Any good shows on in Amsterdam from June 25 - mid July?
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From 4th to 8th September 2013: Costa Contemporánea
Contemporary Dance and Performing Arts Festival
- CÍA WEICKERT: 'Días Pasan Cosas'
- CÍA COBOSMIKA
- JORDI CORTÉS
- MICHELLE MAN y JAMES HEWSION: 'Lightouch'
- JANET NOVAS: 'Who will save me today?
- ANUSKA ALONSO: 'Quando Corpus'
- CHEVI MURADAY: 'Contrarios Comunes'
- CÍA ÁLVARO FRUTOS: 'Bengala'
- SANDRA ANTÓN: 'Sombras de resiliencia clown'
- JAVIER BARANDIARAN: 'Pepinos podridos (en el frigo)'
- FÉLIX ARJONA: 'MedioLleno'
Workshops:
- Conntemporary dance with Jordi Cortés (AltaRealitat) , Olga Cobos and Peter Mika (CobosMika)
- Videodance/Screendance/Filmdance with La Ignorancia dance film music
+info: Costa Contemporánea
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Watch documentation of talks here
I am honored to be able to aggregate and present the video documentation of he 1st. International Conference on “Multimodal Communication: Language, Performance and Digital Media” that was organized in the framework of TKB – A Transmedia Knowledge-Base For Performing Arts research project conclusion (http://tkb.fcsh.unl.pt)
It was aimed to: present the results and software tools developed during the TKB project; provide a multidisciplinary forum for researchers from different disciplines and artists interested in the documentation of Performing Arts (with a focus on contemporary theatrical dance and Performance), as well as in issues of multimodality in human communication and in human-computer interaction, particularly regarding video annotation tools and collaborative platforms for cultural heritage.
The event wished to bring together contemporary artists and researchers from a broad range of academic disciplines, working within different theoretical and methodological paradigms in a creative, internationally oriented, and stimulating atmosphere. The importance of multimodal communication and creativity is now generally recognised by researchers from either the Humanities, Information Technologies or Cognitive Science. This conference has therefore offered an opportunity to present and learn about research findings concerning human behaviour and agency in different types of communication and their cognitive, cultural, narrative, technological, social, textual or discourse functions.
It was organized by the FCSH and the FCT of Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal, and has taken place at the CCB, Lisbon, from the 2nd to the 3rd May 2013.
Keynote speakers:
Sally Jane Norman (Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts, Sussex: UK)
Charles Forceville (Universiteit van Amsterdam, NL)
Irene Mittelberg, Aachen University
Organization: FCSH/CLUNL (www.fcsh.unl.pt) and FCT-UNL: Interactive Multimedia Group (www.fct.unl.pt)
TKB Project Supporters:
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
O Espaço do Tempo (Transdisciplinary Arts Centre)
Centro Cultural de Belém
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian
Atelier Re.Al, Lisbon
Rumo do Fumo, Lisbon
For more than 20 years, the International Theatre Festival Malta has been a melting pot of traditions, themes and forms. The distinctive feature of the festival is the fusion of concerts of international stars, experimental shows, small projects in the city space and discussions with scholars.
Poznań will host from the 24th of June to the 20th of July a new edition of the Malta Festival, where contemporary dance is always present. A representation of the modul-dance project will be concentrated in a few days of the most innovative choreography. Anne Juren will present Tableaux Vivants (25 June) and Magali Milian and Romuald Luydlin, members of La Zampa their Spekies (27 June). Polish audience will have the chance to discover one of the artists selected in 2012, An Kaler who will perform On Orientations/Untimely Encounters twice in the same day (26 June).
Marie-Caroline Hominal and Sofia Dias & Vítor Roriz, modul-dance selected artists, are too part of the programme with other titles, Bat (26 June) and A gesture that is nothing but a threat (28 June), respectively.
All the shows will take place at Stary Browar, home of the Art Stations Foundation Poznań, one of the modul-dance partners.
