You were the youngest dancer hired at Merce Cunningham Company. Which are the first memories of this experience? How was it like to work there?

I would like to share an unusual perspective on this. Normally, I do not answer or consider questions about Merce Cunningham, as this has very little to do at all with the work I create: but upon deep reflection, I’d like to share that he and I had in something in common. We shared a quite total, uncompromising devotion to choreography. I know that I will be pursuing this as passion, for decades – no question, here to stay. And I’m very honored to participate in the continuum of choreography.

I respect the mutual risk that we engaged in together: his decision to hire an 18-year old, and my decision to accept the invitation, and make it my life. It was deeply rewarding – speaking as a dancer.

And now I’ve moved on.

I’ve turned the page, aesthetically speaking.

What do you think was your best asset when you got there?

Separate, independent studies in Visual & Media Art were the most valuable assets to my formation in dance.

How did this moment influence your career?

My own career in choreography took shape very separately. I found, totally by accident, a 3,000′ foot loft in Bushwick, and began creating my work there. That was actually the single biggest influence on my life, and on my choreography.

I can hardly imagine what is the atmosphere like. Can you please detail?

I view choreography as the design of dance, and often, it is a private or solitary experience. Whereas the staging of a dance, the rehearsal of work, and the performance of work is a very shared public atmosphere and experience: for performers and viewers alike. I appreciate both aspects, but they are very different atmospheres. My favorite kind of performance atmosphere is when dancers, and public, are mutually satisfied together. That’s what always feels the best.

FILTER by Jonah Bokaer
©Anthony Goicolea_2011

I believe that you are interested in the way the body moves in a certain space. In which way does space influence your performances?

Beginning in 2002 I began to show my work in galleries and museums. This was because I was working in a very visual manner – and it just seemed right to me. Now with more maturity, I would say, that I seek the greatest possible resonance in a given space, its architecture, and the staging of choreography within it. The choreography and the space should always be a hand-and-glove experience, whenever possible.

In a city as big as NY, creating an art space like CPR is something very brave. How did you get to create CPR?

I had the opportunity to co-found CPR between 2006-2009, and the center opened publicly in 2009. It involved a capital campaign, cooperation from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and negotiating a mortgage in the middle of the global recession. It is my pleasure to remain on the Board of CPR, and I am very proud that the organization remains so stable during this time of legacy shakeup in NYC dance. CPR was possible because I was in my 20s, did not need much sleep, and was discovering my capacity as a powerful fundraiser. I’m proud of CPR, but it took a strong head, a strong spine, and at times, a strong stomach. Creating NYC arts real estate is not an experience I would recommend to others. But I’m thankful that I did it young enough, to now relax and enjoy the purity of making new dance – which is what my life is dedicated to. It just feels right. (The organization was co-founded with John Jasperse.) But I’m thankful that I participated early enough, to now relax, and enjoy the purity of making new dance – which is what my life is dedicated to. It just feels right.

You said in an interview that now in NY it’s better to have a research lab. Why is that?

I see artists, performers, choreographers, and musicians being asked to operate within increasingly diverse presentation contexts. I am currently exhibiting in museums, as often as my choreography is shown in theaters – if not more. To keep the work meaningful, and rigorous, a research lab was essential for me. It’s also much more fun that way, and keeps work interesting.

You worked a lot with artists from other media. Why are you interested in meeting them and putting up something together?

The combination of visual arts and dance is the focus of my entire creative output. The mission of my work is to intensify the relationship between these two forms – and often that involves finding an inbetween, hybrid form. I think I’ve also been very lucky to work with generous collaborators, for which I’m very grateful.

How was it to work with Daniel Arsham?

Artistically speaking, Daniel Arsham is my brother. We have a continual dialogue with each other’s work, which continues to grow, broaden, deepen. I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to have Daniel and his work in my life. He’s 100% there, professionally and personally, and I am the same for him. We have a number of exciting productions coming up, and ongoing weekly dialogue together. It’s a continual challenge, a continual evolution between both of our works.

Dancer Szabi Pataki by Jonah Bokear
©LivioDeponte, 2014

How would you describe Robert Wilson’s practice?

To me, Robert Wilson is the artist who most formed my work, because he taught me about the technical execution of stage space, and exhibition space – from the inside out. Early exposure to his process allowed me to reimagine how artists can collaborate. I find Bob to be a very generous collaborator, and a very clear communicator. He’s also quite successful at supporting younger artists, which I find inspiring.

Occupant
by Jonah Bokaer x Daniel Arsham
©Carlos Avedaño, 2012

You founded Chez Bushwick. Was is the main goal of this longterm project?

Chez Bushwick is dedicated to providing affordable workspace for the performing arts in NYC. 12 years and counting! It’s a wonderful organization, and an incredible team. The true mother ship, and such incredible longevity.

