Vile, Tue 09 Aug 2011
‘ALMOST imperceptibly a soundscape becomes audible and the body (dancer/choreographer Rosalind Masson) begins to move, apparently randomly, before lapsing into stillness, again and again. Masson has the enviable ability to make each move look as though it happens organically, involuntarily, without a hint of anticipation of the next. Somehow the progression from her sporadic waking up to chaotic (in the mathematical sense) whirling movements succeeds in conveying the underlying feeling of climate change heralded in the title, The Oceans are Drowning. As the lights dim, the white coffee cups, now scattered, glow enigmatically …. It’s both an effective and a beautiful meld of science and dance.’ – Northings Art Magazine – Review by Jennie Macfie