Submit your dance film to POOL 13 - INTERNATIONALE TanzFilmPlattform BERLIN until July, 4th
POOL is a recurring format for dance- and animationfilm.The aim is to create a platform for dancers, choreographers, directors, artists, organizers and other interested people. POOL offers space for a mutual exchange of experiences, developing and advanced training, and presentations prospects. It`s a platform for those kinds of films, which picture dance not as a simple documentation, but more as a creative piece of art, using cuts and several other techniques for creation. We also like films which include every kind of non-dance movement in choreography. Moreover biographies of creators are less important or whether it`s a high or low budget film.
Screening: september 9-15 2013 at Dock11, Berlin, Germany
CoFestival is three festivals in one: modul-dance, Ukrep and Pleskavica. Under the title The Art of Coliving, Kino Šiška Ljubljana presents its second edition, that will take place from 17th to 21th June and from 21th to 27th September.
Under the umbrella of the modul-dance project, the event will open with Marcos Morau/La Veronal and their recently premiered Siena, a reflection on the conception of the human body, used by the artists as a container and projector of meanings, as well as an exploration of the history of Italian art in a journey that begins in the Renaissance (17 June).
Mixing digital arts, urban and traditional dances lil'dragon, piece of the modul-dance selected artist Eric Minh Cuong Castaing, will propose a sensory experience toward a feeling of future, physical and imperceptible (20 June).
The program also includes a new edition of the ShortDanceFilms, a film screenings curated by Núria Font/Nu2's (18 June).
In September, one of the last modul-dance selected artists, Jurij Konjar will premiere in Slovenia his new piece Still.
The complete programme includes not only dance, but also workshops, theatre and dj sessions.
On September 2011, Frauke Requardt wrote this text about her experience as modul-dance artist.
Creating Episode was an incredible rich learning experience to me. It has been the first piece of work as the sole director following on from three collaborations of different kinds. To be the only one who calls the shots, to be the one who's vision is the centre motivation is a responsibility and a joy much different from sharing this position. It was a great reminder of what it is that I deeply care for in my art and also a pleasant surprise as I acknowledged the growth from these previous joined experiences coming into play when directing solely.
We had a residency in Dublin at Dance Ireland and a residency in Tilburg at Station Zuid as part of modul-dance. Each of those residencies brought out a surprise or an unusual perspective onto the work. There seems to be a 're-shuffling' of the things you 'know' when placed into an unknown environment. The questioning of what I usually take for granted then seem to be what brings the new insight. There are a number of other important aspects to being away from your usual stomping ground: Firstly, there is an undivided focus for the work as interruptions from daily life are taken away. Secondly, there is an intense and intimate exchange between the people you work with. It has been a real joy and a great benefit to the work to get to know each other in this way. In which other profession do you spend three weeks in a packed house with each other, cook and eat together and share thoughts and, well, the bathroom? The residencies definitely provided for personal growth on an interpersonal level -meaning there was a learning process in the way we communicate with each other. Communication seems to be any way at the core of the creative process somehow.
We had a premiere in June at The Place. As always there were last minute concerns. Part of our set is a big beautiful salmon-coloured austrian curtain which reveals and hides the pianist, singer and various other scenes. This curtain turned out to be incredibly difficult to control: The first time it worked was in fact the premiere.
So I sat in the audience sweating and hoping... I am so pleased to be able to say that the two shows we had at The Place were a complete success. It was sold out on the first night and almost full on the second and there was a fantastic response afterwards. Episode got good reviews and some really great ones. This show is a very personal one and I wasn't sure if it would be accessable or entertaining enough- both things I care for. What had been created was still too new to myself to be able to reflect on it in regards to these factors as the focus had been on creating meaning in new ways. It was basically a bit of a ride!
Picture: © Chris Nash
The Chilean artist Brisa MP in FLA - Latin American forum- ISEA International Symposium on Electronic Art
June 12, 2013, 1:30 p.m.
University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
http://www.isea2013.org/events/latin-american-forum-presents-2
The body-technology artist Brisa MP will present part of their research on FLA- Latin American Forum- ISEA. The conference: "ART, BODY AND TECHNOLOGY: AN OVERVIEW OF CURRENT APPROACHES FROM LATIN AMERICA"
The artist and Director of INTERFACE Art, Body, Science and Technology International Festival, and FIVC, Videodance International Festival of Chile, will be receiving artworks video registry to be scheduled for new version of its festivals in Chile.
