About
Set amongst rows of wooden chairs, with a huge chandelier hanging overhead, Broken Chords is a visually striking portrait of breaking up and breaking down by an international, multi-tasking ensemble of performers.
Heartbreaking in its honesty, full of dark humour, sublime dancing and playful theatricality, Broken Chords shifts effortlessly between the bleakly comic and the beautifully tragic, charting the director’s devastating divorce with rebellious and hysterical results.
Teasing the audience at every turn, Broken Chords represents Vincent Dance Theatre’s coming of age as a company that has consistently surprised, challenged and delighted audiences.
Broken Chords was originally commissioned by Sheffield Theatres and the Nuffield Theatre Lancaster and funded by Arts Council England and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.
Broken Chords was about the most harrowing yet inspiring transmutation of personal pain into artistic achievement that I have encountered.
New York Times
Credits
Directed and Designed by
Charlotte Vincent
Artistic Director & Chief Executive (She/Her)
Charlotte formed Vincent Dance Theatre (VDT) in 1994 and has directed all the company’s collaborative work to date, on stage and on film. Vincent has also designed the work since 2005 and performed with the company until 2002. Vincent’s distinctive, contemporary choreography ‘stages ideas’ and embeds her own and her collaborators’ lived experience within the work, raising awareness of personal and political issues, breaking down the barriers between professional and non-professional performers and in VDT’s film installation and engagement spaces, between audience and participant.
Vincent is recognised as a sector leader in movement based socially engaged creative practice and creative health, particularly around her work with care-experienced young people and women at risk, championing gender equality and advocating for best practice to support parents and carers working in the performing arts. Her pioneering work on film ensired VDT were ‘covid ready and able to work through Covid and consequently allows Vincent’s work to be purposefully ‘applied’ in non-arts settings as well within conventional arts venues and settings.
Charlotte is an experienced speaker, lecturer and Mentor, working with early and mid-career artists to develop their creative practice and production work. Vincent has also worked as a director, dramaturg, and facilitator for other artists and companies, most notably Two Destination Language (Near Gone, winner Total Theatre Awards for Innovation and Experimentation 2014), Keira Martin (Here Comes Trouble Sadlers Wells Wild Card and Good Blood) and facilitating early R&D for Sue MacLaine’s Can I Start Again Please (2013).
In the past, Vincent has performed and collaborated with Professor Liz Aggiss as V&A Artefacts, curated an inaugural 4-week festival of experimental performance practice, Juncture at Yorkshire Dance in Leeds and co-hosted The Table, a forum to nurture dialogue across disciplines between established female artists with Dr Claire Macdonald. Charlotte sat on the Artists Advisory Group at Yorkshire Dance for several years and Steering Group for Dance UK’s National Choreographic Conference in 2013. Most recently she has been a driving force behind the development of the London Road Network in Brighton, a collaborative group of organisations and individuals working towards deeper interaction between arts orgs and grassroots organisations in one of Brighton’s more deprived areas.
Vincent is Safeguarding Lead for VDT, trained in Trauma Informed Practice, Mental Health First Aid, therapeutic parenting, and First Aid. She completed a Clore Leadership Short Course (2010), the Clore Programme for CEO/Artistic Directors (2011) and Clore Brave Conversations Programme (2013). Vincent is also trained in FA Football Coaching.
Vincent has written chapters and been written about in several Routledge Publications (resources) and PhD’s, and her work Art of Attachment lies at the heart of Dr Cath Lambert‘s imminent publication Troubling Adoption.
In 2023, Dr Vincent gained a PhD in Performing Arts from Canterbury Christ Church University, reflecting on VDT’s socially engaged practice, supervised by Professor Angela Pickard, Director of the Sidney de Haan Centre for Arts and Health.
Dr Charlotte Vincent lives in Brighton with her son, who loves mountain biking, fishing and gaming.
Composed by
Additional music
Lighting Design
Costumes
Dramaturgy
Artistic Associate
Devised and Performed by
Aurora Lubos
Artistic Associate
As an independent artist she created solo performances “Knife, Horse and Stairs.”, “Unfinished” and “Zanzibar”, and installation/performances “Still Alive” (2011) and “Food Cycle” (2011), ” Four corners” (2010), ” .No 1″ (2003), and several short animations “winter 2010”. In 2005 she was nominated to The Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. In the past she has worked extensively with Dance Theatre of Gdansk and Dada von Bzdülöw. She collaborated with Avi Kaiser, Tatiana Baganowa, Jerzy Mazzoll, Bronek Duży. With other three artist Jacek Staniszewski, Oskar Martin and Patrycja Kujawska she co-founded KLM’S Group and created “Te Takie Te”.
Aurora first came across VDT’s work when Charlotte was invited to Gdansk to workshop choreographic ideas as part of the Baltic University of Dance Winter Explosion festival. For VDT Aurora has performed in Caravan of Lies (1999), made and toured Drop Dead Gorgeous (2001), Let The Mountains Lead You To Love (2003), Punch Drunk (2004), Broken Chords (2005), Fairy Tale (2006), Look At Me Now, Mummy (2007), If We Go On (2009) and Motherland (2012-2014). Aurora lives in Poland.
Janusz Orlik
Artistic Associate
Janusz Orlik is a performer, choreographer and dance practitioner.