How would you describe your practice? Has you practice change over the years? If yes, in which way?

There is a golden thread running through all of my work: it is about the visuality of dance, as a form of art. My early work was more digitally motivated; my breakthrough works were in museums; more recent efforts engage the cultures of North Africa and the Middle East, which I feel have not been appropriately represented in the public over the past 14 years – and certainly not in dance. But the thread is visual design, which anchors all of my work, and which I see continuing into the future.

Other Myths by Jonah Bokaer ©ValeriaPalermo, 2014

What are you working on at the moment?

My dancers, collaborators and I  have the good fortune of touring about 30-35 weeks annually, and often in Europe – though I’m very passionate about sharing my work broadly in the U.S.  I was recently with dancers in residence in the Hudson Valley, at work on two major commissions. One is for the 70th Anniversary of a historical event in Polish and women’s history, set to premiere on October 7th of this year, at the Center for Jewish History. Ririe Woodbury Dance Company has also commissioned a new work, set to premiere this fall on September 25-27.

I am also creating a special NYC performance at a new venue called Lightbox, on West 38th Street, a fantastic jewel-box space which gives audiences customized event experiences. This event will be with Daniel Arsham.

It should be a fantastic engagement – our home season.

2015 will include tours to France, Atlanta, Italy, Miami, and elsewhere.

I am also releasing my 4th App – which should be a blast.

More about Jonah Bokaer jonahbokaer.net

Jonah Bokaer
MUDAM photo ©Angela R.Moore

Jonah Bokaer at Spoleto
photo ©Adji Dieye

The post Jonah Bokaer: The Combination of Visual Arts and Dance Is the Focus of My Entire Creative Output appeared first on INHALE MAG.

photo blogs.artinfo.com

photo huffingtonpost.com

photo works.jonahbokaer.net

With Daniel Arsham
Music by Riyoji Ikeda
Performers: Tal Adler-Arieli, CC Chang, Valda Setterfield
Research: Laura Gutierrez, Irena Misirlic, David Norsworthy, Sara Procopio
(2013)

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photo kingsplace.co.uk

A human body is injected in a cistern. Over the course of 45 minutes, the pressure of the liquid exerts upon him multiple neurosensorial transformations. From his epidermal fiber to his nervous system, he reacts to influxes of viscosity in this liquid chamber. His cortex, lacking oxygen, gradually loses all notions of the real. Like a human guinea pig: a matter-body whose psychological states are the object of kinetik tableaux, of singular temporal spaces.

photo kingsplace.co.uk

The genesis of the principal visual material for this project was a shoot, in an immense cistern filled with water, which lasted six consecutive days. Yso had to be immersed for over eight hours a day in the glass tank, oscillating between weightlessness and lack of oxygen. With the aid of various digital video recording and photographic systems kolgen assembled many series of temporal sequences, images that he then assembled into a flexible and modular body. It’s a matter of a narrative progression, in perpetual circles of influence and movement, where the real is in dislocation.
Inject is a modular performance in video hd format and multichannel audio.

photo kingsplace.co.uk

Alpha-ville LIVE presents HERMAN KOLGEN: Inject & Dust / 18.05.2014 from Alpha ville on Vimeo.

HERMAN KOLGEN – DUST-02 from Herman Kolgen on Vimeo.

via kolgen.net

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Wolfgang has extensive experience working with metals, timber, concrete, light and glass, exploring and understanding their materiality, character, process and sustainability.  He believes the physicality of materials can involve an individual with the world, evoking experiences and texturing horizons of place through memory. A deep understanding of structure, process and scale informs the aesthetic of his work. By incorporating engineering principles at concept stage, the structure of the work is seamlessly integrated with its form.

Space Tokyo 2014

photo wolfgangbuttress.com

photo wolfgangbuttress.com

photo wolfgangbuttress.com

Una Australia

photo wolfgangbuttress.com

photo wolfgangbuttress.com

North Hill Sun, Minehead

via wolfgangbuttress.com

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Woodkid created the original music, Lil Buck is a guest dancer. JR’s debuts as a choreographer will involve 42 dancers on stage. Les Bosquets is inspired on JR’s first art project, Portrait of a Generation, and by the riots that happened in France in 2005.

photo abigailalathea.com

photo jr-art.net

photo facebook.com/WoodkidMusic

photo facebook.com/WoodkidMusic

photo jr-art.net

The French street artist J R, far left, working on choreography for the piece “Les Bosquets,” with Lil Buck, center, and City Ballet company members. Credit Andrea Mohin
photo nytimes.com

via nycballet.com,  jr-art.net

The post LES BOSQUETS AT NY CITY BALLET : ORIGINAL MUSIC BY WOODKID, CHOREOGRAPHY BY JR appeared first on INHALE MAG.

photo cavs.mit.edu

photo xavierleroy.com

Ivo Dimchev /1976/ is a choreographer and performer from Bulgaria. His work is extreme and colorful mixture of performance art ,dance, theater, music, drawings and photography.

