Blogs

The NPN Coproduction Fund for Dance assists artists, programmers and producers' mobility, exchange and cooperation on a national and international basis. It advances the creation of new dance productions that extend beyond solos or small formats.

The artists' origins are irrelevant; however, production must take place in Germany to a substantial degree.

The involvement of international partners as co-producers increases the chances for support, but is not absolutely necessary. Programmers are not the only ones eligible to apply; individual artists and companies can do so as well.

The applicant must be the executing producer and headquartered in Germany. In addition, at least one of the German production partners must be a producer or programmer (e.g. festival, venue or production unit).

The funds can lie between 10.000 and 50.000 EUR and no more than 50 percent of the production costs.

more information

www.peeppol.net

The NRW KULTURsekretariat is offering 6-12 week performing arts residencies for dancers, choreographers, performers and musicians. These are to be used for thematic research projects, which should not be focused on a production.

RESEARCH PERIOD

August to November 2015. The findings of each project will be presented at public events.

OFFERED

Rent-free accommodation for 1-2 people, plus a grant of up to €7,500, according  to the nature and scope of the research project. Personal support, mentoring and guidance. The NRW KULTURsekretariat will also provide access to its institutions and experts. Should any production emerge from the research projects, the Kultursekretariat will support any performances staged in NRW.

more information

> Intersecting Art, Meaning, Cognition, Technology 

August 14-15 2015, Vancouver Canada

Simon Fraser University

http://moco.iat.sfu.ca/

=======================================

Building on the success of the first International Workshop on Movement and Computing (MOCO’14) at IRCAM, we are happy to announce the second edition, MOCO’15 at Simon Fraser University. MOCO’15 will be co-located with ISEA2015 (http://isea2015.org/)

MOCO aims to gather academics and practitioners interested in the computational study, modeling, representation, segmentation, recognition, classification, or generation of movement information. We invite participants interested in exploring how movement experience can contribute to computational knowledge through movement modeling and representation. We welcome researchers that are positioned within emerging interdisciplinary domains between art & science. 

While human movement itself focuses on bodily experience, developing computational models for movement requires abstraction and representation of lived embodied cognition. Selecting appropriate models between movement and its rich personal and cultural meanings remains a challenge in movement interaction research. This two day workshop seeks to explore an equal and richly nuanced epistemological partnership between movement experience and movement cognition and computational representation.

This second edition of MOCO will bring together people working in interdisciplinary intersections of Human Computer Interaction, Computer Graphics, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Affective Computing, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, Psychology, and Artists from Media Art, Choreography, Composition, Dance and Design. The workshop aims at promoting scientific and artistic collaborations within this inter-disciplinary boundary. It will offer opportunities to disseminate emerging research works through presentations, demonstrations, and group discussions.

= Suggested Topics

=======================================

  * Expressive movement-based interaction

  * Machine learning for movement 

  * Modeling movement qualities

  * Gestural control

  * Movement generation 

  * Movement and sound interaction

  * Sensori-motor learning with audio/visual feedback

  * Embodied cognition and movement 

  * Visualizing movement 

  * Modeling kinaesthetic empathy 

  * Somatic practice and design 

  * Whole-body interaction

  * Expressive movement analysis and synthesis

  * Design for movement in digital art 

  * Semantic models for movement representation

  * Laban Movement Studies and computation

  * Dance and neuroscience

  * Biosensing, biocontrol and movement

  * Movement expression in avatar, artificial agents, virtual humans or robots.

  * Music and movement

  * Movement computation in ergonomics, sports, and health

= Participation to the workshop

=======================================

The workshop is an opportunity to present a research or a collaborative work. Participants will have the possibility to make a presentation of the results of their research on one of the themes of the workshop, and to interact with their scientific, artistic peers, in a friendly and constructive environment.

If you are interested in an oral presentation of your work, please submit a paper and/or a demo and/or a poster.  

= Submission

=======================================

The submission categories are:

• Long paper with oral presentation (8 pages maximum) 
• Research note with oral presentation (4 pages maximum)
• Short paper with poster presentation (2 pages maximum)
• Short paper with demonstration (2 pages maximum+ Demo proposal form + link to a video).

All submissions should be PDF and use the MOCO’15 template – adapted from ACM SIGCHI template 

http://moco.iat.sfu.ca/authors/

Authors of long papers and notes are also invited to propose a demonstration of their system and its use. All demos must be submitted separately. They have to provide the demo proposal form and a link to a video about the work. The demo proposal form is mandatory for all demo submissions and must include technical set-up and space requirements.

Online submission: All submissions must be done through EasyChair

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=moco15

All submission must be anonymous and will be peer-reviewed. The MOCO proceedings will be indexed and published in the ACM digital library.  