Art, Body and Technology: an overview of current approaches from Latin America
By: Brisa MP (Chile)
The presentation aims to make a brief tour of the current state of the art of the production that articulates the human body and the technology in the fields of dance and performance. This tour offers a mapping of various levels of production, such as artists, work of art , theoretical production, collaboration networks, research in Latin American festivals and an analysis of the general situation in the region.
No doubt that the art-technology development in Latin America has been largely led by artists from the visual arts. In this scope we can see that the performative arts are not far behind, while its approach to science and technology has been happening slowly, it is now possible to recognize several projects developed in our region. These projects constitute a network of performances, educational and outreach that have shaped a recognizable set between dance-performance and technological mediation.
Moreover, the state of the art makes evident conceptual, aesthetic and economic problems, it proposes new ways of collaborative creation, instances of intercultural exchange and training that have allowed local development of projects pushing the boundaries of traditional Dance and Performance Art territories.
Meanwhile It is recognized that in Latin America a first approach to the relationship between dance and technology, comes from the videodance production, in which the initial scenic event moved to digital imaging and the screen. This is evident in several countries, making it visible a second state of the dance-performance and technology exploring more complex technical and aesthetic structures therefore presenting unequal levels of development in the countries of the region.
http://abierta.cl/isea2013/brisamp.html
Brisa MP
Transdisciplinary Chilean artist. She investigates relationship between the body, science, and technology.
Her work in dance and performance art language try to develop questions and research about new human body conceptions, body-city-technology relationship, and study new methodologies, paradigms, art forms from the technology use.
She won the SOGEDA PRIX for Electronics choreography "Ejercicios Electrocoreográficos" In Monaco Dance Forum (Montecarlo,2006). She development dance and technology residence toghether with collective SWAP PROJECT at ZDB (Lisbon 2009). She has won contest FONDART (Government of Chile) in 4 opportunities.
She is a member of the Latin American Network MAPAD2 Dance and technology.
In 2009 she published book “INTERFERENCIAS”, and she writes in Escaner Cultural digital magazines.
She is director the INTERFACE International Festival of Art, body, science and technology, and FIVC, International Videodance Festival of Chile.
She´s licensed in Visual Arts, Arcis University (Chile). Postgraduate in “Studies and Projects in Visual Culture” Barcelona University (Spain). She studied Dance in the University (Chile) , workshops and seminaries in dance, digital medias and technology in Europe and Latin American.
Actually, She develop tesis and research of Masters in Technology and Aesthetics of Electronic Arts, Tres de Febrero National University . Buenos Aires (Argentina).
She has won contest DIRAC - Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile- for your participation in ISEA 2013
Artworks
www.caidalibre.cl
INTERFACE
International Festival Art, Body, Science and Technology
www.cuerpoytecnologia.cl
FIVC, International videodance Festival of Chile
www.videodanza.cl
Last october, during a modul-dance meeting in Tilburg, we had a conversation with Irish choreographer Fearghus Ó Conchúir. He talked about his modul-dance project Tabernacle and his view on choreography.
Visit www.fearghus.net.
Could you talk a little bit about the work you have developed as part of modul-dance? My modul-dance piece, Body and Forgetting, premiered on January 29th 2013 at The Abbey Theatre on The Peacock stage in Dublin. Through the structure of modul-dance and other partners such as the Dublin Dance Festival, The Abbey Theatre and Dance Ireland, I was able to lengthen my creative process and develop the piece in stages over a 14 month period. Through modul-dance specifically I had a residency with my dancers and musician at DeVIR/CAPa Faro in Portugal and also at Dance Ireland Dublin.
The work was influenced by Milan Kundera's atmospheric and unsettling novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and presented an abstracted account of the themes, moods and characters from the book in movement with the constant accompaniment of a film and live score. I collaborated with Irish documentary and film maker Alan Gilsenan.
