Broken Chords 2008
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Cover photo on Projects page by Hugo Glendinning, from publicity for Let The Mountains Lead You To Love
Broken Chords 2005
A visually striking portrait of breaking up and breaking down. Heartbreaking in its honesty, full of dark humour, sublime dancing and playful theatricality. Performers slide in and out of control, struggle to hold on to each other and hold on to the work. Bleakly comic and beautifully tragic.
Review By Barbara Brian, EdinburghGuide.com, 12 November 2005 - "Anger erupts. Chairs are hurled about indiscriminately. Couples start to argue violently. A woman (TC Howard) bursts onto the stage wielding a gun and starts to terrorise the troupe into obedience but her dictatorial stance is gloriously transformed into great humour as she farcically orders them around."
Review By Barry Woods, ScottishTheatre.co.uk, 12 November 2005 - " . . . with this in mind, the piece is daring and innovative and thrives on a masterful delivery from TC Howard (on the verge of a nervous breakdown) and the dynamic musicians and dancers who share the stage."
Punch Drunk 2004
Emotionally raw and darkly humorous, set against a backdrop of decaying theatrical grandeur, performers move like ghosts slipping in and out of half-remembered acts, stuck in a theatre they cannot leave. It’s a piece about acts and the act of performance.
Review by Elizabeth Schwyzer, The British Theatre Guide, 1 November 2004 -
"VDT’s performers are a motley crew, and from their diversity they derive real theatrical strength. From the technique and explosive energy of the exquisitely tiny powerhouse TC Howard to the lanky, facially expressive lounging and strutting of Patrycja Kujawska, each performer’s unique skills and strengths are exploited in a unifying whole.
Howard’s solo performed in a puddle of bathwater and wet confetti is poignant, sexy, dripping with desire and regret. Minutes later, she’s playing an accordion, head thrown back, gargling water. It’s no show for those who crave continuity, linear development, or ‘serious work’."
Let The Mountains Lead You To Love 2003
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A rich and playful look at love in its various forms, full of vitality, innocence and a healthy dose of cynicism. Releasing six extraordinary performers from the restrictions of the city to indulge in the confusions of their sexuality, the puzzles of attraction and the joys of fake folk-dancing,
Review by Jenny Gilbert, The Independent on Sunday, 6 April 2003 -
"Young women in tight cocktail dresses and perilous party heels swoop and flutter like bluebirds, exciting themselves quite as much as the lovers who yearn for them. Women fall for women (or at least try Sapphic romance for size), men test their feelings for each other and re-examine old loves turned sour, old friendships struggle to accommodate change."
On The House 2002
Dancers - TC Howard and Janusz Orlik
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A looped sound and video installation inhabiting gallery spaces interrupted by a live danced duet. The action takes place around, under and on top of a precarious glass house on stilts with the audience free to place themselves anywhere amongst the video imagery and the dry leaves that cover the floor. It is an intimate and disorientating secret universe where real, filmed, choreographed and imagined time frames kaleidoscope into one. A dark and beautiful study of a complex and passionate relationship.
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“An extraordinary sense of environment, a total theatrical experience. Unrivalled speed and agility” Venue Magazine, Bristol
Drop Dead Gorgeous 2001
Danced upon a tonne and a half of slate, Drop Dead Gorgeous is set in a stark, painful and broken landscape bombed out by men with guns, missiles, bombs and hate. The piece explores how pain acts as an instrument for shifting consciousness, where people are compelled to act out their worst nightmares and come face to face with their grim reality.
Review by Clare Jones, Sheffield Telegraph, 2 November 2001 -
"Bodies are always collaterally damaged in war and the physical struggle in this performance was made brilliantly clear, as the dancers fought their way through the rubble and debris covering the stage.
TC Howard’s heart-breaking portrait of a victim abused by faceless rapists offered just one view of damage."
Caravan Of Lies 2000
Set in an old style circus ring the show where death defying feats, rapturous applause and glittering costumes do nothing to mask the broken dreams, the backstage bickering, ridicule, mistrust and exhaustion of its players.
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Review by Mary Brennan, The Herald, 9 February 2001 - "A wild-child whose innocence is leering abused by Lodge, but protected by Howard (the sequence where she “frees” Lubos, putting her in pointe-shoes and transforming her into a ballerina is painfully moving, as is her own compelling solo, where every movement, both on the trapeze and on the stage) conveys the anguish of divided loyalties, among them her feelings for the gentle Shenton.