= Important Dates:
=======================================

Submission deadline: 1st of March 2015 (5:00pm PST)

Notification: 1st of May 2015

Early bird registration: 1st june 2015

Early program: 31st June 2015

= Venue

=======================================

Simon Fraser University, Woodward's, 

Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings Street, Vancouver Canada. 

http://www.sfu.ca/sfuwoodwards.html

MOCO15 will be  co-located with ISEA2015 (http://isea2015.org/)

= Workshop Chairs

=======================================

  * Thecla Schiphorst, SIAT, SFU, Vancouver, Canada

  * Philippe Pasquier, SIAT, SFU, Vancouver, Canada

  * Sarah Fdili Alaoui, SIAT, SFU, Vancouver, Canada

  * Frederic Bevilacqua, Ircam, Paris, France

  * Jules Françoise, Ircam, Paris, France

Contact email: moco15@easychair.org

= Local Organization Committee

=======================================

> School of Interactive Arts and Technology

  * Thecla Schiphorst, SIAT, SFU, Vancouver, Canada

  * Philippe Pasquier, SIAT, SFU, Vancouver, Canada

  * Sarah Fdili Alaoui, SIAT, SFU, Vancouver, Canada

A worldwide call for projects made via Ars Electronica’s online submission tool will be open from mid of December till 9th of February, 2015. The submitting artists have the chance to win a residency at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile. There is free access to the application process by all interested artists.

Interdisciplinarity, digital creativity and intercultural exchange are the three key criteria for artists submitting to the open call.

http://www.aec.at/artandscience/open-call/

The Summer Program provides a unique opportunity to observe the development and performance methodologies of Robert Wilson and his collaborators; to work with established professionals in the international performing arts world; to forge relationships with artists from a broad range of experience levels and disciplines; to develop networks of US and international professional contacts; and to investigate what it means to be a “global artist.”

Summer Program participants receive access to an extensive collection of resources central to the Watermill experience: daily meetings with Robert Wilson; lectures on subjects including theater and opera innovation, installation, design, and science led by international cultural luminaries, established artists and scientists; opportunities to propose and develop new work for public presentation during the annual Watermill Summer Benefit and Discover Watermill Day; 20,000 square feet of rehearsal/design spaces and outdoor stages; a theater production archive; an extensive physical and digital library; the Watermill Art Collection; and the Center's landscaped grounds. Additionally, participants have an opportunity to audition for Robert Wilson's summer staging rehearsals and to take part in workshops with his collaborators.

Application Deadline

Wednesday, March 4, 2015 at 5pm EST

Program Dates

The Watermill Center 2015 International Summer Program will run from:

July 13 to August 16, 2015.

more information

www.peeppol.net

A worldwide call for projects made via Ars Electronica’s online submission tool will be open from mid of December till 9th of February, 2015. The submitting artists have the chance to win a residency at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile. There is free access to the application process by all interested artists.

Interdisciplinarity, digital creativity and intercultural exchange are the three key criteria for artists submitting to the open call.

We are looking for digital artists who will be truly inspired by ESO, showing their wish to engage with the ideas and with ESO as places of scientific collaboration, using them as springboards of the imagination which dare to go beyond the paradigm.

You might be a choreographer, performer, visual artist, film maker or a composer – what you all have in common is that you use the digital as the means of making your work and/or the way of presenting it.

Deadline: 9th February, 2015

more information

Julia Barnes viola player composer about the initiative: 

"Dear friends,

MAPA is a magnet for talent and dedicated theater makers, musicians and upcoming artistic directors who want to make a difference. This is a physical approach to learning, including building up the performance space, use of light as an integral element of performance, being involved in every aspect of creating and bringing performance to audience. For me as a performing musician seeking ways to bring music out of box to reach out to more people, the lessons have been exciting. As a teacher I value the interaction of all members of the group in looking at the whole–the whole composition, the connection with audience, the practical aspects. No divas here, but a group of talented performers who create together from their unique talents.
In supporting MAPA you support a growing collective of international artists who will use the skills they learn here to enrich the world, starting in Haarlem! The first gift they have given is redeeming a disused and neglected piece of property, making it into a beautiful podium and theater school.

My wishes for a beautiful holiday season and a good 2015,

Julia Barnes
ps if you are unable to be a sponsor, please send this on to someone who may be!"

Here is the link:  http://www.voordekunst.nl/vdk/project/view/1479-studio-mapa-nederland

One of the modul-dance project key elements is the promotion of mobility, so that artists receiving its support follow itineraries across Europe to develop their creative work and present it to different audiences.

Modul-dance presents a collection of modul-dance city guides. Each of the guides in this collection shows a city from the viewpoint of a local artist, who proposes his or her own particular route to artists in transit, seeking to put them in connection with their host city. While these city routes share some basic features, each one is different and in their differences lies a wealth of gazes, aesthetics, approximations to the local and much more. In a word, they form a mirror of the diversity that modul-dance has always fostered. Athens, Barcelona, Bassano del Grappa, Dresden, London, Stockholm, Vienna, Toulouse, Paris and Poznań ready to be discovered.