What connections have you been able to establish through modul-dance? In general modul-dance has helped me to become more familiar with the current prevailing European production trends, put faces to names within a European context and make new relationships that have afforded me useful feedback.
What were your expectations when you joined modul-dance and what is your experience insofar? When I joined modul-dance I was mostly interested in making new connections with European dancers, designers and collaborators. To be honest, this has yet to materialize but it may be more to do with my approach as opposed to the modul-dance structure. I originally assumed that meetings would occur organically through residency or performance opportunities but now after some time in the network I am beginning to understand it better and see that my initial expectations may have been too vague.
How do you think modul-dance has helped you and your new project and/or how would you like it to help you further? I think modul-dance has helped my project through residency opportunities, advice, feedback and time. In the future I would of course appreciate opportunities to further the life of Body and Forgetting through further performance opportunities in Europe, but also as I begin to make a new solo work this year I look forward to seeking dramaturgical advice from the modul-dance framework of supports. In the long-term I would hope to achieve my initial expectations and emerge from this modul-dance experience having gained new insight into my working process and making better work with inspiring artists from my field and associated fields of expression.
Do you think European mobility projects like modul-dance influence the way the work is created and, if so, how? Yes, I do think that European mobility projects influence the way the work is created. I'm not sure that it is always the ideal structure in which to make work. It depends on the subject matter you are exploring. Body and Forgetting, although inspired by a Czech writer, was very much to do with an Irish perspective and relationship to the body. The embodied reserve, loss and confusion of that perspective can only really be reflected on from a point of stillness. I realized early on in my process that my subject matter conflicted in someways with the sense of mobility in the modul-dance project but that was the way it turned out and I'm sure it created some interesting tensions in the process.
If it's true that the way in which people sit, swim or eat depend on how certain culture passes on these skills - as French sociologist Marcel Mauss stated - then our body (and dance?) is influenced and formed in a culturally specific way. Do you feel that this is true or is it true what John Ashford provocatively says that "borders in dance are dissolving and increasingly what we find on the other side is pretty much more of the same"? This quote by Tom Waits came to mind as a rather extreme response to the question above, “If two people know the same things, one of you is unnecessary”. I wondered if this is what the question is really asking? In some ways I believe personal culture to be embedded and inescapable though more and more we find ourselves living out similar situations; maybe it is just economics and not culture.
I am not sure that this issue should be so important for artists but I think it could become more of a problem for presenters and producers. However it progresses, the importance must remain with the artist at the centre of their own experience, whatever that may be.
As an Irish artist, where would you position yourself within the European dance context? Although I have done many residencies and had my work performed in Europe during the last 10 years, I have a relatively low profile as a choreographer there. Throughout this time I have been building my own company with a group of dancers and creative collaborators in Ireland. It was important to develop this relationship to my work steadily and over time. Having been through this period I now look to the possibilities for interaction, dialogue and connection in Europe and hope in the next 5 years I can grow opportunities for my work, embrace new influences and expand artistically.
Picture: © Fionn McCann
Mala Kline's Eden is getting excellent reviews.
" [...] her distinct sense of creating an invisible but firm connection with the auditorium, in which the unhindered flow of energy conditions the main purpose - sensing a common mental and emotional engagement"
"Eden is a complex project that in one swipe lucidly explores raw aspects of the subconscious and collective dream images while expressiong the exquisite originality of the author's ideas and their intriguing realization".
Picture: ©Damir Zizic
Lil’dragon has been performed about a dozen times, in Vienna and on national and regional stages in France. What comes to my mind above all with this piece is the impact of working with children... the impact on stage (which is something we expected even before getting down to work) and the impact on the creative process.
In fact, there have been as many different creations as groups of children. We knew it and we were looking forward to it but experiencing it was something else. So that is what I would most like to tell you about today.
Children, a living material
Children are a living material for the stage: they bring reality to it. Each group was also a social material that gave a different colouring to the stage, which is something that greatly inspired us.
