Festivals and Poetry

Two new Fiery Rockets Videos now live!



"The Edge" - a piece of spoken word based on a true story, by myself, Gemma Connell.

Photos by Francesca Hughes of The Big Walrus (www.bigwalrus.co.uk) and Music From Rainy Skies Magazine (www.musicfromrainyskiesmagazine.com)

An accompanying blog will follow at www.fieryrockets.blogspot.com



I reviewed the Manchester stop of the Dot-to-Dot Festival for Music From Rainy Skies (www.musicfromrainyskiesmagazine.com). Here's some footage from the bands we saw:

Patterns
Turbowolf
Wonder Villains
2:54
A Plastic Rose
Pure Love
Dog is Dead
The Drums

An accompanying blog will follow at www.fieryrockets.blogspot.com

Improvisation in Dance

A performance vlog detailing and showing some examples of improvisation techniques in dance.

An accompanying blog is now available at www.fieryrockets.blogspot.com

In the studio...

A short piece of improvisation playing around with mirrors and reflections in the studio. An accompanying blog will follow at www.fieryrockets.blogspot.com



A contemporary dance performed to an Untitled poem of mine. An accompanying blog will follow soon at www.fieryrockets.blogspot.com

UNLEASHED Rehearsal Footage - Broken Rose teach Warwick Street Vibe

Broken Rose Artistic Director, Gemma Connell, runs a 6 hour workshop for Warwick University's Street Vibe, in preparation for their yearly show UNLEASHED in March 2012.

If you'd like Gemma to run workshops such as this one for your group, please contact brokenroseperformance@googlemail.com

www.brokenrose.eu

Disclaimer: Broken Rose does not claim to own any of the music used in this video.

Music mixed by DJ ABD.

My Artistic Process - Writing a Poetry Set

I recently had to write a whole new set of poetry for a gig at Sandbar, Manchester, as part of Light In The Dark Entertainment's "Into The Light" Showcase.

In this video, I share the process of creating that set, as well as snippets of the final product.

If you'd like to see the full set, please go to www.youtube.com/brokenrosearts

An accompanying blog will follow soon at www.fieryrockets.blogspot.com

Poetry Set at Into The Light - Gemma Connell of Broken Rose Performing Arts

Broken Rose Artistic Director, Gemma Connell, performs a short poetry set as part of Into The Light, (22/02/2012) an event hosted by Light In the Dark Entertainment at Sandbar, Manchester.

Performing a set of brand new poems, Gemma provides her audience with an insight into different areas of the human psyche.

www.brokenrose.eu

Tour Diaries #1 - Manchester to Crewe

I've recently moved from my home in Manchester to Crewe, for career reasons. Follow my journey and explore my new house, which, as always, tells the story of my entirely crazy life!

Blog coming soon at http://www.fieryrockets.blogspot.com/

Four NEW Fiery Rockets Videos now live!

Four NEW Fiery Rockets Videos now live!

"Breaking A Rose" - The Career of a Professional Artist/Producer



A look into the career of an Artist/Producer.

Dancer, Choreographer, Writer, Director, Producer and Project Manager Gemma Connell of Broken Rose Performing Arts - http://www.brokenrose.eu/

In this video, I'll take you through my career to date and offer advice for any budding artist or producers who'd like to make it in the industry.

The Making of "Flow!" - Broken Rose Performing Arts and Contact Theatre




Producer and Dancer Gemma Connell discusses the making of Open Stage Spoken Word and Dance event "Flow!", produced by Broken Rose Performing Arts and Contact Theatre, Manchester. Part of the Manchester Literature Festival 2011.

http://www.brokenrose.eu/
http://www.contactmcr.com/
http://www.manchesterliteraturefestival.com/

The Making of "Bitten" - Broken Rose Performing Arts




Writer/Director Gemma Connell talks through the process of making the play "Bitten" by Broken Rose Performing Arts.

Play Syopsis: Raven's always felt drawn to people. But not necessarily for their personal qualities. Strangely, she still agrees that "it's what's inside that counts." Join Broken Rose Performing Arts in this short piece of theatre which explores the story of a young girl who finds herself with a rather unorthodox craving... and then dedicates her life to finding out why."

Starring Francesca Smith.
Written and Directed by Gemma Connell.