Dimchev is author of more than 30 performances. He received numerous international awards for dance and theater and has presented his work all over Europe and North America.

photo ivodimchev.com

Miguel Gutierrez

“I create evening-length performances that engage enduring philosophical questions around who we are and why we’re here. My work is about desire, longing and the search for meaning. I translate the experiential nature of performing into a sensory experience for the audience. I see myself continuing a legacy of experimentation that prioritizes process over product, and constantly re-defines form.
The people in my work perform with ferocious commitment, and shift in an instant between the ordinary and extraordinary, the heroic and the abject. Their urgent bodies – which convey a desire to be loved, to communicate, to understand the complexity of identity – work in concert with the equally important visual and sonic elements to demand an attentive state – a state in which we can acknowledge the privacy, richness and turbulence of our interior lives.”

photo media.timeout.com

via centrepompidou.fr, ivodimchev.com, miguelgutierrez.org

The post RETROSPECTIVE BY XAVIER LE ROY AT CENTRE POMPIDOU appeared first on INHALE MAG.

Across this year’s four-week programme one can find juggling, clowning, physical theatre, circus, puppetry, acrobatics, dance and magic. And if evidence were needed of the festival’s continued dynamism, it will be provided by two unforgettable shows kicking off proceedings: L’Après-Midi d’un Foehn and Vortex, both the work of the French performance artist Phia Ménard and her pioneering company Compagnie Non Nova.

photo independent.co.uk

The first, L’Après-Midi d’un Foehn, was a major critical and audience hit at last summer’s Edinburgh Festival, winning a Total Theatre Award, and it will appeal to both small children and adults. Supermarkets might want to kill off plastic bags, but this show brings them alive, making them morph into beautiful, haunting art. It starts with a silent performer on stage delicately cutting up coloured carriers and then sticking the pieces back together with tape to create human-like figures. Rising into the air, they miraculously start to dance to the music of Debussy, pirouetting, leaping and even holding “hands”.

The second show, Vortex, is a more violent, confrontational, distinctly adult counterpoint to L’Après-Midi … Ménard appears herself this time as “the alien”, dressed in an oversized black suit and bandages like an obese Invisible Man. Costumes are then dramatically peeled away, abandoned layers rising up and blowing around to create more dancing creatures. The result is a breakthtakingly primal depiction of rebirth.

Ménard formed Compagnie Non Nova (motto: “not new, but in a new way”) in 1998, at first to develop her ideas around juggling and add extra risk to the art. In the show PPP, for instance, Ménard juggled balls of ice that were so cold they could cause burns if held for too long but would shatter if dropped. Ménard smiles as she describes her philosophy of pushing the bounds of “injonglabilitié” – “unjugglability”. She also juggled with cacti, pushing herself to the limit and putting herself in constant danger of injury.

photo sortir.telerama.fr

Compared to this, and to the dramatic unfurling of Vortex, the dancing bags of L’Après-Midi … are more benign. The initial germ of an idea for the show came from an experience she had while working on a project about movement in the Natural History Museum in Nantes. Walking around the museum in the middle of the night, she was acutely aware of the stillness, and brought in some fans so she could make the fur on the stuffed animals rustle. “The museum suddenly became a graveyard into which I decided to reintroduce life,” she says. Then, on another occasion, the sight of a pink plastic bag floating through the air “like an unexpected visitor” gave her the idea of making bags into balletic creatures.

photo langogneenfete.fr

The next project Ménard has in mind is “something to do with sweat”. When she was growing up, there was a distillery nearby and Ménard was fascinated with the way that drops of alcohol were slowly extracted. Thinking back to it, it reminded her of the way we sweat. “I wonder if our sweat is the best of us, because as a liquid it ties us to nature,” she says. But though, in the future, she might be exploring what comes out of the skin, Ménard has already set the benchmark very high with two shows that truly get underneath it.

via independent.co.uk

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photo kvs.be

The beginning is an ironical homage to Joseph Beuys’s performance I like America and America Likes Me where the actor Jerry Killick plays Joseph Beuys and the four dancers are the coyotes attacking him, while Danny Willems, the photographer, is taking as much pictures as possible exposing himself to the risk of being attacked. This is a first reference in order to make a very essentialised passage through performance history and Jerry aka Joseph Beuys is pushing the moment even further by proposing an even more dangerous game, allowing the four “coyotes” to tear up his clothes and eat him alive.