In Vienna, for example, the children were already aware of what dance involves. We had our fears because we didn’t want any formatting. One of the little girls had already adopted the ballet posture and she even came on tiptoes to the rehearsals. In this case, however – just as always – we quickly saw that children are children in their childish bodies. They hadn’t anchored other people’s gazes within themselves and we were quickly able to work on their interiority and their interiority’s expressivity, which is what we actually want to deal with. In fact, with these Viennese children, we were even surprised to see that this task was easier than usual on certain levels: they were more familiar with learning a choreography but they preserved this quality of spontaneous bodies that we wished to present.
With the children, however, there was no “ideal configuration”: each group had its own strength and we based our work on it. In Evry, for example, this strength was a more mixed, dynamic and maybe even raw culture: the children’s bodies were more mobile and their “copy” of the older people’s dance was more personal. On stage, the group of children, who were more detached from mimicry, revealed however a greater overall coherence, with individual precisions that it was not our job to define.
In short, the children have been a continuous source of inspiration. In one of the groups, the duet with Meah Savay was performed by a little Cambodian girl who had been adopted. For us, and perhaps for her, it could not be otherwise.
The teaching experience
In the parent-children teaching workshops that we held the teachers were a tie, a medium and a precious help. We answered all the questions – they were curious above all about the mata children’s tattoos: Why are tattoos forbidden? Why do they wear them? I found this to be an interesting approach to a different reality and to the conditions in which children live.
A real-time creation
We had a few misfortunes: one of our two dancers was injured just a couple of weeks before the debut performances and we had to arrange to cover her role with someone else. Then the robots used for the digital projections were delivered late and, on top of it all, we were affected in all respects by budget cuts in this complicated production. The preview in Vanves was one of the most difficult.
Crowdfunding experiments
The reduction of our budget led us to try out the crowdfunding system. While crowdfunding calls for a big effort (communication, reciprocations…), it allowed us to raise a little over 5,000 euros directly from the public.
The Meah Savay experience
Meah Savay, a one-time ballet star in Cambodia, hadn’t been on stage since 2008. It was her first contemporary creation. She didn’t speak much French and the presence of the children was like a resurgence of the time in her life when she ran the dance school of a refugee camp. Meah showed a maternal attitude. She also told us that some traditional dancers found her manners strange, that is to say, they found some of her gestures, like putting her mask on the ground, to be almost sacrilegious.
An evolution
This was for everyone, I think, an important experience, a time of exchange and discoveries, and also an experience of accepting difference. I often had the impression that the children understood what was happening better than anyone else. One of the children from Toulouse wrote to us after the production: “I saw two of my friends in judo class who made me think of Augustin and Morgan. I had a dream. I was going to go on a trip with the group and all of a sudden we were taken hostage by some people. We had to get away at all costs (...) Then we found ourselves in a little village with two people who taught us to expand our imagination by dancing and they were called Eric and Gaetan. Thanks for the good time I had at the CDC. Antoine”. In just this way, I hope we will all be long remembering this project as a highly positive experience.
Beyond our experience with respect to this European programme itself, which could be summed up by exclaiming “Fantastic! Encore! Encore!” in connection with the residencies, the welcome and meeting the different partners, here we would like to look at our experience from the standpoint of having had the chance to “get away from our own territory”.
Getting away from one’s “territory” does not only mean travelling.
In our case, leaving our territory entailed some big changes:
- In our creative habits, since our creation process usually unfolds in a single quintessentially French context – whereas with modul-dance the separation, the distance, allowed us to return home invigorated and lighter in weight.
- In our time-management habits: we usually stay longer in each place. In this project, however, between the discovery of the venues and of the working hours, which were always different, we had to constantly adapt ourselves.
That allowed us, from the beginning to the end of the creation of our piece, to remain in a state of continuous questioning, in a condition in which nothing was immovably established with urgency, thanks especially to the chance we had to present our work in distinct stages in three different places (Ljubljana, Barcelona and Dublin).
In some cases we felt we would have needed to stay longer on a residency, to anchor our work in a place and to feel secure before changing venues and questioning everything all over again. As things were, however, we went from a 15m x 20m stage under a glass roof to an 8m x 8m dance studio with mirrors and barres to a fully-equipped theatre stage and then back to a white studio… That affected the project’s aesthetic dimension and made its stabilization difficult.