"Bitten" has toured to:
26th October 2011, 9:25pm, TV21, Thomas Street, Manchester
22nd November 2011, 9:25pm, Sandbar, Manchester

#INKED - Episode 1



First in the series. I take you through my fabulous collection of tattoos, most of which were done by artists at Spear Studio in Birmingham.

An Update from Inside the Industry

Hello it's been while, but to make it up to you, here's some footage from my most recent shows! Enjoy!

"Bitten" - A Short Play by Broken Rose Performing Arts
Raven's always felt drawn to people. But not necessarily for their personal qualities. Strangely, she still agrees that "it's what's inside that counts." Join Broken Rose Performing Arts in this short piece of theatre which explores the story of a young girl who finds herself with a rather unorthodox craving... and then dedicates her life to finding out why.

Starring Francesca Smith.
Written and Directed by Gemma Connell.



Gemma Connell's Spoken Word
In November 2011, I made my spoken word debut, performing some of my poetry at Light In the Dark Entertainment's "TEN" in Sandbar, Manchester. It was a thrilling experience, and certainly one I aim to relive again and again.



"Flow!" - 2011
Flow! took place on 14th Oct 2011 at Contact, Manchester, as part of the Manchester Literature Festival. An extremely succesful first event, Broken Rose are currently evaluating this first incarnation, and moving forward with plans for further events.

Produced by Contact and Broken Rose Performing Arts, Flow! is a revolutionary open stage event that will see dancers in close conversation with poets. From its roots in the USA, slam poetry has become a cultural phenomenon, touching the hearts and minds of those involved in the hip hop genre, as well as that of modern literature. Over the years, the lines between this form of performance and other arts have begun to blur. Flow! takes this a step further, allowing the spoken word to entwine itself with the human body. This event sees a succession of freestyle duets, teaming up poets and dancers to showcase their art forms collaboratively. Each pair locks, pops, spits and rhymes their way through a spontaneous set.

We're all in this together...

Check out my DCMS blog about collaboration in the arts:

http://blogs.culture.gov.uk/main/2011/10/were_all_in_this_together_cue.html

Check out the footage from "Filthy Gorgeous" - Dance Theatre by Tongue-in-Cheek Eccentrics below. For the blog that accompanies these videos, please go to www.fieryrockets.blogspot.com

Perform at Flow! - Brief for Poets and Dancers

Broken Rose Performing Arts and Contact, Manchester

Flow! Co-produced by Broken Rose Performing Arts and Contact, Manchester, will take place in Space 5, at Contact, 9:30pm on Friday 14th October. This event is FREE.

Project Outine

Flow! will bring together dancers and spoken word artists in an extraordinary fusion of movement and words.

In recent years, much slam poetry has begun to sound like MC-ing, and has therefore become associated with the Hip Hop genre of music. With this in mind, it seems appropriate to bring two otherwise polarized sets of artists together; dancers and slam poets.

Similarly, Contact's monthly event Mixed Movement is Manchester's only "open mic night" for dancers. The brainchild of a dancer, theatre artist and poet, DawN Crandell, Mixed Movement gives dancers and musicians a chance to improvise, celebrate and show off their skills. Flow! is heavily influenced by Dawn's show, it being a chance for artists to meet, collaborate with each other, and share their ideas.

Dancers, poets and MCs can apply to perform at Flow! The evening will be split into three sections:

1. A dancer and a poet will be paired up and one will begin, with the other joining in as soon as they are ready. The freestyle will be a conversation between the two artists. Both artists are encouraged to interact with each other during the performance, rather than simply performing side-by-side.



2. A completely freestyled performance for all involved. 1 poet will begin, and all the dancers will freestyle with the poet as and when they feel its appropriate. Gradually, other poets will come in and have their say, until the performance naturally comes to an end (This will be discussed with performers prior to going onstage). Again, all artists should interact with each other during the performance.
   


3. WILDCARD SECTION - Again, a section inspired by Mixed Movement, a dancer and a poet will be pulled out of the audience to freestyle with each other.
   

Flow! is to be launched as part of the Manchester Literature Festival 2011.

Many thanks go to DawN Crandell and Baba Israel for inspiring this opportunity.

To Apply

If you would like to perform either as a dancer, poet or MC at Flow! please send an expression of interest (as below) to brokenroseperformance@googlemail.com. Places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.

