Action, Word, Move - Public Showing
Sunday, April 7 20:00 - K77 Studio
Our improvisation workshop facilitated by Jeremiah Day has concluded its first ten week session and so some of the group will host an informal evening presentation on April 7th at 8pm.
All who are interested are welcome to come and check out the kind of work we’ve been developing in the last weeks.
Suggested contribution 3-5 Euro (sliding scale).
The second session of Action, Word, Move will run May 12 to June 30, sundays 17:00 to 20:00.
luciana achugar
If I were in L.A. on March 29th, I would be there.
—- TANZTAGE 2013 —-
For my new solo “Vessel, resonating” I built a frame around the idea of resonance, through which I look at body and movement techniques that have been important to my personal dance history and the way I assembled corporeal knowledge in the past two decades.
The display of choreographic skill isn’t as important as the irreverent treatment of it, since I recognize that what determines the “skill set” in each perspective on technique varies as much as the physical skills a technique aims to instill. So I am generally not too interested in “how to convey expertise”; rather I am interested in subtlety and contrast, and in the shifting of awareness, values and frame of mind.
body as sound, body as animal, body as female, body as shadow, body as interiority, body as theory, body as imagination.
I am hoping to create more space for fully corporeal and sensual experiences in and around me with “Vessel, resonating”. Let’s see.
Performances are Monday, Jan 7th and Tuesday, Jan 8th at 8:30pm at Tanztage Festival
Sophiensaele (Festsaal)
Sophienstr. 18, Berlin
Tickets under 030-280 927 93
If you are interested in the other artists on the festival program, click here!
Steadily, feverishly, maniacally working on my new solo, in case you are wondering. Can’t say much more about it right now, but here is a glimpse.
Many loose parts, odd ends, tangents, and filaments as for now.
What is the intervention? What is it doing?
Title… … …
(THANKS to photographer Sonja Koch)
cypher.myself
My dancing has become so hard to decipher.
And I assume that this is true for a large number of contemporary works. With the move away from modern aesthetics, with storytelling dominating many dance works (with exceptions, of course: most famously Merce Cunningham) the maker-viewer agreement was much clearer: The choreographer would make it her responsibility to communicate clearly. Now, with many dance makers and dancers based in a wide array of body techniques and somatic practices, the viewer can’t rely on the previous, linguistic modes to understand a dance. (Questions like: “What is this dance saying?” “What story is it telling?” “What is its vocabulary, its syntax?” are leading to little productive answers, as far as I am concerned.)
So recently, I have made it my practice to dive into this illegibility some more. I am not excluding gesture from my improvisations, but am trying to have them read as movement, rather than as means to the end of communicating. (And yet still, SOMETHING will be communicated regardless, to anyone watching.) What exactly that something is, I do not care much about at the moment. Arrogant? No. Avoiding artistic responsibility? Maybe.
Trying to find out more. Drop me a note if you have thoughts about this. I’d very much appreciate it.
arihoffmann at
macdotcom
I am starting up a new class here in Berlin, at Theaterkapelle to be precise. Teaching as creative practice. I plan to turn conventional didactic and methodology on its head, I will shake them up until they lay in shambles, and I will plant a new field of flexible elements - following my and participants’ needs for openness, space, room to be in more fully. It is part of a new strain of research interest in (what for now I call) the “welcoming body.”
Its basic idea is based on what I call “cross-training”: a practice against the hierarchy of body theories and movement aesthetics. A move away from the “expert body” the one solidly trained in one technique.
I want it all: get my blood pumping, ask questions, give space for introspection, tune into perception, create performative moments, laugh… It’s about being deeply physical.
Some further thoughts on how this desire ties into our larger cultural and political moment to follow…
(via workoutberlin)
My new rehearsal space as of this week. I am quite happy with the fact that it is not a dance studio. But let’s not linger on “what it is not,” let’s move.
It is an attempt to bridge the distance of art making and other aspects of life. The dance will happen here and now, in the context of funeral services and rock concerts. (Ashes involved in both.)
Opening the mind and body to the possibilities of the spaces within (both within myself and within a situation). A meditation on life and death - every time I rehearse.
Oral Dance Histories - at Tanznacht Berlin 2012
I teamed up with Peter Pleyer and Andrea Keiz for a series of meandering conversations while engaging in some pretty tactile activity: knitting and crocheting. A fantastic way to listen to some folks talk about Berlin dance history. I say this casually, but we had the chance to talk to the grand movers and shakers of the contemporary dance field, like Nele Hertling and Irene Sieben. What is amazing to me - how far back their connections go. The accounts of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s revealed the deep roots of relationships and contemporary dance practices, while there seems to be a lot of transient activity right now.