A hybridization of aesthetics
In our discussions with the people in charge of the venues that welcomed us, we were also able to size up the aesthetics advocated by each one and, more broadly, we were able to take the measure of their territory.
The diverse expectations and the various ways of approaching the stage and of putting the body into play sketched, in a certain sense, a national choreographic outlook. This multiplicity helped us in some way to refocus ourselves on our work since it was impossible to meet all the demands posed by these many differences.
Consequently, our vision of our work became calmer.
In hindsight, it may be said that this phenomenon had a positive influence on our confidence in the project and in the method of dealing with it. We sought to make a statement on stage even if it differed from everything we had done before.
The economy
The economy of each country and each venue influences these sites’ relationship to the artist and has an effect on the artist’s way of creating. Indeed, the context affects the creation, scenography, number of performers and many other aspects. It is perhaps a gauge of the “national choreographic signature” that we all bear.
One can only pose the question, however, of whether this signature is actually something that is chosen by artists or whether it is above all imposed by the economy itself?
Even though we felt this financial pressure, we didn’t suffer from it very much since ours was a solo number and our scenography could fit in a suitcase. Nevertheless, if Spekies had needed a more elaborate scenography, more performers or more time to create the lighting, what would have become of it?
The making of acquaintances
By its very nature, this programme threw us directly into the “paws” of the directors of the venues concerned, with whom we couldn’t have imagined that we would be dealing since we are little accustomed to international commitments. This was an aspect that was absolutely wonderful (there is no other way to put it). One thing nagged us all the same: modul-dance comes to an end in 2014.
What will become of these opportunities to make new acquaintances without the European subsidies? Will we be falling back on the long lists of unanswered e-mails or will our future projects receive special attention? In other words, are these lasting relationships once outside the modul-dance framework?
Just as we said at the beginning, “getting away from one’s own territory” does not just mean packing one’s bags and departing. It’s true that we are nomadic by nature and that we enjoy meeting people. We couldn’t have been luckier: we found this dynamic, this movement to be exhilarating, like something indispensable to our way of creating.
It has reorganized and posed a new space of reflection for us. It has drawn us out of the “paralysis” that we may sometimes have felt. It has already projected us on what is to come... because we want to continue along these lines.
How can this be achieved? Everything remains to be invented.
Artistically speaking, we are at the end of a cycle and we can feel how another cycle is beginning.
This European experience allows us to ask ourselves the right questions about our artistic and structural future, including:
- Our relationship to the stage and to language.
- Our relationship to an economy that is steadily more insistently demanding “extra-light” forms. How can this constraint be linked to a performing dimension that will uphold each artist’s intimate personal universe?
- Our relationship to places: how can an increased mobility be combined with continued ties to the dance structures in our own territory?
Magali Milian and Romuald Luydlin – La Zampa – France
On my residency at ADC Genève I started out by researching the movement in my new piece ego breathing. This piece is based on a fictional scenario (although it is growing steadily less fictional in today’s world), in which even air, the last thing shared by everyone, becomes privatized.
ego breathing is a performance and a living installation that presents an existential state of being revolving around the basic life sign of breathing and the will to grow as large as one can and to take control of as much surrounding space as possible.
The process of inflating oneself with a pneumatic skin restricts the biological body in a way that determines its movement as well as breathing itself. The breath is used to inflate the second skin and the performer’s extended muscles, breasts and even lungs store air.
On this conceptual cutting edge, our existential topic runs up against the social and political impact of a liberal economy that still believes in unlimited growth. The privatization of air is the last step in the hopeless attempt to make every single aspect of human life profitable. This process comes to form a sort of loop as the human being tries to make a profit on himself.
Every action unfolds in a recurrent loop, constantly throwing the individual back on himself and producing in this way the existential loneliness presented in this piece.
I am deeply grateful for the generous hospitality of Anne Davier and Claude Ratzé and for the impressively spacious studio they made available to me. I am in love with this place and I very much hope to return some day.
Picture: © Michael Schultes
