welcome - bienvenuti/e

This artist-residence at the Emily Harvey Foundation in Venice was a retrospective of two works by choreographer Thomas Körtvélyessy, Sokrates (2000) and walking con·sens·us / skytime (2006) Both works had first been developed and performed in public space in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The goal of the residence was to review and to re-create these two pieces in the environment of the city of Venice. The residence took place between May 8 and June 16, 2014.

Here is the overall video-trailer of the residence - from several days of performing Sokrates in the historical center of Venice to the final climax with walking con·sens·us / skytime on Campo Trovaso in the Sestiere of Dorsoduro ...


 
Thank you / Mille Grazie :
In the first place warm thanks and gratitude go to Emily Harvey Foundation for their generous and friendly support that made the residence possible. Thanks to Marianna Andrigo for her invaluable help and support, and her many generous connections which made the realization a true success: Live Arts Cultures, C32 PerformingArtWorkSpace, eventi arte Venezia, Kairòs Il tempo Giusto.
Thanks not in the least, to all dancers, both the hundreds of people who came into Venice every day, and the wonderful dancers who performed in the final manifestation walking con·sens·us / skytime.

Equal thanks goes to Jean-Ulrick Désert for his ongoing stamina and patience, Elaine Summers for countless moments of inspiration, not in the least by www.skytime.org for which many of the dances became a contribution, and fellow-artist-resident Gisela Weimann for her energy and extra help with documentations. Anchora, grazie mille!


Exploring this blog :
Scroll down and browse the other articles to learn more about the residence.
Some key-moments have already been published, with brief descriptions of what happened, others are still being edited for publishing. (with the great amount of video-material and many beautiful photographs, this process of distillation for the most characteristic results is bound to take some time)

Just like the ambulant Socrates, have a good itinerary ~

Buon viaggio!

a moment in between ...

walking con·sens·us / skytime

To all who participated in the performance on June 12th : Grazie mille!

Thank you to all the dancers: Allessandra Zuin, Ilaria Briata, Anna Laura Forin, Gabriela Stoica, Bianca Visonà, Stefania Fabris, and especially Marianna Andrigo who faciliated, organised, brought us together -thank you so much!

Thanks to Jean-Ulrick Désert and Gisela Weimann for their help, to Tommaso Zanini of Eventi Arte Venezia for their excellent beamer, to Andrea Morucchio, and to Aldo Aliprandi who helped with putting it in place and getting the best image results.

Furthermore thanks to Bar "El Borrachero" (located at Dorsoduro 1078, near Vaporetto Zattere or Accademia) who gave us electricity, and Giulia V. for extra help and inviting more people to watch that evening ~

Finally, thanks and gratitude to the Emily Harvey Foundation for granting this residence, and all co-sponsors who made it possible to live and work in Venice. It brought forth the renewal of Sokrates, a workshop of Kinetic Awareness® and two classes of dance improvisation at Kairós, and the first full-intermedia performance of walking con·sens·us / skytime. All of these works are directly inspired by the works of Elaine Summers, and many other pioneers of contemporary dance. Thanks to all of them, it is very exciting to continue along the lines and find out more about them.

(photo credits ©2014 Stefania Breban - for more photos click here)

workshop / demonstration at LiveArtsCultures/C32 in Mestre

Yesterday I could rehearse and informally present the conceptual group dance 'walking con·sens·us' in its intermedia form, with a dedicated group of local dancers from Venice. Choreographer Marianna Andrigo, and visual artist Aldo Aliprandi, generously allowed a use of their space C32 / Live Art Culture in Mestre, the industrial part of Venice.

We worked on realising the score of the dance, then how to perform it together with the video-projection. This video shows the day-sky over Budapest, and was shot in 2006 as artist-in-residence at tűzraktér, later edited in Rotterdam by Adolfo Estrada.

It became clear that the speed of the walking should correspond with the movements of the moving clouds in the video. On Thursday we will find out how we can maintain the this basic tempo, but keep the dance alive and ever-changing.

Thank you to all the participants and everybody who came and watched!

Corte Morosini and Piazza San Marco

On our way to San Marco we got to Corte (court) Morosini by accident and decided to make a shot there. After the experiences of three days, I went a step further and faced the notion "emptiness" much more radically: Instead of remaining in conscious control, I let my body move and trusted that the accuracy of energy and action would be right, and correct in harmony with the situation.

The results felt amazingly fuller and more present.
In the two videos below, this state of letting happen comes into a beautiful balance with subjective expression, both complementing each other.




Finally, we did arrive to the (in)famous Piazza San Marco, the epicenter and heart of Venice as a city.


                  *                     *                  *

As we entered the Piazza, one of the restaurant orchestras played Viennese waltz, which turned into a festive moment for all of us and inspired a number of tourist to become spin-off dancers and continue after I had finished.



Some of the dances were very new and unusual in comparison to my more regular work.
There were a number of solo- and duet moments.

I was consciously involving Skytime, a project by Elaine Summers that I have been collaborating on since 1995. The general atmosphere was one of interest and appreciation. Touching the sky, imaginatively, high extensions and jumps were the result, but also thinking of friends who were far away, geographically speaking, and who I figuratively 'connected' with during my dancing.





There were several more moments of audience- participation, partly moved to dance on their own ... (in a great tradition to Elaine Summers' Invitation to Secret Dancers ...)

