On the 8th and 9th March, designer James Perkins and lighting designer Gareth Green joined me at Deda in Derby to try out some design ideas for the development of Matters of Life and Death later in the year.

Thoughts from the end of the first phase of research for 'Matters of Life and Death', August 2010

At the end of last week, we had our first sharing of work in progress, and those who came were kind enough to contribute feedback, some of which I will integrate here.

So this week, one of my big discoveries has been the work of Bill Viola, particularly Five Angels for the Millennium (2001), thanks to Anna Williams, my choreographic mentor for this project, and Eckhard Thiemann, who suggested this and other references after our first sharing of work in progress at Moving East last Friday.

Last week I worked with Laure (Bachelot), Marie (Chabert) and Tom (Goodwin) to identify some key features of the movement vocabulary we will be using to devise our new piece, 'Matters of Life and Death', over the coming weeks.