photo kvs.be

Well, we’re in a theater, actually there is no coyote on stage and the difference between the real performance (with all the word’s “real” connotations) and this fake remake is strongly related to the title. Booty Looting means stealing what has already been stolen and in a first phase; Vandekeybus steals Joseph Beuys’ art that Beuys himself had stolen from the reality. “You steal from me, I steal from you. Art is a bit like that”, says Vandekeybus in an interview.
Now it’s the moment for Brigit Walter to enter the stage being presented as an anthropologist interested in Joseph Beuys’ activity in order to give her opinion about the remake. But everything gets confusing, she drops dead and all of a sudden she comes back to life as a famous actress.

photo kvs.be

For those who know Vandekeybus for his dance perfomances, the right thing to say is that this show has a bit of everything, as you can see from the cast; the accent goes on the mixture of these elements (photography, dance, theater, music) and it’s difficult to label it. But, as Vandekeybus declared in the same interview, his major concern was the photography and its impact on stage. The connection between photography and the study that Roland Barthes wrote about it plays an important part for a better understanding of Vandekeybus intention. It’s said that people were afraid of being photographed because they thought their souls were being stolen. Photography has a lot to do with death because it immortalizes something that is gone/dead and Barthes talks also about a special function of photography, confirming that something happened, something real.

photo kvs.be

In this performance, there are pictures taken every minute and projected immediately on a big screen, the photographer gives us pieces/photos of Brigit Walter’s past. A past that is part true, part fiction. In this case, photography has a double power: of the past and of the present and it works in the same way as the theater does: showing something that perhaps it doesn’t exist but is present on stage. The frame of the photos confronts the frame that the spectators have from their seats, so the photographer is there for giving another vision, another reality or a made-up one (see the photo session for reconstructing Brigit Walter’s relationship with her sons having some fake views behind them).

photo kvs.be

Who is Brigit Walter? Jerry Killick is a post-dramatic story-teller, he gives fragmented details intentionally confusing the listener, the pictures could say a different story and the stage becomes a mess where everybody can be anyone/anything. Brigit Walter is an anthropologist, an actress, a bad mother, a desired woman. She is Romy Schneider playing in L’Infer of Henri Georges Clouzot, she becomes Medea killing her children by putting them on the photocopier and printing images of their tormented faces. There is no Brigit Walter, there is a performance playing tricks on memory.

photo kvs.be

by Petro Ionescu

Petro Ionescu is a playwriter, still an unknown one, and she sometimes even performs herself on stage. For the moment she studies in Brussels trying to better understand the performance writing.

The post A WIM VANDEKEYBUS SHOW – BOOTY LOOTING appeared first on INHALE MAG.

eXchange is the focus of this year’s eXplore dance festival artistic selection. Encouraging choreographic research, supporting the younger generation of dancers and choreographers and the diversity of contemporary forms of dance and performance, increasing visibility among the wide audience, this year’s programme focuses on future generations.

eXplore dance festival 2013 will unfold around three essential points: international cooperation, continuous education, the development of a new platform for production and distribution in contemporary dance and performance and will include: presentations, performances, installations, films, workshops, coaching projects, artist talks, conferences and lectures. The special guest of the edition is the well-known German choreographer Raimund Hoghe, Pina Bausch’s dramaturge, much acclaimed on the international stages through his unique personality. “Pas de deux”, one of his most recent creations, will be presented on November 9 at WASP – Working Art Space and Production.

Meet the Next Generation is a programme for supporting and promoting the younger generation of choreographers and performers – with a special focus on East-European artists, will continue this year with coachings and choreographic research and production activities.

Special events in the frame of eXplore dance festival the 8th edition are: film screenings celebrating the centenary “Sacre du printemps” | Stravinsky – Pina Bausch (“Sacre du Printemps” and “Café Muller”), Raimund Hoghe (“Sacre du printemps”), contemporary dance shorts, in partnership with Cinedans – Dance on Screen Festival (Amsterdam).

COLETTE SADLER (UK/DE)/28.09.2013/WASP

RECHTS RADIKAL-CRISTOPH WINKLER (DE)/06.10.2013/WASP

www.exploredancefestival.ro

SOUNDING BODIES|MOVING VOICES/ALESSIO CASTELLACCI (DE/IT)/18,10,2013/20:00/WASP

www.exploredancefestival.ro

-via exploredancefestival.ro

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In December, the French fashion house will launch its own cabaret show, “Mugler Follies,” at the Théâtre Comédia in Paris. The production promises to be an interesting blend of two Mugler signatures, sci-fi and glamor, and will feature an original score, as well as an array of dancers, singers, and high-flying acrobats.

“It tends homage to the human beauty and all its talents,” explains Mugler on the Follies website. “It must be visual and very sensory, combining a huge content of eroticism to its sophistication.”

