This is LOVE

This is a project devoted to Celine Dion. A work of absolute devotion to the woman of love. 200 songs and 198 about love. Why love? Love is the root of all. Love totally eclipses questions of good and bad. We want to fill the stage with love. And dance. Two of the biggest most pervasive activities known to humanity. Why specifically Celine Dion? She's the ultimate commercial manifestation of love. She is a product of publicity machines and mega-mogul studio execs strategically being the architects of her career. Under the guise of love. A beautiful marriage of the mainstream and the deep deep human soul. So we dance to Celine. We dance - because we want to and because we have to. We get back to basics in our bedrooms and kitchens. Making dance within the constraints of having day jobs and no space. Bumping into coffee tables and chair legs. Surrounded by comfort and familiarity. Like teenagers we watch our favourite dance genre movies and learn the material and make them a part of our dance. We think about dance on a level where it is rife in society. Beyond the proscenium and into the TV. And like the rest of the world we get big kicks out of putting it on YouTube - so you can see how this performance came about. So that when we re-enter the theatre people have a choice to engage in the project so that the dance they see on the stage is actually much much more than just stage time. It's blogs and it's texts and it's stories and it's pictures. It's coming home from work and dancing to a song because that feeling of falling in love is overflowing so bad it must be danced out and filmed. The performance is inseparable from it's creation. It's not cryptic - it's simple and it's beautiful. It's not afraid to be embarrassed about taking pleasure. Hasn't every one had a glass of wine and danced around in their living room to music they would never admit to owning? Now we are ready to extract these and see what happens when it enters a studio/theatre. It won't fit. It will be weird but it'll be dance - the ultimate dance. A love dance.

These videos are works in themselves.

They are embracing a new aesthetic of communication rampaging through society in a way I can only compare to a bushfire. It is supremely low grade in quality - can you look beyond this? YouTube is there and it's free and it serves a purpose. And i use it. And I also believe that it is beautiful. Hollywood is not necessary here. These videos are totally embarrassing to those in them. But they are accurate depictions of how I am choosing to make my dance. This is how and what will find itself in new contexts on stage. This is where this came from - a bedsit in Kensington, a bedroom in Hackney, Sadlers Wells on a Sunday afternoon, Green Park - all in London. All not paid for. Max rehearsal time was an hour and a half - these videos are the last five minutes. They have absolutely no economy. They are wrapped in love. They are all totally frivolous and totally charming. What you see is exactly what it is context and content wise. No more mysterious methods of dance production - we revel in the world accessible technology - and totally drag our high art into our bedrooms to sit along side the dutty wine, the stookie and any other dance phenomenon you've discovered on YouTube. The unpolished is brilliant.

DANCER FEVER - new dance work

Got to http://www.dirtydancingfever.blogspot.com
to check out my new piece DANCE FEVER.

Let's Talk About Love 41 - Performance Part1

Let's Talk About Love 40 - Performance Part2

Let's Talk About Love 39 - Performance Part3

jessyka vs celine

How others feel about Let's Talk About Love... on the web.

CLICK HERE

Links to Let's Talk About Love as discussed on the web...

Some links to the FLAILBOX blog. A blog pertaining to all things to do with British Dance... Demystifying dance for the flailing punter

Click here for a review for the three performances of the evening at Resolution! 01 Feb 2007.

Click here for a review of Let's Talk About Love premiered on 01 Feb 2007.

I know it's really tacky but.... helll why the fuck not. It's there so we might as well flog it...

REVIEW OF THE PREMIERE OF LET'S TALK ABOUT LOVE PROJECT. 01 FEB AT THE PLACE IN LONDON. WAS A GREAT NIGHT. ANY IDEAS ABOUT FUTURE SHOWS THEN CONTACT JESSYKA. jessyka_wg@yahoo.co.uk

Vandella Dance, Linda Gieres, Jessyka Watson-Galbraith

Vandella Dance meets Skank Agenda My right hand clutches this grenade

Linda Gieres White Moment

Jessyka Watson-Galbraith Let's Talk About Love



Working Process is an on-going exploration of Maday Kinga’s human limitations. She perches on a white cube under a spotlight for a meditation on physicality – hers and ours; her nudity magnified the minimalist movement that’s often lost behind clothing. The layering of stillness and bodily positions tested audience concentration a little, but this searching solo was deeply felt and performed with integrity. The nudity was no gimmick, but addressed the timeless necessity of live performance and the body.


Linda Gieres and Alicia Weihl ticked the boxes for embodied, mature technique, satisfying those who delight in precision and clarity of line, even if the classical appreciation of beauty and harmony meant this work broke no new boundaries. Their movements may have lacked heart, clogging up their rib cage, neck and head, but the dynamics and spatial relations emitted more interesting interpretations. The Arvo Pärt soundtrack was all too familiar; White Moment was expertly danced, but the choreography and concept felt as cold and academic as a museum.


Even if she didn’t lay down the usual markers of contemporary dance in form and style, Jessyka Watson-Galbraith was true to its spirit: push the audience and question expectations. Deep and meaningless, she led her twelve dancers in a gushing lip-sync and jazz extravaganza to three sick-making Céline Dion songs. Let’s Talk about Love made the audience a mirror to live and filmed personal dancing, the kind you do in private – part catharsis, part piss-take. Inwardly cringing, we laughed out loud to a wilderness of emotional hair-thrashing and diabolical choreography. The evening was made by this joy of warped reality in a dance-world near stagnation.

