The Death of Birds
The audience are asked not to begin to die unexpectedly.
Writing about dance is like making fugues about architecture: The Death of Birds ten years on
The Death of Birds
We talk about the “language” of dance as if it were its own tongue, rather than a limping interpretation of signifiers in actual spoken or written language. This piece is an attempt to enact a full translation.
The Death of BirdsBirds
TelegraphGuardian
The Death of Birds
Words are a cheap tent for the solid stuff of meaning. The body is the tongue’s slave labourer; at best it is a donkey led by a carrot, at worst a fat worm writhing on a small, smart hook. Alphabets are tyranny. This piece draws on the very bones built, flesh filled. It is a sentence.
PLEASE NOTE: The audience are required to regulate their breathing. The audience are asked not to begin to die unexpectedly. Cramping and weeping are allowed but not encouraged.
The Death of BirdsObserver
Birds
The Death of Birds
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
The Death of Birds
Birds
The Death of Birds,
Birds
The Death of Birds
The Death of Birds
The Death of Birds
SoldiersBirdsBirds
The Death of Birds
Art is a crime against meaning because it so tyrannically insists on tying itself to the sorry strictures of our language. We have loaded ourselves with denotation wrought from outdated wastes of words. We infect ourselves.
When the rains come, they don’t come with intent; they cannot even be said to come because that suggests a goal of place. This is the first site of the colony.
You can slap me or you can kiss me and it is both the same thing and two entirely different stories. Your wrists are like novels to me. Your throat is a lullaby. It is always bodies and bodies do as they will do. What I feel is not thematic; it happens like weather.
The audience are requested not to start dying, yet.
The Death of Birds
sub rosa
Birds
The Death of Birds
The Death of Birds
The Death of Birds
Ash Walbrook, Sadler’s Wells, January 2024
Ka Bradley is an editor at Granta Books & Portobello Books. Her work has appeared in Queen Mob's Tea House, Minor Literature[s], The Offing and Shooter. She lives in London.
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