According to WWD, word around town is that Balmain designer Laurent Mercier’s cross-dressing alter ego, Lola, will be in the mix of performers. Consider our fingers crossed.

photo muglerfollies.com

Mugler stages the story of a young woman in search for her inner balance. As a result of her unpredictable and unusual encounters, she not only discovers herself but also transforms into a sublime and blooming woman. For this production, Manfred Mugler revisits the Revue, an artistic expression that gives him the greatest freedom. It allows him to display all of his follies, boldness and all forms of metamorphoses on stage.

photo muglerfollies.com

A show rich in creativity, Mugler combines joy with eroticism, magic with high technology, lights with transformation, and transports the public into a swirl of emotions. Each number gives the opportunity to travel from one universe to another, with musical rhythms and original songs composed specifically for each act.

photo muglerfollies.com

The casting is judicious; artists are dancers and acrobats, singers and comedians, models and performers. Mugler is delighted; he suggests step-by-step different facets of beauty. Far from a still image, Manfred Thierry Mugler extols diversity in a visionary show that reinvents the cabaret / Revue.

photo muglerfollies.com

photo muglerfollies.com

photo muglerfollies.com

via styleite.com and muglerfollies.com

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The International Festival started in 1995 and each year it has a different theme explored by the presented shows. This year’s theme sounds like this: “The crisis and the open sea” and might make us think that an overrated problem is brought into the spotlight. In fact, the crisis goes beyond the economical part and looks for a deeper and wider understanding. So here are some shows that deal with this issue, maybe not in a very obvious way.

The movement crisis – Anatomia publica

Tomeo Verges’ opening show of the festival consists of a number of repetitive movements in which the quotidian is decomposed in small sequences that become strange gestures. Everyday life actions like sitting on a chair, taking a newspaper off the floor, hugging and kissing your wife, putting your coat on the hanger, lighting your cigarette, opening the door, are repeated all over again just like someone is playing with the remote control pushing the back and forward buttons.

The body is tracing the expression of every change: the face muscles are holding a one second grin, the hands and the legs are tense, the body position is stopped in the least expected moment. But there is a story being told and it is related with a true story of the choreographer’s grandmother. She was living with two husbands: while the first one was at the war, his wife married once more… They decided to live together, the three of them, trying to find a new harmony.

The choreography and the title are inspired by the public human dissections from the 16^th century seen as a form of entertainment, but also by the films of Martin Arnold.

The light plays an important role being synchronized with the dancers’ movements and creating a cinematic effect. The image is intermittent just like the image of an old movie. Everything is in fact synchronized: the music, the light, the gestures, the set, the plot, they all follow the same rhythm.

Anatomia Publica
Tomeo Verges
photo journal-laterrasse.fr

The colour crisis – Mystery Magnet

Coming from a visual artist, Miet Warlop, this next show is a colorful madness where some hard-to-define creatures are filling the space with loads of paint. If at the start of the show the stage was almost empty, only one big white wall standing in the back, as the ending scenes are approaching, the stage is almost flooded. The weird characters puke rainbows, fart pink, smash and crash and splash the wall with their hairy heads and a rain of multicoloured little arrows is attacking the stage from beyond the wall. But the performers don’t stop here and they disembowel themselves cutting out flocks of red cotton. Everything seems like an organic protest against symmetry and order, reminding of Jackson Pollock’s performances.

Mystery Magnet
Miet Warlop
photo archive.kfda.be

Some visual effects are created in order to break the colored violence: a girl seems to be hanged on a bouquet of helium balloons, a high heeled man is transformed into a horse, a kitsch painting of dog becomes a sparkling golden dress.

The final touch is an electronic acapella chorus (Laurie Anderson – like) of some white mannequin busts on a white plateau and controlled with a sort of vacuum cleaner that make their soft plastic necks move.

The love/sex crisis – 7 ways

Geumhyung Jeong is a Korean dancer and the choreographer of her own shows. 7 ways proposes a particular approach in which the object is incarnate and comes to life. The performer finds herself alone (and somehow lonely) on the stage, she hides and uses her body as a vehicle for creating 7 possible love stories. That’s how a mask put on a foot can caress a mannequin or a big-headed jellyfish hand can have sex with a melodica.

7 Ways
Geumhyung Jeong
photo concertnews.be

Each story is twisted and has powerful sexual connotations, some parts are poetical and kind and some others create the impression of a strange dream, or even a nightmare. Probably one of the strongest and disturbing images is the one with an old man-vacuum cleaner raping the “dead” body of the dancer.

The difference between the human and the object is blurred and creates an intended confusion, but after several sequences the spectator gets used with the convention and the performance becomes a bit boring.

