Maynard Abercych is a resource for Dance and Movement Arts in Rural West Wales.
‘Dance first. Think later‘… ‘It’s the natural order.’ Samuel Beckett
We have been welcoming artists in residence here since 2009, below is a selection of artists documentation. Other artists who have spent time here at 2 Penrhiw are: Jennifer Monson (USA), Kirstie Simson, Rosemary Lee, Susan Schell(USA), Eva Karczag, Miranda Tufnell, Ben Stammers and Ceri Rhys Matthews, Thomas Goodwin and Katye Coe, Jessica Lerner, Ray Jacobs, Rachel Ligget, Mervyn Bradley and Chloe Shepherd/SiD, Sianed Jones, Yumino Seki and Siobhan Davies.
Maynard is a place for everybody to gather and dance together, sharing different ways of being in our bodies, as equals in a changing world. Maynard invites communities and artists to engage in making friendships, making change, making belonging, making dances, and making home in our bodies.
We are interested in how an engagement with different artists might begin to reveal the complexity of ‘community’. What is the nature of communities that emerge through dancing together? and how do we provide activities for these communities and understandings to develop in a rural area?
We are committed to creating contexts where families, children, elders and differently- abled people are a central and familiar presence. This might be through participating in our regular Twmpath events; at family workshops, where artists share practices with all ages; a festival or a residency, where an artist may share their practices with a diverse audience; and as part of our future plans, where people from this community perform in an artist’s work.
Jennifer Monson- Dance Artist (iLand, New York) Residencies 2013/2016
'My time at the 2 Penrhiw residency was a resonate opportunity for me to settle, to feel the lived history that arises through the shape of home-a small staircase, cozy sitting room, a door out the kitchen that beckons one outside to take a walk down to the Cych, through fields, communing with cows and sheep and traversing fields and streams. It was a time to listen, reflect and explore new avenues of research that arose in the rich conversations and meals shared with Simon and Stirling. The residency offered a balance of the quotidian joys of life with the intensive focus of creative research. The flow of time, work, movement and rest was conducive for me to digest, restore and invigorate my work. I felt a sense of quiet communion and companionship that is so valuable for my practice ...'
