In While We Were Holding It Together, a tribute to the power of the imagination, Ivana Müller subjects notions of body and mind, and the relationship between the two, to a closer inspection. This results in a poetic, humoristic and philosophical production that draws the audience into Müller’s clear logic. While We Were Holding It Together creates images in becoming, always changing, depending on who is looking. Is it a rock band on tour? A picnic in the forest? A hotel room in Bangkok? We look, imagine and re-invent while searching for what is hidden and for what we want to see.
Created in 2006, the piece has been shown more than 70 times in festivals and venues in Europe, the United States and Asia. In 2007, While We Were Holding It Together won two prizes at Impulse Festival (DE). The jury of this internationally renowned festival awarded the performance with the first prize for the best off-theater production as well as the prize of the Goethe Institute.
The piece was also nominated for the 2007 VSCD mime-prize, which is the annual prize of the collaboration of Dutch theaters and concert halls for the best show of the year in the category of physical theater.
The piece exists in the original English version and, since November 2008, also in a French version.
Concept, direction: Ivana Müller
Performance: Katja Dreyer/Sarah van Lamsweerde/ Albane Aubry, Pere Faura/Ricardo Santana/ Arnaud Cabias, Karen Røise Kielland/ Hester van Hasselt/Anne Lenglet, Stefan Rokebrand/Jobst Schnibbe/ Geert Vaes/ Sébastien Chatelier, Jefta van Dinther/Bill Aitchison/ Julien Fallée – Ferré
Text : Ivana Müller, Bill Aitchison, Katja Dreyer, Pere Faura, Karen Røise Kielland, Stefan Rokebrand, Jefta Dinther. Artistic advice : Bill Aitchison Sound design : Steve Heather Light design & technics : Martin Kaffarnik
While We Were Holding It Together is produced by LISA and I’M’COMPANY, in co-production with Sophiensaele Berlin (DE), Productiehuis Rotterdam / Rotterdamse Schouwburg (NL), Dubbelspel (30CC and STUK Kunstencentrum Leuven, BE).
This project is financially supported by the Nederlands Fonds voor de Podiumkunsten and the Mondriaan Stichting.
Ivana Müller is a choreographer, artist and author of texts. She grew up in Croatia but most of her life lived and worked as a foreigner.
Müller’s dance and theatre performances, installations, text works, video-lectures, audio pieces, guided tours and web works have been presented in venues and festivals such as Rotterdamse Schouwburg, STUK Leuven, brut Vienna, Frascati Theater Amsterdam, Kampnagel Hamburg, La Villette Paris, Wiener Festwochen, Theatertreffen Berlin, DTW New York, National Museum of Singapore, Saddler’s Wells London, Springdance Festival Utrecht, HAU Berlin, Centre nationale de danse Paris, Kaaitheater Brussels (for a more extensive list of works and venues please look at the page WORKS).
Some of the recurring subjects in Müller’s work are body and it’s representation, self-invention, place of imaginary and imagination, notion of authorship and the relationship between performer and spectator.
In 2007 Müller received the Charlotte Koehler Prize from the Prins Bernhard Funds (NL) for her œuvre, as well as Impulse Festival and Goethe Institute Prize for her piece While We Were Holding It Together.
Ivana Müller is one of the founding members of LISA (2004 – 2009), a collaborative production and discursive platform based in Amsterdam.
Ivana Müller lives in Paris and Amsterdam and works internationally.
References
Maaike Bleeker: Thinking Through Theatre Published in Deleuze and Performance. Edited by Laura Cull, Edinburgh University Press, 2009
Maaike Bleeker. “You Better Think!. Het denk-theater van Ivana Müller en Carly Wijsz/Ryszart Turbiasz” in: Theater Topics 2: De Maker als onderzoeker. Edited by Maaike Bleeker, Lucia van Heteren, Chiel Kattenbelt and Kees Vuyk. Amsterdam University Press, 2006
Jörg Huber/Gesa Zimer/Simon Zumsteg: Archipele des Imaginären Institut für Theorie(ith) und Voldemeer AG, Zürich Springer-Verlag Wien New York, 2009
World premiere: 17.-19.10.2008 @ 19:30 Dom im Berg, Graz
In 1 poor and one 0 BADco. returns to the scene of the first film ever shot – Workers Leaving The Lumiere Factory: the factory gates. The first moving images ever made show workers leaving their workplace. The movement of the workforce from the place of industrial work into the world of film: the starting point for the problematic relationship between cinema and the portrayal of work.
From its outset cinema tended to leave the manual labor out of the picture, focusing rather on atomized stories of individual workers once they have left their workplace: their romances, their transgressions, their destinies in the course of world events. Cinema starts where work ends.
Starting from these initial images, 1 poor and one 0 sets about exploring the multiple ways of leaving the work behind. What happens when you get tired? When is the work we devote ourselves to exhausted? What comes after work? More work? What happens when there is no more work? What is the complicity between the history of contemporary dance and the history of post-industrialization?