The meaning crisis- Les Bouveuses de cafe

English translation would be “The coffee drinkers” and, of course, we have two women drinking coffee during the show in a very symmetrical and well calculated way. The set has something from Twin Peaks red room and even the mood is quite similar to the movie. But who would have thought that drinking coffee can produce such a mysterious ambient? Of course, the performance is not reduced only to this: after the first scene, things are getting ambiguous. A third women appears on stage and she is going through a strange ritual that makes her become like the two other women. There isn’t a clear relation between the scenes. “Hey, but that’s normal! Didn’t you hear about postdramatic performance?” you would firmly say. I actually did, but something, I don’t know what, made things illegible this time… The music remains a plus, it can be very catchy for the spectator.

Les buveuses de cafe
mossoux-bonte.be

The body crisis – Sweat baby Sweat

Probably one of the best “crisis”, a hard physical training with a man and a woman. In fact, a love affair that consumes itself on the stage. The choreography follows an approaching process between the two performers, everything is very intimate and touching. So the kissing scene comes as a relief, it is a waited, wanted, needed moment and a natural one. There is also a sort of exhaustion mostly because of the repetitive slow movements: the bodies are getting wicker and wicker and the muscles are shaking.

The second part contains a subtle irony that lets the audience to enjoy an endless romantic song. While the two dancers are crawling and almost fading in the darkness, some lyrics of the song are projected on the wall just like in karaoke. The funny part is when we notice that the romance is gone and we are starting to read what we might think in that moment.

Jan Martens
Sweat baby sweat
photo janmartens.com

Well, I guess this is where the crises end.

by Petro Ionescu

Petro Ionescu is a playwriter, still an unknown one, and she sometimes even performs herself on stage. For the moment she studies in Brussels trying to better understand the performance writing.

The post A SHORT STORY ABOUT PERFORMING CRISES – THE INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL LES BRIGITTINES appeared first on INHALE MAG.

Swedish artist and designer Erika Janunger’s short film “Weightless” is one of those things that you watch, and while you’re watching you’re not totally sure what you’re seeing or why you even like it, and then you realize you’ve watched the whole thing. Then you watch it again. Then you realize you’ve let it sink in and feel like an ass for not loving it the first time. But that’s the thing sometimes about breaking new ground – it’s so new you need to digest it and let it breathe until you really catch on to what you’re seeing.

A combo of dance and interiour design, this short film was Janunger’s masters project and is her way of exploring the intersection of architecture, choreography, and music. Though she’s not the first film maker to tilt a set to create the illusion of defying gravity, I’ve never seen it done so quite unapologetically before. It’s not a gimmick or just a visual trick – this weightlessness is part of these girls’ reality. Counter to our normal fantasies of the freedom of flight, they seem (in a crazy paradox) weighted down by their very weightlessness. Like it’s a cross they bare. When brilliant dancers Malin Stattin and Tuva Lundkvist gaze right into your eyes, you can tell this isn’t a state of being they’ve chosen for themselves.

photo deagosto.com

She’s also almost shockingly multi-talented. She not only directed, art directed, and set designed “Weightless”, but she also wrote the music and lyrics to it’s haunting soundtrack. She’s got a Tori Amos-esque sound that I clearly dig, and she’s an equally accomplished liver performer. In fact her site divides into two sections – design and music. On the music portion you can download a few tracks for free and order her debut album “Hazy”. Plus, you can see a video of her performing live at the Lilith Eve’s Gala in Stockholm here.

photo shape-and-colour.com

On the design side, her site is a trove of various projects, including “Workshop in the Woods” where she lit up a forest near Gothtenburg, Sweden.

photo shape-and-colour.com

In fact the more you look into her work, the more it seems like there’s nothing she can’t do. Holding a masters in interiour architecture and furniture design from the College of Art, Craft, and Design in Stockholm, Janunger clearly has an eye for design. But it’s her drive to explore the art of how people interact with her creations – with lighting, with a chair – that sets her apart. She is driven to create, as her statement on her site makes pretty clear:

“Creating architecture and design, is like making music. By using three dimensions – three notes, you make a chord. By using many chords, shapes and spaces – you can create an entire world… I want to understand how all that works, I want to create surroundings and objects based upon peoples lives and feelings. I want to create worlds, I want to play God.”

photo vimeo.com

via shape-and-colour.com

The post ERIKA JANUNGER: WEIGHTLESS appeared first on INHALE MAG.

She She Pop- “Schubladen”

She She Pop is a Berlin based performance group, formed mainly by female members: Sebastian Bark, Johanna Freiburg, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Ilia Papatheodorou and Berit Stumpf .

“Schubladen” – is a meeting between former East and West german female residents, confrontating each other, their lives, their education and the society they were brought up. Biographical elements are inserted in the collective history of the last 40 years.