EXPRESSION OF INTEREST:

NAME, DANCER/POET/MC, BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF PAST EXPERIENCE

www.brokenrose.eu

www.contactmcr.com

www.manchesterliteraturefestival.com

Fiery Rockets

I want to take this opportunity to thank all of my loyal followers. It's amazing to get this many views on a blog that is just about my life. However, feeling the need for a change, I have now moved to another site, under a different name, Fiery Rockets - www.fieryrockets.wordpress.com

This new vlogging site is for show tours, tattoos, travelling the world and all things performance, and the first video is below. I will still be posting Fiery Rocket videos here, as well as some Broken Rose stuff, so stay tuned if you prefer to stick with one blog site.

Much love.
CC/Fiery Rockets

"Bitten" - Call for Actress

Broken Rose Performing Arts (www.brokenrose.eu) is looking for an actress aged between 18 and 25 to play a confident young woman who suffers from Renfield's Syndrome and has in the past been a victim of domestic abuse. The character is an extremely feisty, emotional woman, and the actress will have to hold the audience's constant attention as much of the play surrounds her monologue.

An extract of Bitten will be performed at the Open Mind event in Manchester (website coming soon) on the 28th October 2011.

This is an unpaid position, but one that will give the candidate valuable experience.

To apply, please email an expression of interest, with a photo and recent CV to brokenroseperformance@googlemail.com

Back again...

Hi Everyone,

Once again apologies for being away for so long, but I'll be back with some epic blogs soon - I have so much to share about Manchester International Festival, 24:7 Theatre Festival, Broken Rose and our first ever event at Contact Theatre, Manchester. Things are going really well.

I've also got a Ukulele, so that's fun! It's a Soprano, aiming to work my way up to a Concert Ukulele and eventually teach myself to play the guitar as well. Busy, busy, busy!

Anyways, I'll be back in a few days with some brightly coloured blogs with pics and vids for you. Until then, keep your eyes on the Broken Rose Website - www.brokenrose.eu, which we'll be launching again very soon.

Much love.
CC.

Flow!

"Flow!" The FIRST EVER Broken Rose Performing Arts event, with Manchester's Contact Theatre and Manchester Literature Festival - http://www.contactmcr.com/whats-on/987-mlf11-flow/ - it's just a teaser... more coming soon

All the world's a stage for Broken Rose...

As some of you may know, amongst many other things, I am the Artistic Director of performing arts company Broken Rose (www.brokenrose.eu). Lately, Broken Rose performance dates have been coming in thick and fast.

I will be performing a solo at the Open Mind: Face the Music event at Sandbar, Manchester on the 26th May. I should be onstage at around 10:30pm. I’m developing the concept now - in true Broken Rose style, it’s going to be something a little bit different, but more experimental than I’ve tried under the name of Broken Rose before. More information on this coming soon, so stay tuned. To see my Open Mind debut, check out the video below:





The first official Broken Rose event will take place sometime in October. Details of this event are currently embargoed, so I can’t tell you exactly what it will entail, but I will say that I’m working with some very exciting and innovative people on this project. You Rockstars will be in for one hell of a night, hopefully one that will continue regularly after this premiere event. Please keep checking the website and the twitter (www.twitter.com/brokenrosearts) and the facebook (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=223601003&ref=ts#!/pages/Broken-Rose-Performing-Arts/120642791282372?sk=wall&filter=2) pages for updates on all Broken Rose projects and events. I truly believe that 2011 is Broken Rose’s year!

In addition to the above, an extract of my play, “Bitten” will be performed at Open Mind’s Halloween Special, again at Sandbar in Manchester on the 28th October. We will be auditioning for an actress for this show in the coming months, so stay tuned if you’d like to work with Broken Rose.

Much Love.
CC.

Miles to go - Little Miss Muffet counting down from Seven - Three - Oh...

I've had some very strange feelings about my career lately. Well, I'm not sure if strange is the right word, but they were certainly unexpected. Not so drastic, but so easy to pick up on when you've been so focused on wanting one thing and wanting it now for so long. It;s kinda hard to orientate yourself when you're being rewwarded with new opportunities left, right and centre, but are still getting things wrong at the same time.