If you haven’t been able to listen in on Aug. 25th during TANZNACHT 2012 at Uferstudios: all audio will be archived and publicly available soon. Stay tuned!
Hier gibt es Fotos und einen Ausschnitt des Gesprächs mit Nele Hertling.
Landau mit Liam Clancy
Yes, it is happening. I will be heading to Landau for a workshop series and performance organized by my dear friend Liam Clancy from San Diego, who has been building a yearly opportunity for an encounter with improvisational practice and spontaneous performances for folks in Landau.
We are both preparing individually for some joined teaching and performing in the first week of July 2012. It turns out that both of our processes are heavily informed by Simone Forti’s practice of moving and writing right now.
What preoccupies my thinking at this moment: How to translate somatic and kinesthetic experiences that I am having while dancing to an audience that might not have the same background with bodily practices? How to communicate, basically - and also: what communicates when I share this kind of dancing with people. While those questions are neither new or fresh, they are important for me right now, much more than the actual content/matter of a performance. Because if you can’t reach your audience, what does it matter what you try to tell them? It’s like talking into an electric socket while you intend to relay an important email to someone, telling them about your arrival time. Or so.
Meanwhile, here is what’s been intriguing me when thinking about “resonance,” the hook, the central thought, the jumping-off concept for my next larger dance project.
Having a voice does not necessarily mean you have agency.
Making sounds does not mean you’ll be heard.
itch Dance Journal has a brand new virtual face!
Thanks to the wonderful design and coding skills of Tanya Rubbak.
current studio practice
drawn to this resonance / reference thing, movement-wise, still. diving deeper into it. it is feeling inappropriate at times (like dancing to music), which is probably a residue of WAC-minded consciousness (“appropriation,” stealing, infringing…). unclear yet: what questions will i pose towards it? what this the direction, my larger intention?
i have been finding the drive of my current practice, which includes
1. DANCING TO MUSIC and enjoying it
2. WRITING - a la Simone Forti. at times bordering on dance therapy, then psychological processing, other times pragmatic planning, “lesson planning” for potential workshops…. a huge mix of stuff spilling out of me every time. scattered notes everywhere, physical and virtual ones.
3. KLEIN TECHNIQUE stretches (what i remember of it)
4. MOVEMENT RESEARCH in-between all of the above, unfocused yet specific, very unorganized, disjointed, ADD. combined with awareness practice as usual.
it’s a fun mix and seems to just be right (and has been for a while, without me recognizing its parameters).
against single-mindedness, for multiplicity, for distraction, for diversion, for quick edits and changing foci, for fullness and richness.
ahhh. wild mind practice.
this will lead to something for a performance in Landau early this July, organized by my dear friend Liam Clancy from San Diego. keep updated by following the blog, or subscribing to sparse emails. or by stopping by at my rehearsal space.
Los Angeles shout-out
My tireless friend and co-conspirer of many things dance, Meg Wolfe, is making so much possible in Los Angeles. I MISS YOU. Time to rethink, replenish, reevaluate, re-inspire. Time to Show Box LA.
The blog of the National Arts Journalism Program on Meg
The Los Angeles Times on Meg - on the Faces to Watch in 2012 list!
Dancing to Music
FEELS DIRTY.
I am in a transitional void. In-between. Not here, not there. I have made it my practice to make space to experience resonances (of other places, of other bodies, of my corporeal history, of my myriad practices), things that resonate with me. I lost my artistic context for now, seemingly, trying to figure out how dance is understood and shared here, what is legible for audiences. The seeming lack of context created a need for “referencing” as a way to connect to those who influenced me deeply in my time in Los Angeles and beyond.
This little series of dances to music was created from a studio practice around the idea of “resonance” and “reference” that I am drawn to ever since my Hothouse Residence at UCLA summer 2011.
Thanks to Neil Greenberg for inciting the constant experiment.
Dance to Music I: the new is the old - This dance owes its existence to Vic Marks (via Hothouse Residence at UCLA) and Meg Wolfe. (music: Philharmonia Orchestra “Three German Dances, Dance Three”)
Dance to Music II: b*tch - This dance owes its existence to John Jasperse and Simone Forti. (music Rick Ross) new link!
Dance to Music III: alignment (tuck your thumbs!) - This dance owes its existence to Tim Golliher and Tehya Baxter. (music: Bagad Kemper)
Dance to Music IV: material for the spine - This dance owes its existence to Steve Paxton and Christine Mauch. (music: Israel Kamakawiwo’ole “Ka Pua U’i:)
Dance to Music V: enough already - This dance owes its existence to Matthias Rick. (music: Kid Cudi & Ratatat, “Alive”)