After graduating from ballet school in Warsaw, Janusz became a student of Brucknerkonservatorium Linz in Austria. During his studies he became a founding member of x.IDA Dance Co. and performed in productions created by Olga Cobos, Peter Mika, Catherine Guérin, Rebekka Murgi, Nicole Caccivio and Charlotte Vincent. Since 2002, Janusz has been a regular member of Vincent Dance Theatre. Simultaneously, Janusz creates his own choreographic works, including “Exérèse monobloc” (2004), “and thy neighbour as thyself” (2006), “Live on stage” (2008), “The Rite of Spring” (2011), “Insight” (2013) awarded by The Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland for Janusz Orlik and Joanna Leśnierowska for the best choreography granted as part of Polish Dance Platform 2014, “Mute” (2018) and “Koda (a tribute)” (2019). In 2007 he performed in “nothing” by towarzystwo gimnastyczne and in 2009 in “Happy” by Nigel Charnock, in which he was also involved as choreographer’s assistant.
In 2010 Janusz joined Kwaad Bloed Company performing in “Forces”. In 2011 he joined Nigel Charnock + Company to create new work “Ten Men”. In the same year, he collaborated and performed in “Reconstruction” by Joanna Leśnierowska and in 2012 with Gary Clarke performing in “Horsemeat”. In 2013 he began a collaboration with Daniel Landau. In 2014 he performed in “… (Rooms by the sea) from the series Exercises in Looking” by Joanna Leśnierowska, in “Unintended Consequences” by Sjoerd Vreugdenhil, “Back to bone” by Rosalind Crisp and “Collective Jumps” by Isabelle Schad. In 2015 he performed in an excerpt of “Shirtology” by Jérôme Bel. In 2016 he worked as a movement director in “Ojczyzna” (Polish Theatre in Poznań), collaborated and performed in Polish-Brazilian production “Yanka Rudzka Project: Leavining”. In 2018 he collaborated and performed in Polish-Brazilian-Georgian-Armenian production “Yanka Rudzka Project: Polyphonies”.
Janusz is an author of a series of dance and movement workshops “Moved” which in a cyclical form took place throughout 2018 in cooperation with various institutions in Poland. Other works include “High heels” for the ballet ensemble of The Opera House in Kraków, “Alpha” for The Contemporary Dance Scene in Poznań, “Adagio” for the Musical Theatre in Poznań. As well as performing Janusz delivers movement and choreographic workshops in various venues, dance schools and community centres in Poland and abroad. Scholar of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland in 2011 and 2018.
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Press
“An intelligently constructed and emotionally complex piece... an incredibly rich and satisfying journey.”
Jane Vranish, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 3 May 2010
“The blending of movement, live music, text and humor proved the wit and smarts of the company. Charlotte Vincent showed the ultimate bravery in leaving her broken heart on the stage.”
Adrienne Totino, Pittsburgh Dance Examiner, 3 May 2010
“In two full-evening works, British choreographer Charlotte Vincent matched desperation and humor in equal measure.”
Wendy Perron, Dance Magazine, 18 April 2010
“Rows of wooden chairs fill the stage. There must be over a hundred of them. A huge cluster of lightbulbs pretends to be a chandelier. Two soft chords are repeating: low-high, low-high. Patrycja Kujawska, barefoot and wearing a dark dress, makes her way slowly, bent over, between the first two rows of chairs.”
Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice, 3 April 2007
“Vincent’s 90-minute dance, performed on Thursday night as part of the Montclair State University’s adventurous Peak Performances series, is astonishingly original in the way it takes the familiar and turns it on its head. In the process Broken Chords shows the subtlety with which expressive movement, choreographed by an experienced and inspired artist, can cut to the heart of everyday reality.”
Jennifer Dunning, New York Times, 24 March 2007
“The vitality of Britain's independent dance scene is a thing of wonder to dance watchers abroad, particularly in America, where there is no equivalent of our Arts Council to help keep small companies afloat. Most weeks of the year the Robin Howard Dance Theatre at The Place hosts productions by those companies, whose work - tiny budgets notwithstanding - is often imaginatively ambitious.”
Jenny Gilbert, The Independent, 19 March 2007
“Broken Chords is hilarious and sad all at once. Amongst all the action, a woman (Aurora Lubos) makes several incompetent attempts to kill herself by various means – once by pulling her skirt over her head and smoking frantically under it, and when this inexplicably fails, ‘hanging’ herself by attaching her leg to a chair, putting her head in a suitcase and kicking the chair away – amazingly, this attempt fails too.”
Ann Williams, Ballet.co.uk Magazine, 30 March 2006
“Vincent pulls off a powerful feat - creating a moving portrait of grief while making us laugh.”
Judith Mackrell, The Guardian, 11 March 2006
“Charlotte Vincent has struck gold with Broken Chords, which unflinchingly charts the collapse of her marriage. This is her break-up album and, hewn from the heart, it’s a work of rare beauty.”
Keith Watson, Metro, 9 March 2006
“Charlotte Vincent (from Sheffield) is also a practitioner of physical theater, but with a far more disturbing emotional range. Her Broken Chords was about the most harrowing yet inspiring transmutation of personal pain into artistic achievement that I have encountered.”
John Rockwell, The New York Times, British Dance Review Edition, 25 February 2006