“Schubladen” is a performative encounter of different destinies, all being presented, compared and opposed on stage. There is no good or bad, no right or wrong. Events are regarded with humour and intelligence.

The show is structured as a repetition of confrontations. Sitting face to face, two by two, the 6 participants explore their pasts and bring a personal interpretation to the known historical facts, a catwalk of imagined and reimagined clichés that people have about each other. The conclusion: creating a dialog between opposite sites. Does it work? Can we change who we are if we cannot change the past? Is the past totally defining our lives? The question is to be answered by our personal choises.

Read more on She She Pop’s site: http://www.sheshepop.de/en/productions/schubladen.html

Foto: Katrin Ribbe

www.sheshepop.de

www.sheshepop.de

Mette Edvardsen

“Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine”

The Royal Library of Belgium has hosted the utopia described by Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451. In a future far far away all the books are burnt and the only way to support knowledge is by becoming yourself a book. So why not try it out before the disappearance of books?! Following Mette Edvardson’s concept, a group of artists from all over the world, have started to learn books by hard and to become the book they love. There are already 30 live books(in German, English, Spanish, Arabic, Norwegian, Greek, Dutch), one of them I met this year in Brussels.

photo bellyflopmag.com

He was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He took me somewhere in one of the library’s archive and started talking. It was a weird feeling, the book was not an object anymore but a person. The book was embodied by this middle aged man who had no biography for me. He became the story; without trying to add extra feelings to what he was saying or to set a scenery or to make it theatrical. No, it was just the two of us and the story, and the words, the language, the texture of fiction.

More about the project and about the coregrapher and performer Mette Edvardsen: http://www.metteedvardsen.be/projects/thfaitas.html

by Alexandra Pâzgu

Alexandra Pâzgu is an artistic researcher and practitioner, interested in contemporary dramaturgical dynamics. Currently enrolled in an artistic based Ph.D.  at UBB Cluj, with a proposal that links dramaturgy to conceptual art.

http://flavors.me/alexandra_pazgu

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His latest collaboration is with Daniel Arsham. They are preparing a performance show, Occupant, that will be presented in December at Art Basel Miami. Four dancers will dance near Arsham’s objects (they are white and made out of chalk). What is beautiful about this project is the warmness and the ability of mixing two areas, which is a thing both artists do, in such a natural fluid way, without intruding. What is interesting about Johan Bokaer is also the fact that he constantly challenges himself and other artists when they work together. Among others- Isaac Mizrahi, Robert Wilson, Robert Gober, Iri Batsry.

photo nowness.com

photo nowness.com

photo nowness.com

In False Start, in 2008, his body is standing in front of a garage door, which underlines the contrast between the body and the metal. Then what he does is to fold again and again, as if he tries to find a way to use it in this fight with the metal. How can you get through this door? How negotiate with this powerful object? Also, he body takes the time needed to start over again. All this hope is very important in the entire process, because it keeps the body moving. He also used 3D animation, which, once again, makes a statement on how a body mixed with a different medium to create an organic work.

photo boston.com

In On Vanishing, the choreographer worked with Lee Ufan, that exhibited at the time at Guggenheim, Marking Infinity. It was his first work where dance met sculpture. Here, the dancers used their body to underline the changes through which it goes. What was impressive is the use of space- there are many dancers that have difficulties in really filling a space and in using its full potential. But On Vanishing seems natural there is a great use of the space. Also, they make music when touching the paper, while they were curled up in it, as they were standing in a fetal position.

photo hartharthart.photoshelter.com

photo youtube.com

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photo english.tanzimaugust.de

His portrait of a strictly religious family whose way of life comes under increasing pressure in the 20th century is also a multi-layered reflection on society and social co-existence, on art and politics. Gat works with movement in the same way Gould did with sound. Clear structures leaving space for spontaneity open multifaceted perspectives on social contexts and their influence on the individual. “The Goldlandbergs” investigates the contrapuntal essence of choreography and grants dancers and viewers alike the freedom to make their own artistic and interpretational decisions.

photo english.tanzimaugust.de

Cecilia Bengolea / François Chaignaud (AR | FR)

altered natives’ Say Yes to Another Excess – TWERK

Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud have been going to discos since they were teenagers. In locations as varied as London and New York City, they have become familiar with and learnt popular dances like Jamaican dancehall, krump, house, or split & jump. In altered Natives’ Say Yes To Another Excess – TWERK they transpose this found material to the stage.

photo english.tanzimaugust.de

photo english.tanzimaugust.de

“Outspoken, bold in many ways, humorous, and excessive when it comes to physical commitment, the gang of five tries to intertwine in the most unusual positions. They claim they ‘devour and multi-colonise one another’; and here the choreography does not result from one overbearing author, but is dissolved in the community.” (Libération, Marie-Christine Vernay) This work and its playful writing process were created in harmony with a musical investigation of Grime music. It is the first time that the DJs Elijah and Skilliam, from the London label Butterz, will play in a theatre and collaborate with contemporary dancers.