The ten city guides are available from this link: http://issuu.com/moduldance

Modul-dance offers selected dance artists the time, space and economic structure to develop their work. Modul-dance has decided that the creative processes they encourage artists to embark on consists of four chapters; research, residency, production and last presentation. Each chapter with it’s own structure and economics surrounding them.

I didn’t get to do all modules within modul-dance, but none the less, I kept the form that was suggested to me to create within. The piece The Mob developed through modul-dance is called BABY IT’S YOU NOT ME. Having only premiered the piece less than a month ago, I will try to sit here and contemplate my experiences.

Trailer for Baby it's you not me from The Mob on Vimeo.

Since modul-dance has been in my life since spring 2012, I start to think; which one of all the million feelings and thoughts I’ve had in the last two and half years do I want to write about? Professional life: opportunities to work and get to places and meet people I haven’t met before, laughing, crying, work in new contexts. Private life: travelling, eating food I’m not used to eating, breathing unfamiliar air, missing home, laughing, crying, making love, missing my bed and friends + having loads of Skype dates.

How did I experience being a part of modul-dance?
What is my life now?
What was it before modul-dance?
Did modul-dance shape the piece I developed?

I will use the module titles suggested by modul-dance below to represent a timeline and map of fragments of my mind from summer 2012 to the present.

I wrote within these suggested modules to guide both me and you through this brief attempt to write about creating BABY IT’S ME NOT YOU, modul-dance, life and dancing.

Ok, lets go!

1. Research
MONSTER AND THE MONSTROUS. A big unknown. Stockholm, Poznań, Maribor.
New collaborators. Black metal. The monstrosity of the norm. The SHADOWS of our minds. What we can’t speak about. THE WHITE MALE = SCARY! Christianity really made things complicated for our bodies and us.

2. Residency
Let’s embody all the above-mentioned Lyon, Dresden! We have so many answers to all our questions now! Lets make make make play play play. Gold is a fancy colour.

3. Production
What the f**k am I doing? Copenhagen. What is monstrosity anyways? And who thought it was a good idea to do a dance performance based on that anyways? Oh my goddess! This is brilliant. I’m nervous now. I feel like puking. Everyone else in the team is awesome. Nobody understands me.
MONSTER MONSTER MONSTER.

4. Presentation
Are you a monster?
Is it in your nature to never succeed?
Do you have difficulties communicating with others?
Is your form constantly changing?
Is it true that you live in the shadows?

BABY IT’S YOU NOT ME is a search for the monster, a performance that materializes on stage, in the imagination of the audience and in the exchange between those two. Through an exploration of recognizable movements and inundating live music, the choreography and performance structures dissect the qualities and aspects of monsters and the monstrous. The audience is thus invited to spend some time with the undefinable and the nameless.

BABY IT’S YOU NOT ME is also a concert. In a simple, blunt yet playful way it unfolds through speech, dance and music that stays short of expectations.

Functioning as a fluent symbiotic trio, performers Emma-Cecilia Ajanki and Piet Gitz-Johansen along with saxophone player Otis Sandsjö move through elements of sound, light and body in a way that affects, confuses and blurs the experience of the audience.

Conceiving and creating a new work is like capturing the detailed minutiae of a dream, except it’s in the future… I don’t think we surrender ourselves to the wild plains of our imagination enough. Art is about creating an elemental experience of life, which the audience is invited to participate in along with the performers.

Within modul-dance, I’ve had research modules at Art Station Foundation in Poznań, Poland and at Plesna Izba in Maribor, Slovenia; and residencies in CSC Bassano del Grappa, Italy and CDC Toulouse in France.

In Poland, in March 2013, I spent half of my time in Poznań, writing, working alone in the studio, chatting to other artists and spending time with an enthusiastic ethnography student from Adam Mickiewicz University, listening to polish lore and folk stories; and the second half in Warsaw, dwarfed by the wind-chilled, wide grey boulevards, and felt the constant shadow of Stalin’s Palace of Science and Culture, absorbing the vibrations (and -8 degrees celsius temperatures) of this multi war surviving “phoenix city”.

In May I travelled to Bassano del Grappa, where I worked alone for the first 5 days of the residency, which I often find difficult to do, particularly as I don't usually choreograph for my own body.

I spent a lot of time reading and writing, and being in another place without the everyday burdens, really helped. Roberto arranged a trip up the mountains for me, led by a young academic fountain of knowledge, Sebastiano Crestani, to see some ancient etchings. Unfortunately the Alpine rain cancelled our hike, and instead we went to Padua, where I saw an exhibition on the ancient Veneti people and an amazing 6 mt wooden horse made in 1466.

