Charlie Dearnley’s interdisciplinary practice uses performance to investigate themes of spirituality and mortality. Using text as a basis, Charlie performs utilising dance, spoken word and digital media in acknowledgement of the inadequacy of words alone to convey experience. Charlie has shown work throughout the UK, at venues such as the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art Gateshead, as part of Glasgow International and Future Everything Festival Manchester. Charlie has been collaborating with digital artist and musician Sean Cotterill since 2014, exploring Human-Computer Interaction to create sensorily dynamic performances.

Dance City commission: CHURCH
CHURCH is a collaborative solo performance combining dance, spoken word and Human-Computer Interaction. CHURCH considers the validity of finding spiritual experience in unconventional spaces through comparing church service to club culture. Crowds of people routinely flock to churches and clubs with the similar intent of connecting with others and meditatively self-reflecting, whilst feeding a spiritual, euphoric experience. Both places are rife in ceremony and ritual, with one nurturing structure, and the other fostering hedonism. Having grown up in an Anglican vicarage, Christian liturgy forms the basis of Charlie’s investigation into spirituality and faith. Created and performed in collaboration with digital artist Sean Cotterill, Charlie wears a bespoke sensor suit, translating his movement and text into light and sound, intimately controlling the sensory composition of the performance environment.