Thursday, June 12, 2014

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)


Monday, June 9, 2014

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!


Saturday, June 7, 2014

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.


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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! ☺

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

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 ...