For the second week I invited Justine Cooper to join me, a performer with whom I already developed some ideas. We shared some ideas with a wonderfully engaged and generous audience there before we left. We also got to sit in on a rehearsal of an all male choir, singing old Italian and Alpine folk songs, a real treat to watch a committed group of mean aged 30-80 singing like angels!

My 4 day trip to Maribor (Plesna Izba) in June was planned to coincide with the annual FolkArt Festival, which is a bit like the dance version of Eurovision in it’s presentational format. Mojca had arranged front row seats for the 3 nights, and I sat there, blown away by these massive ensembles of predominantly amateur dancers (some pretty hefty guys) doing amazingly complex things, passionate about preserving their national dances. I got a private lesson from Vaska, a Slovenian dance historian, choreographer and choreologist of folk dances from the regions. It was here in Maribor where my attention began to focus more towards the crazy music of the Balkans.

My final 2-week residency took place in Toulouse in December 2013, and this time I brought along 5 dancers. It was the first time for us all to be together, and we spent the entire 2 weeks working in the studio. The facilities at the CDC were wonderful, in that we spent most of the time dancing, eating and talking, which resulted in a sense of ease in our environment and explorations. This ease allowed me to go places artistically I’d never been before. Newer, darker, funnier, stranger places. We had some visits from school children who sometimes joined in the warm ups and university students with whom we shared and discussed small segments of our work.

With Tundra I wanted to explore a familiar concept/myth/truth, depending on one’s beliefs, to reveal the poetry of “heaven and hell” and the instability and abysses that exists within us all and in everyday life. I wanted to somehow work with the potential of an unseen world, and feeling the breath of “the ideal”, without wanting to impose any sort of didactic notions on the work. But I am drawn to thinking about reason and logic being overcome by internal and external forces. By that I’m talking about intuition and the connection between our own instinct and a greater external force outside of our control and indeed understanding. Not wanting to sound too esoteric or ethereal, Tundra is a world that’s cosmically misaligned, where time and space lose their boundaries, inhabited by characters who are confronted by fear -of themselves, their existence, their actions and of the unknown, but ultimately they want to break through those barriers to a higher plane. I’ve been thinking about the cyclical nature of time, and how, historically, we can see patterns emerging, where at certain times everything goes into a state of flux and volatility. It looks like we’re in that state right now, and it is a time of insecurity, change and we have witnessed the exposure of a huge amount of human suffering and darkness. I'm endlessly interested in talking and exploring human nature but in particular our chaos, and struggle with desire and death. I enjoy delving into seemingly banal moments, which our mind and imagination has the capacity to make extraordinarily beautiful or horrific.

I like to allow the spectator to receive his own interpretation of each moment for her/himself, and to allow the mind to organize it in it’s own way. It’s an innate process that we naturally do anyway, so it’s not that any special intellectual treatment or analysis is required. But the aim is to allow the arrangement of all of the components of our creation to have an individual effect or Gestalt in the eye of each spectator.

Each piece of work requires a specific language, a movement one, a visual one, a musical one and sometimes a spoken one. And so for me the “sequence of steps” has to take a secondary position to the people who are actually doing them. An intelligent performer requires much more to keep her/himself stimulated than just repetition. And so that’s when the work becomes much more interesting when the performers are also creators and bringing themselves to it. I was really buzzed by the performers that I worked with on Tundra, which demanded a mutual act of searching from us all. They really brought themselves, their experience, memories and, most importantly, their imaginations into the room. The characters are emerged from them, which felt more truthful, than imposing mannerisms and alien stories on them. The performers are paramount to the work- they are the ones that distil, embody and deliver the energy to the audience, and I have been very fortunate to work with some really wonderful artists.

Tundra premiered at the Dublin Dance Festival in May 2014 and was packed up after it’s successful 4 -show run. What next? There’s a new work on the way in 2015, there’ll always be a new work. But it can be exhausting always creating new work for just a handful of performances, and hoping a DVD will magically enable a longer life for it or garner interest in the next new work.

As I Iook back on my modul-dance experience, and attempt to measure the result my participation has had on the work, there are of course lots of interesting and fruitful moments that come to mind, many of which I mentioned earlier. But I also wonder about how the participating artists affect the partners and modul-dance as an organization. This remains a mystery to me. And although it was an enriching experience to develop the piece in new, unfamiliar places, the question of "what next" will not leave my mind.

Picture: © Ros Kavanagh

How did the following aspects affected my work:

General:
What has affected my work more than anything in modul-dance could be summed up with the word "tailoring".

As I have joined modul-dance a little less than 2 years ago my main topic (apart from my project proposal) was how to tailor this opportunity to my real needs. I suspect modul-dance as a supporting network is introduced differently to different artists depending on their own home venue by which they were suggested and the role and the production conditions of that venue. In short, an interesting realization was that artists adopt the kind of approach to this opportunity that is suggested or presented by the home-venue. I am mentioning this as my situation was a bit different – suggested by Plesna Izba Maribor as my motherboard organization, yet based in Germany, in Frankfurt at the time of being introduced to the network.