photo english.tanzimaugust.de

photo english.tanzimaugust.de

via english.tanzimaugust.de and berlin-diagonale.de

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Sasha Waltz is a German choreographer, working with different artists and expanding towards architecture, as well. If her latest works are more classical, both in choosing the scores as well as the way in which the dancers move, at the beginning of her career the choreographer was more experimental. For example, she created Travelogue-Trilogy together with her company, inspired by Buster Keaton movies. The energy of the show made it so famous, as well as the idea of a body that repeats the same movements without loosing its focus and intensity. The show toured internationally, to the critics’ acclaim:

photo sashawaltz.de

As mentioned before, the choreographer is constantly interested in different artistic areas, as with Continu it is very visible her influence, since there is a structuring of the space in that performance. And when we say that it’s not about the scenography, but about the large gestures, dancers moving at the same time, creating a powerful visual and energetic structure, thus reminding of architecture. In her career, the choreographer seems to have moved from more experimental works, to performances that are more classic, where she is interested in key elements like movement and music, as if she got to the basis of choreography.

Her creative force changed through the years. Her trilogy Korper, S, noBody questions the body itself and searches new means of relating to it. There is the famous part where the dancer would say a phrase about her legs while she would be moving her head. This also questions the power of language and what it comes with it once some words are so well established.

photo bernd-uhlig-fotografie.com

Sasha Waltz made a film, Architectural Dialogues, where she underlined the importance of the space where the dancers perform.The unconventional spaces are Neues Museum in Berlin (archictectural studio David Chipperfield and Julian Harrap), the Jewish Museum in Berlin (architect Daniel Libeskind) and MAXXI National Museum of the XXI Century Arts in Roma (architect Zaha Hadid). The strong architecture makes the dances aware of where they are performing, thus changing the space itself with their own bodies.

photo post-new.com

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But it all started a long time ago when, in 1978, she performed in a piece called Cristallisation where she would drop raw eggs on the floor, among others. It was a period of experiments, where artists tried to find a medium in which they would feel comfortable to express themselves. The general atmosphere was one of liberty and experiment when, in 1981 with Danseuse-performeuse cherche amoreux or amoreuse pour la nuit du 1er juin (Dancer-Performer Seeks Male or Female Lover for the Night of June 1) she put herself on sale, through an auction during the show. People were outraged by her act. And it was only the tip of the iceberg, since in Petite danse sans nom there was a scene where someone urinated and Marie Chien Noir included a masturbation scene.

In 1990 she started her own company, La Compagnie Marie Chouinard, and the first performance was Les Trous du ciel, where the dancers were acting like primitives, and language was replaced by some noises. The performance was very powerful and the critics praised it:

She is interested in rituals, and many of her works are around this issue. Starting with 2000, she became more and more fascinated by them, and her works are, therefore, more mysterious and dense in hidden meanings. She puts the body in different contexts, where the body has to adapt do a special condition. Using objects is another way of changing the natural position of a body. How does it change? What rhythm does it take?  In 2005, starting from Henri Michaux’s drawings and poems, she created bODY_rEMIX/les vARIATIONS_gOLDBERG, which won the Gemini Award. It is a highly acclaimed performance through its mathematical form, rhythm and the use of crutches.

photo nakedada.blogspot.com

It is said that the critics try to find new ways of talking about her shows, and that they are at a loss of words. Indeed, it might be difficult sometimes to talk about bodies, especially when the choreographer finds such unexpected means of expressing her ideas. The artist also worked with Marina Abramovic, Laurie Anderson, Robert Wilson, Trisha Brown, Simone Forti.

In 2009 she directed and danced in a performance, Gloire du matin, that was sold out throughout the entire Venice Biennale, since it was a special event: after 20 years she was back on stage.

Gloire du matin
photo youtube.com

In 2013 she completed another performance, called Gymnopedies, based on Erik Satie’s works ,which already started touring, to the excitement of her fans. Yes, it is not a misplaced context to say so, since, indeed, after years of work she already has her fans.

Gymnopedies
photo impulstanz.com

According to impulstanz.com

“eleven dancers from Chouinard’s company immerse themselves in the playful, magic worlds of the danced duet: a one-act ballet to the sounds of three piano compositions jointly called “Gymnopédies” by the French master of modernism, Erik Satie. This brand new piece, which boasts glittering bowls with flickering flames, provides a look into a dreamscape of perfect moments of togetherness.”

photo laplacedesarts.com

Read more about Marie Chouinard and her company: http://www.mariechouinard.com

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