Artistic Director:
Lisa May Thomas
Marketing and Social Media Communication:
Pippa Le Grand
Finance:
Bébhinn Thornton Cronin
MP Board Members:
Suneeta Sellers, Dr Chris Lewis-Smith, Tom Morris, Lucie Spurr, Verity Macintosh
May Productions is a company specialising in participatory and community performance, dance film and immersive performance with digital technologies.
The company strives to make work that is inclusive and accessible: acknowledging, supporting, and sharing difference.
The work produced by May Productions draws on ideas and practices which investigate and challenge normative notions of the sensorial body, in particular how sensing bodies are mediated, extended and disrupted by technology, and the relationship between body and place, body and environment.
About May Productions
People
Collaborators
Creative Technologists:
Clarice Hilton, All Seeing Eye
Sound Design and Composition:
Tom Mitchell, Jo Hyde
Dancers:
Anne-Gaelle Thiriot, Ben McEwen, Will Dickie, Verena Schneider, Bryn Thomas, Ania Varez, Laila Diallo, Fernanda Munoz-Newsome, Alice Smith
Audio Description and Inclusive Access Practitioner:
Holly Thomas
Researcher:
Harshadha Balasubramanian
Photography:
Alice Hendy, Leticia Valverdes
Film and Cinematography:
Adam D.J. Laity, Razaka Firmager, Jonathan Eve
Production:
Katherine Hall, Pilar Santelices
Projects
The Soma Project (2021-22)
The Soma Project explores the concept of ‘somatic agency’ – our experience of and capacity to sense and feel our living and moving bodies, highlighting the perception gap between seeing and feeling through the use of VR technologies.
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Unlocking Touch (2020-22)
Unlocking Touch is a participatory binaural (audio) experience, designed for listeners to encounter in their own homes. Through incredible sound design, an emotionally gripping narrative, and gentle invitations to engage in simple physical practices, the very rooms in which the audience live become the setting for this unique and unusual story. It is a ‘touch journey’ through the Covid19 pandemic, a story of restriction and expansion, a story about hope and connectedness.
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VR and Dance-Somatic Practices as tools for Embodied Perception and Living Well in our Environment (2019)
This documentary highlights the experience of visually impaired dancer Holly Thomas with Soma, a participatory performance which combines multi-person Virtual Reality (VR) technology and movement-based practices.
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String-Figure Dances (2019)
String Figure Dances #1 is a short exploratory movement score which transposes and choreographs ‘string figures’ from hands to bodies, offering a way in which to feel the dynamics of other bodies through space.
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The Touch Diaries (2015-16)
The Touch Diaries is a community dance project exploring the value and role of touch in people’s lives and led to the production of a short dance screen work.
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Play VideoView teaser trailer
Shipwrecked at Chisenhale Dance (2013)
Using elements of film, live performance and pervasive objects, over 4 days Lisa May Thomas has been joined in the studio by dance artist and improviser Anne-Gaelle Thiriot, artist/maker/technologist Nikki Pugh and musician Bruno Humberto to research ideas around sea stories, death, grief and immortality to create a structure of improvised live scores based on an original short film by Thomas There is a shipwreck in my bones.
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Grassblades (2012)
Lisa May Thomas in collaboration with composer Andy Pink and a team of dancers and musicians delve into the world of T.S. Elliot’s ‘The Wasteland’ and explore the notion of touch and accent through improvised movement scores.
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There is a Shipwreck in My Bones (2011)
This work stems from a collection of writing and poetry by the artist inspired by stories of the sea. From both afar and from within the intimate spaces of the dancers, a series of movement conversations are set against the backdrop of the sea. Time and states shifts from one scene to another and moments of contact and tenderness are juxtaposed with a sense of solitude.
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Challenge 59 (2007)
Challenge 59 is a dance and film project directed by Jo Rhodes and co-produced by East London Dance. The project empowers school children and their teachers to actively engage with health and wellbeing issues within their communities through the use of dance and film.
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Projects in development
VR duet
This is an experimental film, a study into the sensory experience of VR technology. It is a duet between two dancers which moves across physical and virtual terrains, using point of view captures for each dancer and for both the physical and virtual spaces they inhabit.
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My Octopus Body
Social interactive immersive performance.
Sandmaidens
Short dance film.
Dressmaker
Dance animation.
Too Dangerous for Swimming
Screenplay.
Two Sisters
Screenplay and immersive, cinematographic experience.
Writing
Thomas, Lisa May 2022
Employing a dance somatic methodological approach to VR to investigate the sensorial body across physical-virtual terrains
for Special Issue “Creative Methods and Tools for Multimodal Technologies” in Multimodal Technologies and Interaction
DOI: Read now
Thomas, Lisa May 2021
Returning to the Body
Body, Space & Technology, 21(1), pp. 1–29
DOI: Read now
Thomas, Lisa May 2021
Reflection on bodies in lockdown
Multimodality & Society, Pages 88-96 Volume 1(1)
DOI: Read now
Thomas, Lisa May and David R. Glowacki
Seeing and feeling in VR: bodily perception in the gaps between layered realities
International Journal for Performance Art and Digital Media (2018), Pages 145-168 Volume 14 (2)
DOI: Read now
Thomas, Lisa May
Figuring: Bodies, Materiality and Touch in a Multi-person Virtual Reality – Developing an Ethics of Care / Touch in Participatory Performance Practice
UCL Digital InTouch Lab, (2019)
Blog post/thinking piece: Read now
Thomas, Lisa May
Somatic sensibilities in VR: crossovers with pain
Somatics, Pain and Technology network, Coventry University, (2020)
Blog post: Read now
Thomas, Lisa May
Investigating the somatic body in virtual reality : exposing and exploring the perception gap between seeing and feeling in participatory performance
University of Bristol, (2021)
PhD thesis: Read now
Thomas, Lisa May
Virtual Connections
Interalia Magazine, (2016)
Article feature: Read now
Services for Hire
Working at the intersection of art and technology, May Productions produces work that is participatory, rich and engaging. The company takes a practice-based and embodied approach to designing interactive experiences which are inclusive, welcoming and positive.
We are available for consultancy, creative direction, and production for performance work, particularly which incorporates a digital element; choreography and movement direction for film, TV and theatre; dance-film direction and production; and designing for VR-specific user experiences. We also offer mentoring services and student placements across dance, immersive technology and performance industries.
Contact
Email:
info@may-productions.co.uk
Studio:
LA Studio,
24 Long Ashton Road,
Bristol, BS41 9LD
In Residence:
Pervasive Media Studio,
Watershed, 1 Canons Road,
Bristol, BS1 5TX