This presented me with an interesting insight at the very beginning, starting to understand that although modul-dance is an umbrella for independent dance artists, with a concrete proposal and a fixed system of nominating, awarding membership and supporting the production of their work, it is also an experiment, experiencing it much more alive when understanding it as proposals and suggestions, trials, showings, gathering and exchanging rather than rules and regulations, requirements and criteria.

Development / Modular system:
Personally I have struggled with understanding the scope and the concrete possibilities the network can offer. Although very suggestive with its name, modular system was something that seemed to me a “solution” to something. It sounded as if there was an estimation of the then current productions and residencies and perhaps an observation that the artists lack a clearer vision or articulation of their process, therefore a modular system could be something to give a little push or present a suggestion/advancement of their methods and processes. It would simultaneously help the productions houses themselves to get more suitingly involved. It seemed as an encouragement to deepen one's interest and work and go pass the one-month processes where things are rushed and squeezed in. That is how I perceived it at the beginning. In that regard I must say that “insisting” on one project for 2 years proved to be very fruitful in defying the normal time-conditioned production modes. However, I had some issues with it; extending a project over two years, with a residency in every 5-6 months affects the continuity heavily. My personal practice already incorporates involvement with a specific project for longer period of time, so sustaining the focus and engagement with the subject is not a problem. The purely practical level, hardware of it however is – the project grows and changes thorugh time and the venues cannot always meet these new requirements of one's development. I found myself often compelled by the conditions to rigidly insist on my initial proposal, when in fact the phases of research or residencies brought about new, more suitable pathways to pursue, demanding different conditions than speculated at the beginning.

I have envisioned my proposal with three people at the begining; I have then started a research phase alone, continued with a residency with two other persons, the next one with only one, ending with another research phase where I was working with a group of local dancers. An obvious break in continuity here was due to many reasons – the conditions and possibilities of the hosting venues, the misalignment of the time schedules with the performers I have invited to work with and similar. Although not leading me to the desired outcome, each of the opportunities was still a step forward, expanding and enriching my proposal. Tensions between the aforementioned factors resulted too often in a compromise I had to reach within myself to progress instead of an act of balancing.

Speaking of different phases (research, residency for example), as much as it seems like a good model, it hasn't proved to work well for me. A matrix how a process is unwinding comes across as a valuable suggestion, yet it is something individual, very specific in each case. As it may be beneficial for a group of partners supporting an individual artist to bring about a full-fledged production, I found the modular system a bit over emphasized as it had little correspondence with the phases my project would have undergone otherwise, more organically I assume. On the other hand, it has worked wonders to be practicing such adaptability – using conditions to serve you and not the other way around or simply looking for the best in every opportunity. To conclude on the modular system, I have found myself to start considering the needs of my project and design necessary stages a bit late in my “modul-dance time”, focusing more on how to meet the ends – my needs and venues' offers. So after a year and a half of residencies I am only now at the stage where I'm clear with what is absolutely necessary for the project to be realized and what is less urgent and can be compromised.

Community of artists / Network of trust and colalboration:
Another point I would like to comment on is the community of artists. I have to say it was something I would have wished for more opportunities to engage with others. Meeting people at conferences made sense for me when the format was flexible enough to allow both – a presentation, performance as well an insight into individual's ways of working. I have been inspired by so many artists, connected with few and will for sure keep in touch with them in the future. It has been of great help to meet the rest of 50 something artists and exchange a bit on our development during the modul-dance support. This was the eye opener on how to use or benefit even more from the network, how to “tailor” it individually as I mentioned before. It seemed to me a bit like hearing the testimonies of other's “rules of the game” they have created for themselves.

Also very important was connecting to the programers or let's say everybody else involved that are not the supported artists, from different environments. It was definitely “insider's” information in sense that I got to learn how production is approached to and tackled. What is the venues' approach, values, requirements and criteria, how they treat the audience, and similar for sure expanded my own understanding and influenced not only my future management skills, but artistic approach to some degree as well – be it opening it up to new factors considered in what contributes to dance-making, be it becoming more protective and appreciative of my own artistic visions and beliefs.

However, not only community of artists, but the whole modul-dance community is something I did not expect to start to feel part of. Having heard negative experience of the past generations, jokingly naming it a "market for the programmers", I had my doubts of course, left a bit confused about what to expect. In retrospective, believing one only gets what one expects, I did get confusion, but also and most importantly got the support to develop my work. Both through time & space enabling 'em to work as well as developing skills needed for independent dance maker to create and expand. Although the premiere is not on the horizon yet, I can see already the development of my work and the side-effects of it on a broader scale – how I communciate and integrate in my current environment. All these changes and opportunities were however possible only through a good personal contact I had with each of the partner, mostly finding a common interest and therefore a good connection purely on a personal level, engaging in a chit chat, sychornizing energetically more than any kind of pre-concieved plan and aimed for connection.