1 poor and one 0 is a twofold performance: while the performers develop the manifold forms of dissolution of the working subject before the audience, the audience is slowly drawn into a process of transformation: from the popular medium of cinema to the political theater of populism. Theater exhausted in moving images, images exhausted in the theater of movement. A change of perspective.
Directors: Tomislav Medak & Goran Sergej Pristaš Authors and performers: Pravdan Devlahović, Ivana Ivković, Aleksandra Janeva Imfeld, Ana Kreitmeyer, Tomislav Medak, Goran Sergej Pristaš, Nikolina Pristaš, Zrinka Užbinec Dramaturgy: Ivana Ivković Stage: Slaven Tolj Costume design: Silvio Vujičić Video: Ana Hušman Light design: Alan Vukelić Sound design: Ivan Marušić-Klif Sound technician: Jasmin Dasović
Company manager: Lovro Rumiha
Inspired by the work of Auguste and Lois Lumiere, Samuel Beckett, Vlado Kristl, Jean-Luc Godard and Harun Farocki.
Coproducers: Steirischer Herbst, University of Zagreb – Student center – Theatre &TD
Supported by: Zagreb City Council for Education, Culture and Sport; Ministry of Culture of Republic of Croatia
First the body. No. First the place. No. First both. Now either. Now the other. Sick of the either try the other. Sick of it back sick of the either. So on. Somehow on. Till sick of both. Throw up and go. Where neither. Till sick of there. Throw up and back. The body again. Where none. The place again. Where none. Try again. Fail again. Better again. Or better worse. Fail worse again. Still worse again. Till sick for good. Throw up for good. Go for good. Where neither for good. Good and all. – Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho, 1983
Little by little we are replaced … by uninterrupted chain of images, enslaving one another, each image at its place, as each of us, at our place, in the chain of events on which we have lost all power. – Dziga Vertov Group, Here And Elsewhere, 1972
This circulation of value in the cinema-spectator nexus is itself productive of value because looking is a form of labor.
– Johnathan Beller, Cinema, Capital of the 20th Century, 1994
The first camera in the history of cinema was pointed at a factory, but a century later it can be said that film is hardly drawn to the factory and is even repelled by it. Films about work or workers have not become one of the main genres, and the space in front of the factory has remained on the sidelines. Most narrative films take place in that part of life where work has been left behind… In the Lumière film of 1895 it is possible to discover that the workers were assembled behind the gates and surged out at the camera operator’s command. Before the film direction stepped in to condense the subject, it was the industrial order which synchronized the lives of the many individuals.
– Harun Farocki, Workers Leaving the Factory, 2001
Interview with vana Ivković and Tomislav Medak at the Balkan Dance Platform 2009, Novi Sad, Serbia
Posted by Susan Elena on March 12, 2008 at 12:44pm
These Things Happen when three dancers and one dancer/film maker follow instructions given by choreographer, Angus Balbernie at a Dance House research lab. Spontaneous, textured and very low-tech.Following another failed attempt to hire any equipment I ended up using my own Mini DV and mobile to film improvisations at Angus' research lab. Angus had agreed to let me use the footage anyway I decided but I wasn't sure how to put it all together with it being on different formats and still make it look like one cohesive piece. After a lightbulb moment last weekend I decided to embrace the low-tech aspect and only use the footage from my mobile. The only editing I chose to use was to rotate some of the sections which had been captured in portrait to give the feeling of the camera rotating but the dancers remain standing.I'm quite pleased with the results and am now thinking of ways this can be combined with my final project. Find more videos like this on dance-tech.net These Things Happen will be screened at the launch of re:surface tonight, the Dance House's video dance event.
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Posted by Susan Elena on March 12, 2008 at 12:40pm
After a successful day in The Arches playing with torches and taking photographs I knew it could turn into something really exciting but didn't really know what. I had thought After Effects would be the answer but after missing the workshop due to the Scottish Dance Theatre work I was back to square one.Enter Isadora.Perfect for working with torches. I can have dancers moving with lights in the space and create the trails of light which I have been obsessed with for a while now at the same time. I can turn these trails of light into different things according to different triggers and I'm really excited about the whole thing.It's going to be ace!
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www.mediatisedsites.netMediatised Sites is the culmination of a six month interdisciplinary project involving artists from all over the world. Led by Tamara Ashley and Kate Craddock, these artists have been developing intimate response to their chosen geographical locale and communicating that response through online and digital media. The festival will include performances, discussions and installations created by these artists. Work in the festival will explore how technology mediates our perceptions of sites, landscapes and places, as well as virtualised relationships between each other. The day will also showcase work created by local artists in the tractors and attractors laboratory that takes place in the week preceding the festival.Day Pass: £8/£5Passes available from Dance City, www.dancecity.co.uk, 0191 261 0505
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