Watching my old dance team, Street Vibe, perform in Warwick's yearly dance show, Pizzaz, last week was an interesting experience - feeling so proud of them on stage and beforehand being praised by them for being the only one to have alunched themselves into a career in the industry, straight out of university. And to watch Broken Rose beginning to chug along slowly, it should be suprising that California is at times seeming further and further away from me... But that feeling is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it's spuring me on, making me work even harder.

At MIF, it's obvious that although I'm doing extremely well, I still have a lot to learn, so I've been thinking lately that a course of some kind is perhaps in order.

On top of this, I have so many new ideas that I want to try out in the UK first. Here I'll make some ripples, then bring to California a tidal wave.

Come and see some evidence of the ripples I'm already making in Manchester - I'll be performing at the Greenroom at around 9pm on Saturday 5th March 2011, as part of Contact Theatre's Mixed Movement.

On top of that, check out my solo freestyle performance at the Open Mind Valentine's Special - now available as a playlist, below.



Much love.
CC.

Once Upon a Time...

...There was a story. Your story to be precise. At least, that's a key idea in the make-up of my company, Broken Rose Performing Arts. I'm here to remind you of a fabulous YouTube series which began not so long ago on the Broken Rose channel - "Your Story" allows performing arts pracitioners, fans, groups and artists to tell the world their story with regards to the arts, through the Broken Rose YouTube channel.

Tell us about how you got into the arts, what inspires you and what your hopes are for creating your art in the future. A short while ago I made an example video (or rather videos, as I always have too much to say!) which you can view below:





And... see how an organisation has taken advantage of this opportunity, with Warwick Street Vibe's video:



To submit your video, email upload it to rapidshare or megaupload and send the link to brokenroseperformance@googlemail.com or check out www.brokenrose.eu

If you're not a big fan of the arts, but still have a story to tell, email me at celticcalifornianblogger@gmail.com and we'll talk... I might make it at Celtic Californian Blog thing :)

Much Love, and thanks for all the support - now over 1, 000 blog views in just a few months!
CC.

My Beautifully Broken Rose

You may have heard me refer to Broken Rose in past blog posts. For those unclear on what this is, Broken Rose is my very own performing arts company, that is currently trying to stir up some interest on the internet.

Impatience is a virtue. It always gets things done quicker; getting them done better is not the issue, at least you’re flying along by the seat of your pants in a slipstream somewhere, and probably having a delightful time doing it.

So that’s me. Miss Impatient. I’m the kind of girl who’s already reaching for the button on her jeans before she’s closed the cubicle door because I’m having far too much fun bumbling along to waste extra seconds in the loo.

And that’s Broken Rose; performance that wants to show off now, and not later when it could be more practiced. No. That would ruin the aesthetic. We’re here to teach something primal. Here to tell a story of love, hatred, and someone who never made it by others’ standards, but by some other warped one, one day you’ll see their name in ‘effing lights.

Aiming to smash through every preconception and convention the performing arts world has ever held, Broken Rose is a performing arts company which combines all forms of performance in their work. Currently putting together a performing arts crew of alternative lovelies. Remember, you’re a Rockstar.

The above should give you a flavour for what we do at Broken Rose, and the below video should add to that. Similar videos can be found on our YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/brokenrosearts



We have various projects in the running at the moment, one of which is a Music Drawing project with Artist Naomi Kendrick. Naomi is currently working on a mass music drawing project, which will take place in Manchester next year. She was interested in working with Broken Rose because dancers hear music in strikingly different ways. I recently spent an afternoon doing some music drawing with Naomi. Her innovative idea of music drawing involves letting music flow through you, drawing what you feel onto the paper whilst a piece of music is being played. We tried out various different styles of music during the afternoon, and noted the difference in the drawings with each genre.

We also played around with movement in our session, with me dancing whilst Naomi drew the music. Naomi described my movements as being what was going on in her head as the music was being played.



Apologies - the audio on the final clip went a bit funny, so a different track is over the top. For the full video of that clip, please go to http://vimeo.com/user3350784

An extremely successful session, Naomi and myself will be meeting again soon to perform some more music drawing experiments, so stay tuned for that!

For more information on music drawing, check out Naomi's blog at http://deadrabbit-ablog.blogspot.com/

For more information on Broken Rose, please go to our website at http://www.brokenrose.eu/
For more Broken Rose videos, please go to our YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/user/brokenrosearts
And follow Broken Rose on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brokenrosearts

Much Love.
CC.