"It’s not often you find such energy, emotions, and interwoven layers of well-structured meaning and imagery, but Charlotte Vincent and her outstanding company really excel in getting under the skin of personal dilemmas that we can all recognise. They make us all feel we are on that tightrope."
Falling From The High Rise Of Love 1999​
A collision course of emotions, both punishing and amusing, where people made indecent choices, revealed their most tawdry secrets and failed to cope.
Review by Maggie Lett, Sheffield Telegraph - "The evening is rescued by a dazzling performance by TC Howard, whose drunken women is a treat in both comic and dance terms."
In Optimo City 1997
A duet devised and performed with Charlotte Vincent - an exploration of text and movement dealing with issues of gender identity, cliches of love, getting lost and finding yourself alone in a familiar world.
Fairytale 2006 - 6-8 yrs and family
Co-directed by Charlotte Vincent and TC Howard (dancer/associate artist/education officer - also led a series of show related workshops for audience members.)
Set in an extraordinary hideaway built from other people’s junk, two mischievous battling sisters spend their days and nights doing whatever they want, getting into self made scrapes, creating mad inventions, playing, surviving and testing their relationship.
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Note from TC -
The concept and emotionality of the work drew heavily on my experiences of working with street children in the third world whilst working with David Glass on the Lost Child Project. I spent many months working alongside children, some who lived on the junk heaps and called them home, some preferring to lay out newspaper on the floor even when a bed was offered. It was their life and it was what they knew. I witnessed with awe, from my western and privileged viewpoint, their unrelenting need to survive, their determination, appetite to play and to find fun. Children all over the world are told fairy stories and invent more stories; we all learn and face life through our adventure and play.
During the initial phase of research and development Aurora Lubos and myself created our own hideaway in an underground studio. We built a home of found things and hung out there for two weeks; set ourselves tasks, danced, got bored, laughed hysterically, invented, dug, threw things at one another, felt sad and played.
Anjali 2005
Co-choreographers TC Howard and Charlotte Vincent
Three lads steaming through an evening of alcohol-fuelled bonding, posturing and nostalgia in a romantic lament that examined the conflict between the brash, public male persona and the often-hidden masculine sensitivity within.
Body Ink 1998
Dancer - part of a creative team workshopping textual, visual and movement based ideas with Charlotte Vincent, photographer Paula Summerly and writer/poet Keith Jafrate to produce a one off publication designed to explore the body through the visual and photographic work
Shifting Intimacies 2005
Dancer - TC Howard
solo dancer for the collaboration between Keith Armstrong, Guy Webster and Charlotte Vincent shown at the Brisbane Festival and the ICA in London. An immersive interactive art work to be experienced by one participant at a time, inviting differing states of meditation, exploration, stillness and play, creating states of shifting balance that produce a heightened awareness of the body.
Rust 2004
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A dancer on a three week research project bringing together Nesta Fellow Gerard Renvez and Vincent Dance Theatre on a collaborative project, exploring interactive performance techniques, video projection, photography, sculpture and dance around ideas of rust, corrosion, water, dust, machinery and industrial techniques.
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Note from TC -
Just married the week before, my husband and I were caught in the Boxing Day Tsunami in Sri Lanka. It was a honeymoon that changed our lives. We were fortunate, we were alive and could return to Sheffield with our futures ahead of us. Within days I was back in the studio with a team of artists collaborating on Rust. For me the exploration began a process of unravelling and recognising the grief, shame and resulting trauma of the tsunami, which at that time was impossible to explain with any coherent words.
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The photos below are some of the figures I formed from paper, which were exposed to water coloured by sediments from the ground and old metal objects
DANSOPOLIS COMMUNITY DANCE FESTIVAL 2004
TAKING FLIGHT, LEEDS
Six weeks working with a diverse collection of groups in and around Leeds including Mind the Step (special needs), Primary Schools, Over 50’s, recent dance graduates and family groups to construct an intergenerational inclusive evening of dance that explored notions of taking flight. Commissioned as part of Yorkshire Dance’s Dansopolis Community Dance Festival, performed at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.
Bridlington Waltz 2003
A community project designed to encourage people who are new to dance to become performers and audience members in a large scale celebratory event held in the Royal Ballroom at Bridlington Spa. It involved working with 75 intergenerational mixed ability performers over a five week period, cheered on by 150 audience members and a final free-for-all dance with live party music from The Dizzy Club.