The only thing left to add is that this experience has vastly influenced my “positioning” in the most broad sense of the word, to even think of it as a part of my vocabulary when reflecting on my work, it had been testing the range of my permeability – how, when and for what purpose am I exposing my artistic process intentionally or unintentionally and it added sparks to the already ignited desire of mine to have a future opportunity to be part of a tighter artistic community, where the flow of exchange is the motor, curiosity the fuel and integration and support the destination.

Picture: © Zoe Alibert

Conceiving and creating a new work is like capturing the detailed minutiae of a dream, except it’s in the future… I don’t think we surrender ourselves to the wild plains of our imagination enough. Art is about creating an elemental experience of life, which the audience is invited to participate in along with the performers.

Within modul-dance, I’ve had research modules at Art Station Foundation in Poznań, Poland and at Plesna Izba in Maribor, Slovenia; and residencies in CSC Bassano del Grappa, Italy and CDC Toulouse in France.

In Poland, in March 2013, I spent half of my time in Poznań, writing, working alone in the studio, chatting to other artists and spending time with an enthusiastic ethnography student from Adam Mickiewicz University, listening to polish lore and folk stories; and the second half in Warsaw, dwarfed by the wind-chilled, wide grey boulevards, and felt the constant shadow of Stalin’s Palace of Science and Culture, absorbing the vibrations (and -8 degrees celsius temperatures) of this multi war surviving “phoenix city”.

In May I travelled to Bassano del Grappa, where I worked alone for the first 5 days of the residency, which I often find difficult to do, particularly as I don't usually choreograph for my own body.

I spent a lot of time reading and writing, and being in another place without the everyday burdens, really helped. Roberto arranged a trip up the mountains for me, led by a young academic fountain of knowledge, Sebastiano Crestani, to see some ancient etchings. Unfortunately the Alpine rain cancelled our hike, and instead we went to Padua, where I saw an exhibition on the ancient Veneti people and an amazing 6 mt wooden horse made in 1466.

For the second week I invited Justine Cooper to join me, a performer with whom I already developed some ideas. We shared some ideas with a wonderfully engaged and generous audience there before we left. We also got to sit in on a rehearsal of an all male choir, singing old Italian and Alpine folk songs, a real treat to watch a committed group of mean aged 30-80 singing like angels!

My 4 day trip to Maribor (Plesna Izba) in June was planned to coincide with the annual FolkArt Festival, which is a bit like the dance version of Eurovision in it’s presentational format. Mojca had arranged front row seats for the 3 nights, and I sat there, blown away by these massive ensembles of predominantly amateur dancers (some pretty hefty guys) doing amazingly complex things, passionate about preserving their national dances. I got a private lesson from Vaska, a Slovenian dance historian, choreographer and choreologist of folk dances from the regions. It was here in Maribor where my attention began to focus more towards the crazy music of the Balkans.

My final 2-week residency took place in Toulouse in December 2013, and this time I brought along 5 dancers. It was the first time for us all to be together, and we spent the entire 2 weeks working in the studio. The facilities at the CDC were wonderful, in that we spent most of the time dancing, eating and talking, which resulted in a sense of ease in our environment and explorations. This ease allowed me to go places artistically I’d never been before. Newer, darker, funnier, stranger places. We had some visits from school children who sometimes joined in the warm ups and university students with whom we shared and discussed small segments of our work.

With Tundra I wanted to explore a familiar concept/myth/truth, depending on one’s beliefs, to reveal the poetry of “heaven and hell” and the instability and abysses that exists within us all and in everyday life. I wanted to somehow work with the potential of an unseen world, and feeling the breath of “the ideal”, without wanting to impose any sort of didactic notions on the work. But I am drawn to thinking about reason and logic being overcome by internal and external forces. By that I’m talking about intuition and the connection between our own instinct and a greater external force outside of our control and indeed understanding. Not wanting to sound too esoteric or ethereal, Tundra is a world that’s cosmically misaligned, where time and space lose their boundaries, inhabited by characters who are confronted by fear -of themselves, their existence, their actions and of the unknown, but ultimately they want to break through those barriers to a higher plane. I’ve been thinking about the cyclical nature of time, and how, historically, we can see patterns emerging, where at certain times everything goes into a state of flux and volatility. It looks like we’re in that state right now, and it is a time of insecurity, change and we have witnessed the exposure of a huge amount of human suffering and darkness. I'm endlessly interested in talking and exploring human nature but in particular our chaos, and struggle with desire and death. I enjoy delving into seemingly banal moments, which our mind and imagination has the capacity to make extraordinarily beautiful or horrific.