Finally there were three dances involving other people more directly, one while thinking of a friend in Rotterdam, one with an American tourist, and one with a Turkish tourist ...



When going back home, Jean-Ulrick and I were told by the American tour-guide that her visitors spontaneously made an entire a dance of their own all over the Piazza after we'd moved on. And so, by its own making, Invitation to Secret Dancers, happened once again.

As one of my academy teachers said: Dance is infectious! ☺

San Polo to Piazzale Roma and back

Today was the first full itinerary of Sokrates. It took much time to get it all together, but finally the moment was there to put on the white overall and go for a first walk.

The performance started at the apartment of the Emily Harvey Foundation in Sestiere San Polo and went across the Sestiere Santa Croce to Piazzale Roma, then back via Rio Terrá dei Pensieri, a quiet residential street just off from the bustle of Piazzale Roma.

Unfortunately my current laptop turns out to be too limited to handle the large HighDefinition video-files of the DSLR camera. Since it was clear that we were still in a try-out phase of the documentation, we did some photo shoots as well.

So here are highlights from Campazzo Tre Ponti (three Bridges)
Let's see what tomorrow will bring ...

Campo Nazario Sauro

On our search for good locations in Venice, we came across this very friendly campo in the Sestiere of Santa Croce (Holy Cross) named after Nazario Sauro. I did a study of walking a circle and sensing the different interactions with the walking people who were crossing. You can see how the dance is blending in and out of the overall situation.



Then I let my body move very slowly and from sensation, so that I could keep up with all of the impressions around me, while I was moving. It created a very different kind of poem that is made of movements.



We went on and discovered a small alleyway between houses. (There are many such alleys in Venice, and the more central you get, the more narrow they can become) Here, the space invited me to do a small dance with touching the walls and letting that influence me.



Finally, I finished on the smaller Campiello de le Strope, which became a bit more exuberant, less measured. (the graffiti on the wall says "Art" in German, which was another motivation ☺ )



Now when I review the videos I am surprised that the movement material seems very consistent. It seems that I can dare to go to extremes even more, as long as I am still in a dialogue of listening and talking with the actual situation where I am, including the people who are there.

a first tryout on the fish-market

We are currently waiting for the result of an application for a licence from the local police authorities to perform within the city of Venice (singing! the authorities request the addition of singing as there is no category for only dancing ...) Jean-Ulrick Désert has recently arrived from Berlin, making our strategic working group more complete.

On Wednesday 14 May 2014, we experimented with the possible tech equipment in C32, a very friendly cooperative dance-movement space established in Mestre off the mainland of the Venitian islands, via choreographer Marianna Andrigo. Upon returning to the Emily Harvey Foundation A.I.R. apartments we recorded the first preliminary video experiments (for framing) and dance on the illuminated Fishmarket near the Rialto bridge. It was nearly empty so there was a lot of space available for experimenting with dance movements while allowing the camera to take on its role in documenting the spontaneity of the improvisational work that serves as the basis to Sokrates. At one moment I made a conscious decision to 'repeat' how to move away from the dark-green raised-curtain and the energy of my movement changed. There was very strong sense of poetry in the atmosphere, created by the movements and I could feel the different possible decisions very strongly in their difference. Two tourists came and watched for a moment, then left after giving a welcomed applause.

I realized once more how Sokrates is based on the creation of a portrait of the moment in the moment, comparable to the way Gertrude Stein wrote her portraits of people and objects in the 20th century. Similarly, just like the philosopher Socrates, who realized his philosophy in conversations with others, I have to face the confrontation of relating to people who are passing by. It is up to me to decide how directly I make the contact with them - again - at any moment.

At any moment when you are you you are you without the memory of yourself because if you remember yourself while you are you you are not for purposes of creating you.

(Gertrude Stein, What are Masterpieces and Why are There So Few of Them, 1936)

beginning with Sokrates ~

I have been awarded to be artist-in-residence at the Emily Harvey Foundation in Venice, Italy from May 8th to June 16th and look forward to this time of extended focus on my choreographic work, to make another move forward after the encouragments of last year.

During the coming weeks I will start with re-enacting "Sokrates" a piece that I developed 2000/2001 in public space in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Sokrates is a conceptual dance work and the actual realizations may vary greatly: The basic concept is that like the Greek philosopher Socrates whose daily work, according to legend, was to go to the Market place of Athens and engage passers-by in philosophical conversations, my daily work will be to meander through Venice and engage the city and the people I meet in moments of performance. An important feature when I developed this piece was the state of not-knowing, and that Socrates apparently eschewed the more abstracted modes of his times to write ABOUT philosophy, and PRACTICED it directly, instead.

While re-creating this work in Venice, almost 14 years after its inception (which later became the con·sens·us series) documentation of the results will be done by Berlin-based visual artist Jean-Ulrick Désert - perhaps encountering what he has termed "conspicuous invisibility" in his own work.

I will also consider Venice as a city that has played a significantly in the temporary dominance of European empires and its historical background, and my processes from more recent works (Pelléas material / b.a.n.q. and domain/domein in 2013, my involvement with Occupy Rotterdam and the community-dance-project Delfshaven Dans! in 2012)

Finally, my overall theme for this year is Körperemotionen (German for "corporal, literally: body emotions")
I am curious and eager to find out to what extent I will be able to realize these Körperemotionen with the upcoming Venice residency.

Stay tuned ☺
#sokratesvenice

photos made in Rotterdam, NL ©2001 by Cor Kapaan