Alexandra Baybutt



Just when you think Resolution! has no surprises left up its sleeve, along comes a project devoted to Celine Dion. Yes, Ms. Titanic herself. Jessyka Watson-Galbraith’s Let’s Talk About Love was clearly one chanteuse short of the full power ballad, and one of the funniest dance experiences to grace The Place stage in many a month.

Emoting and gyrating like the cast of High School Musical giddy on a cask of rum, Watson-Galbraith and her eleven fools for love ‘interpreted’ a trio of Dion belters with an open-hearted élan that so ingenuously blended sincerity and satire it was impossible not to fall under its spell. The ragged, under-rehearsed feel of its semi-showbiz musical moves actually worked in its favour, catching the feel of dancing round your bedroom with a hairbrush in your hand. Weird. But kinda wonderful.

By contrast White Moment, a duo by Linda Gieres, was too calculated and controlled for its own good. Performed by Gieres and Alicia Weihl, it elegantly sketched out an echoing relationship between two women, who may – or may not – have been two halves of the same personality. But the combination of Arvo Pärt’s studiedly melancholic score and Gieres’ musical yet over-literal choreography robbed the dance of any sense of spontaneity, rendering the end result academic more than emotional.

Among the responses to a dance piece, ‘nice arse’ is probably not the most appropriate. But how else was Timea Maday Kinga expecting us to respond to her naked solo Working Process, in which she exhibited her slowly moving body like a statue in an art gallery? The programme offered some buff guff about ‘communication between yourself and your physical state’ but, with its tasteful lighting and focus on self control, Kinga’s Butoh-influenced piece was artless in its artifice, ultimately concealing more about its creator than it actually revealed.

Keith Watson

Let's Talk About Love 38 - Final Rehearsal 3

Let's Talk About Love 37 - Final Rehearsal 2

Let's Talk About Love 36 - Final Rehearsal 1

Let's Talk About Love 35 - Pirated Pillow Talk

Let's Talk About Love 34 - AUSTRALIA DAY SPECIAL

Let's Talk About Love 33 - Pillow Talk 7

Let's Talk About Love 32 - Pillow Talk 6

Let's Talk About Love 31

Pillow Talk

It's pillow talk. It's Britney Spears gyrating underneath sheets in one of her film clips wearing a faux fur vest - Elton John and David Furnish with time on their hands laughing like children, living like lovers, rolling like thunder under the covers. It's taking photos of your lover in bed, it's making home porn and getting a rude shock because it's so shit. It's someone tickling your toes in bed. Footsies under the table. It's love. It's intimacy and the reason why you sometimes don't care about brushing your teeth before ending up in bed.

dance videos + xmas + youtube

i have been making dance videos - totally indulgent and crappy ones but they are totally a part of the ethos of my project. that is not caring about quality and placing the emphasis on content. what is actually there and what does that represent about actual life. not inflated theatricality that is throwing a blanket (and holds a pretence of superiority and knowingness about life) over the day to day existence/life. it is hard see the tenderness or frivolity or contradictions of life in so many works i see in theatres.

so i want to fall back into the darkness of how dance can actually affect/exists in real life as opposed to being a hyper representation of real life. this is exactly what these videos are. i suppose it appears conceited or show-offy in a way. but hell if i am alone on xmas day with a little glass of wine a big stereo and a new xmas shirt and full of beans i definitely would be taking a spin around this big empty room. so there it is. i see no shame in using myself as an example. i might be a little embarrassed but life is short. so i don't care.

what are the implications of youtube on dance? what does it do to the art of dance in the theatre when quite brilliant dance works, published to the whole world for free satisfy the criteria of a good dance work? clever concept, wholehearted performance, insane virtuosity in many instances, clear structure. it also presents a lot of things that are missing in dance in theatres and also bypasses so much of the crap to get to the heart of the matter.

a pirate version of my own work. a poor quality reproduction of a very bad quality video of a crappy dance. that is how i choose to use youtube on xmas day. it adds a tinge of sadness to an overall sad day.

Let's Talk About Love 30

Let's Talk About Love 29 - Pillow Talk 5

Let's Talk About Love 28 - Pillow Talk 4

Let's Talk About Love 27 - Pillow Talk 3

Let's Talk About Love 26

Let's Talk About Love 25 - Pillow Talk 2

Let's Talk About Love 24

Let's Talk About Love 23

Let's Talk About Love 22

Let's Talk About Love 21

Let's Talk About Love 21

Let's Talk About Love 20 - In Loving Memory of Pi Pi

Let's Talk About Love 19

Let's Talk About Love 18

Let's Talk About Love 17

Let's Talk About Love 16 - Pillow Talk

Let's Talk About Love 15

Let's Talk About Love 14 - Boxing Day Special

Let's Talk About Love 13 - Boxing Day Special

Let's Talk About Love 12 - Pirate Xmas Special

Let's Talk About Love 11 - Xmas Special

Let's Talk About Love 10 - Xmas Special

Let's Talk About Love 9 - Xmas Special

Let's Talk About Love 8 - The Audition

Lets Talk About Love 7

Lets Talk About Love 6

Let's Talk About Love 5

Let's Talk About Love 4

Let's Talk About Love 3

Let's Talk About Love 2

Let's Talk About Love 1