Bullet

‘Bullet’ is a piece of new commission by the independent dance company Shades of Bray, founded by the Folkestone-based choreographer Jacob Bray. Enlisting contemporary dancer Jemma Wead and self-taught film-maker Joel Snowman, the production is a complex journey that is both an open collaborative process interweaving improvised movements with Snowman’s cinematography of empty urban landscapes, juxtaposed by intimate dialogues with family and friends that draw upon Bray’s personal experience growing up as an artist, queer and working-class. 

The final performance is set in an unsuspecting environment, a friend’s living room which intends to reconstruct a fresh interpretation of those intimate and fleeting moments of discovery. 

“When people ask ‘what is it about?’ I never know what to say. I guess what you will get is a brushstroke of feeling, a sort-of comment on what’s going on through our eyes.” [Jacob Bray]

Gallery image credit: Nina Shen-Poblete

Jacob Bray started dancing at Brockhill Park Performing Arts College as part of the curriculum aged eleven. After dancing with Instep Dance and obtaining two A-levels in dance and performance, he went on to study a BA (hons) in Dance followed by an MA in Performance Dance at The University of Chichester, gaining a place as a choreographer on The GradLab scheme at The Point on graduation.

Jemma Wead became a student of dance at the age of 5, progressing from ballet and tap into contemporary forms with institutions such as Instep Dance and Brockhill Park Performing Arts, before undertaking a Bachelors in Dance at the University of Chichester. As a Postgraduate, Wead progressed onto YPDA, mentoring youths at the established dance school and has since collaborated with Shades of Bray on multiple projects.

Prescient Pool (PP) was a series of collaborative public engagement events and art commissions inspired by people’s experiences and stories in Folkestone. Between April and September 2019, CT20 Projects made three new commissions: Amalia Pascal, Joff Insole, Jacob Bray and Jemma Wead. Initially inspired by the research and archive published under “Transitions” by Pavement Pounders, PP became its own depository of vernacular and symbolic stories contributed by people in Folkestone, presented and reinterpreted to make this heritage available to a whole new generation.⁠