I like to allow the spectator to receive his own interpretation of each moment for her/himself, and to allow the mind to organize it in it’s own way. It’s an innate process that we naturally do anyway, so it’s not that any special intellectual treatment or analysis is required. But the aim is to allow the arrangement of all of the components of our creation to have an individual effect or Gestalt in the eye of each spectator.

Each piece of work requires a specific language, a movement one, a visual one, a musical one and sometimes a spoken one. And so for me the “sequence of steps” has to take a secondary position to the people who are actually doing them. An intelligent performer requires much more to keep her/himself stimulated than just repetition. And so that’s when the work becomes much more interesting when the performers are also creators and bringing themselves to it. I was really buzzed by the performers that I worked with on Tundra, which demanded a mutual act of searching from us all. They really brought themselves, their experience, memories and, most importantly, their imaginations into the room. The characters are emerged from them, which felt more truthful, than imposing mannerisms and alien stories on them. The performers are paramount to the work- they are the ones that distil, embody and deliver the energy to the audience, and I have been very fortunate to work with some really wonderful artists.

Tundra premiered at the Dublin Dance Festival in May 2014 and was packed up after it’s successful 4 -show run. What next? There’s a new work on the way in 2015, there’ll always be a new work. But it can be exhausting always creating new work for just a handful of performances, and hoping a DVD will magically enable a longer life for it or garner interest in the next new work.

As I Iook back on my modul-dance experience, and attempt to measure the result my participation has had on the work, there are of course lots of interesting and fruitful moments that come to mind, many of which I mentioned earlier. But I also wonder about how the participating artists affect the partners and modul-dance as an organization. This remains a mystery to me. And although it was an enriching experience to develop the piece in new, unfamiliar places, the question of "what next" will not leave my mind.

Picture: © Ros Kavanagh

In 2012 MOM/ELVIVERO proposed Lucy Suggate and Sonia Gómez to collaborate in an artistic project. Dance Pals was the first phase of their work together within the Carte Blanche programme in the framework of the modul-dance project, invited by Dansehallerne (Copenhagen) and Graner (Barcelona). The inquisitive middle is a production of the TNT Festival (Terrassa), Sonia Gómez-Lucy Suggate and MOM/ELVIVERO. With the collaboration of Dansehallerne (Copenhagen), Graner and Sâlmon< Festival (Barcelona). Lucy Suggate is supported by Arts Coucil of England.

The German artist Irene Schröder visited Graner in October 2012 for a modul-dance Carte Blanche residency.

More modul-dance videos on Numeridanse.tv.

http://water-wheel.net/resource_files/hotwater-call.pdf

Artists, scientists, activists, teachers and young people are invited to contribute digital postcards, poems or texts on the theme of "HOT WATER - Water, Peace & War". Deadline: March 9, 2015

A panel of special guests will discuss selected contributions, and respond to online audience, live on the Tap, and at Balance-Unbalance conference, hosted by Arizona State University, USA, March 27-29, 2015.

This call is to celebrate Waterwheel's first 3 years and the upcoming website revamp. Prepare your media now and upload when the NEW Waterwheel website goes live. Accepted formats are video, images, animation, audio, text or slideshows - see requirements here http://bit.ly/WW-pdf-En

Each contribution uploaded onto http://water-wheel.net with the keyword HOT2015, will go into the draw to win a music CD.

Please share :)

I was recommended by Plesna Izba Maribor as one of the modul-dance artists in 2012. They also promised to be the main producers of the performance and cover the premiere, so all I needed to get on board were at least three partners. I was seducing them in Barcelona and gave it all to catch their attention, which was not easy. It felt like I was a product on sale and they are buying. There was no big interest but in the end I got what I wanted; three research spaces/residencies, one in Portugal, one in Denmark and one in Slovenia. They offered working space, accommodation, travel costs and per diems, so all the basic needs were covered and I could focus on work, away from trivial obligations in my home town. Therefore going abroad seemed very beneficial for developing work and growing as an artist and as a human being.

New environment was refreshing and revitalising. Being in touch with a new culture opened up curiosity and senses, which was also helpful in the creative process because we were more alert for details. In Faro, Portugal we (Luka and me) were totally motivated for work out and discipline. We were waking up at around six in the morning to meditate, rehearsed through the day and went to run in the evening – across town, by the coast, pass the palm trees. It did not correspond with the laid back nature typical for the warm south but we were so grateful for the big, bright studio and the Mediterranean winds were giving us strength. In Copenhagen we rehearsed in a black box, after the theatre closed the season, so pretty cut off from events and other artists, which influenced the nature of our material. We produced something minimal, slow and intimate, which was really useful for us later on because I got pregnant before the premiere and we had to throw out all the dynamic material and forget about big movements.

