Stephen Eyre – Composer, Soundscape Artist
“I hope the music helps us to peer deeply and far back into the history of this place, to think of the many hundreds of generations that would have formed ‘settlement’ over many centuries.
I have come to appreciate that even in the very early days, its wrong to think of our ancestors without the complexities of life force that we claim for ourselves. I hope the music helps us to bind ourselves to that complexity as the current, living generation – not separate or different but united in a life force and what it means to live here, under the clumps.”
Dionne Freeman – Visual Artist – Visual Art Coordinator
“I have been creating daily drawings for my visual investigations into how I can interpret the Dyke Hills landscape. Using a range of approaches and materials from clay to pencils I have been exploring how I experience the space and how this is constantly evolving. My daily record of drawings will help inform my large scale piece for the HENGE22 event”.
Sophia Stewart -Liberty – Artist, Visual arts team
“With the first of these studies I was thinking, after centuries of attrition, how like a Capability Brown landscape the flooded Dyke Hills look: designed purely for aesthetics and romance. With the second I was wondering how many people over hundreds of generations had stood, in a similar place, at the top of the Dyke Hills, low winter sun behind them, looking at their shadow on a skeletal hawthorn”
Maria Robertson – Drama, Director
“The Henge 22 community project has offered so many exciting opportunities to me as a director. The Whittenham Clumps and the Dyke Hills are an organic acting space that call out to be both explored and experienced dramatically.
I hope to bring to life, through movement and speech, the voices of the early settlers here in this magical area of Oxfordshire. The Settlers, through the drama skills of the actors, will bring the Circle of Life to full fruition, birth, marriage, and death will be explored in a physical and choral style of performance.
This will be a challenge within this ‘theatre in the round’ space, but hopefully my vision will be theatrically, visually, and dramatically exciting to all”.
Michelle Uezzell – Dance, Choreography
“I am delighted to be involved in the first Henge22 dance performance, and have been spending the last few weeks planning the theme, costumes and choreography before rehearsals start with the dancers after the Easter break. It has been very valuable to visit the site this week to get a feel for the environment and to see the actual size and placement of the Henge stones which will form the performance space.
It is such a special site and I believe that incorporating instruments, materials and lighting into the choreography will enable us to provide a truly visual spectacle to portray the history and heritage of the area”.
Adrian Brooks – Artist, Installation
“I find the ancient Dyke Hills and surrounding sites alive with a Spirit of Place. My aim during HENGE22 is to make the Double Ring Henge live again, if only for a short time. Like the original it will act as a performance area, but unlike the original it will glow blue in the evening light, and be decorated with figures, animals and tools, reflecting the life of the Settlers.
The Dyke Hills form a natural amphitheatre, so I hope my installation, with the performances and soundscape, will create an unforgettable experience. I am grateful to Tim Cook, who has worked with me on the lighting and securing of the rock forms, and without whom it would have remained on the drawing board.
Jill Battson – Poet Performer
Jill Battson is a double JUNO Award nominee and an internationally published poet and poetry activist. She has been widely featured in literary journals and anthologies in North America and the UK and she has performed her work around the globe. Her first of four books, Hard Candy, was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award. Jill has written several plays and solo works, including Ecce Homo – an enhanced monologue for dance and voice. She wrote the libretti for two short operas – Netsuke and Ashlike on the Cradle of the Wind – produced by Toronto’s Tapestry New Opera. Her third book of poems, Dark Star Requiem, is the libretto for the oratorio Dark Star Requiem which opened the 2010 Luminato International Arts Festival.
Christopher Baines – Photography and Video
Having taken photographs and made videos for Henge19 on the Hurst Water Meadow, I am delighted to return to document Henge22 in the atmospheric landscape of the Dyke Hills.
I helped to make the introductory video for this year’s festival:
David Burns – Poet
The challenge for me is to create poems that are short and can be painted onto the sculpted stones, but which still have substance. Beyond that, the poetry must speak for itself.
*
Between the stones
I almost smile, where
a scream of swifts
rips through light and air
above your sweet bones
*
each long shadow
pegged by its stone
to the meadow
*
Anna Dillon
Jane McDonald
Landscape and memory are starting points for prints, in which I use very direct processes to record ideas. I have walked on The Dyke Hills and the Wittenham Clumps for many years and it is still exciting to catch glimpses of these monumental places as I travel in this part of Oxfordshire.
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