Our Days of Gold and Cool Company, Nottingham Contemporary
Assunta Ruocco and choreographer and Cool Company artistic director Deane McQueen are developing an interdisciplinary collaboration rooted in movement, memory, and photographic archives. Drawing on Ruocco’s Our Days of Gold—a collection of analogue family photographs shared since 2017 via Instagram—the project explores the memory palace as a choreographic tool.
Building on workshops with performers over 55 at Nottingham Contemporary in January 2025, McQueen and Ruocco are investigating how curated photographs act as spatial and emotional prompts, anchoring memory within embodied improvisation. The project brings together architecture, sound, and dance to create participatory environments where non-trained bodies contribute meaningfully to collective, evolving choreographic structures. At its core, the collaboration treats memory as a spatial, sensory, and democratic process.