We could take good advantage from the research and residency modules. The time we could afford to try out, think and re-think was precious. We could go to many places inside the creation, shifted ideas and had a chance to shape material that was developed through sharing our fascinations and knowledge. The premiered version of Working Title framed all those different off springs into a distinct composition, determined by fatal decisions concluded in the last faze of creation. Because we let the performance develop rather than forced it into a predetermined shape it got an unpredictable form and content, for which it seems to me, it was made with a force bigger than us humans. This life force was something we wanted to come through in the performance and touch the audience. We did not get much chance to try out the effect on audiences because I was not able to perform any more and after me giving birth we were not able to sell the piece. This is where we were not so successful. It was clear from the beginning that being a modul-dance artist does not promise you a tour but maybe the last two modules could be organized more carefully. Perhaps they could run another selection from all the finished works; meaning all directors of production houses would watch all videos and than they choose some to tour. Otherwise mostly those artist that got support from big production houses that have money get the chance for some re-runs. Probably too many artists accumulate over years for something like that. But in the end does size matter?

There are still ideas to make a new version of our performance and from a solo extend it into a duet. We will see about that after the next funding call. Before that I will dance in a piece called Hunting Season, choreographed by Malin Tomašik, so you better watch out for this one.

Picture: © Saša Huzjak

When José Laginha, from Capa/Devir (a cultural structure in the sunny south coast of Portugal) introduced us to modul-dance network we knew very little of it, except that some other Portuguese choreographers (Tânia Carvalho and Cláudia Dias) had also been supported by it in the previous editions.

The meeting in Barcelona, in November 2012, was the first moment we got to grasp the dimension of this network. It was surprising to see the variety of artists, programmers and their specific projects/contexts of action. Although big in scale, the meeting seemed to have the right balance of formality and informality for an actual exchange to happen, and we were caught by its intensity and the way everyone was focused to make it significant and useful.

In that meeting we found affinities with a group of four partners that hosted our project - Satellites - in several residencies over the year. They were Arts Station Foundation, Dance Ireland, Duncan Dance Centre and El Graner. Each place had its own atmosphere and each had inevitably a very specific influence in the way we approached our research. It’s intriguing to notice that no matter how concrete and precise your artistic research is, the characteristics of the studio, its temperature, its privacy, the place where you sleep, the food, the streets you pass by, the familiarity or not with the language, the people you interact with and many other details will work on your research stretching it into unpredictable morphologies.

One can almost draw a big circle in a map connecting those four structures we have collaborated with, starting in Dublin, drawing a soft curve until Poznań, then down to Athens and from there making our way up again to Barcelona. Curiously, like Lisbon, all of these cities make part of some kind of geographical periphery. Not to force a geopolitical layer to this coincidence, but there is something quite interesting in our orbit through this constellation of countries that have a lot of similarities in their recent social and economical histories; specially when one of the main axis of our research in Satellites is about the tension between centre and periphery and the atomization of the centre.

Satellites' first residency was in Poznań and it was marked by a particular research on movement and voice. The residency happened in the same space we had presented one of our works, in the context of Malta Festival, half a year before. It makes a lot of sense when there’s continuity in the relation between artists and partners, and modul-dance just made this possible. As it usually happens, the first residency is where we end up doing everything we had previously thought about the project, as if to take those first preconceived ideas out of the way so that other things coming from the experience of doing may emerge. Not to forget the open class we were invited to give to a vigorous and enthusiastic local community.

Then, in Dublin, we've continued the research ending with an informal open-doors rehearsal where we could share some of the embryonic material with a few spectators and discuss the concepts that were being set as a basis for the work. Work-in-progress showings are something that we tend to avoid; yet, the thing that made sense wasn't exactly what we shared but that it served as a pretext for dialogue. We had also the opportunity to discover and be inspired by Casement’s complex and wonderful life (thanks Paul, for The Black Diaries).

In Athens, we've worked for a week mainly on sound and text, using the surroundings to capture different sounds and test a few ideas about the interaction of the body with the space mediated by a recorded voice. It's impossible not to visit the city and be completely drawn into one of he world's oldest cities, especially when the person who's hosting you is such a passionate guide. In the following week we presented a piece of ours in Arc for dance Festival that had a small focus on modul-dance artists.

Finally, in Barcelona we where able to invite two collaborators of our project, and share some of the ideas that we had been exploring previously, testing them with other bodies and amplifying their possibilities. In El Graner, the term residency was accurately employed because we would sleep and work in the same building. Other artists were also developing their own projects and the fact that we shared a physical space together fostered a genuine curiosity for each other's works.

Now that modul-dance's edition is coming to an end we feel privileged to having been part of it. It is clear that it isn't just about the time you spend in the network, or the obvious benefits of being supported by it; but it's also about encouraging dialogue and setting out grounds for future collaborations.

Picture: © Sofia Dias & Vítor Roriz