A professional study day initiated by KUMQUAT | performing arts in conjunction with the CN D and the biennale de la danse de Lyon, this one-day session is aimed at collectively exploring ways of working and inhabiting the stage beyond the age of 40.
10:00am to 1:00pm
Dancers’ professional careers: what if ageing was an asset?
This first half, dedicated to dancers and choreographers, takes the form of experience feedback on the issue of performers’ on- and off-stage career over the years.
2:30pm to 5:00pm
The dancing body: a matter of gaze and identification?
Open to programmers and all dance-sector professionals, this round table will explore the visibility of age in dancing, accompanying the audience’s gaze and expectations, and how our relationship with age informs the creative process.
Since 2017, a group of dance artists and producers gathered around Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia have been in conversation with Deborah Hay, an icon of postmodern dance, about the possibilities of collaboration and about presenting her rich body of work to Slovenian and regional audiences.
At the invitation of NDA Slovenia, she came to Ljubljana in June 2022, opening up a process of exchange and experiential learning in conjunction with the tools from her long-standing practice. In this way, she introduced the participants to her perspective on dance and choreography, while enriching, challenging and further guiding our individual artistic processes.
For us as dancers, the work with Deborah Hay is a gift, a learning experience, an affirmation of dance as a daily practice and a research of forms, formats and the fluidity of perception. In this process, dance is paralleled with learning, individual and collective. Choreography comes as a structure, which supports and challenges the dancers. The possible readings of it are infinite – firm and fluid at the same time.
Daniel Linehan invites nine dancers of different generations to reflect on the role of dance in their lives. Why do you choose to dance? What motivates you to continue? When does dance start, and when does it end?
In 2019 Linehan created the solo performance Body of Work in which he reflects on his own history of dancing. Revisiting some of the same intimate questions that he asked himself, he gives the dancers of Kiss The One We Are with their own diverse histories the space to reflect on what it is to experience life and the surrounding world through the lens of dance. In what ways can dance connect us with one another and with the other dances that take place all around us: the play of animals, the movement of plants, the rhythm of an ocean, the dance of atomic particles continually vibrating and interacting. …? In asking these questions, together they reflect on the meaning of dance itself.
The radically experimental dance piece „Story“ (1963) by Merce Cunningham is one of the most memorable works in modern dance history. In the historical work, the dancers were able to make decisions about space, time and the sequence of their movements. In the first part of the evening MAKING DANCES at Kampnagel, this historical masterpiece of postmodern dance is reimagined by the Dance On Ensemble. Based on fragmentary archive material (a single film recording, choreographic notations, anecdotal reports), the dancers integrate new elements into the indeterminate structure of the piece. At each venue, a local artist now takes on the historical role of Robert Rauschenberg, whose décor at the time consisted of objects he found near the theatre. In Hamburg, the work of Hamburg-based visual artist Anik Lazar will be part of the stage choreography. The second part of the evening is a contemporary, choreographic response to „Story“: French choreographer Mathilde Monnier responds to Cunningham’s work with „never ending (Story)“, using the poetry of David Antin, a contemporary of Cunningham/ Cage, as a starting point.
An expanded season of programming on the work of Lucinda Childs, encompassing performances, film screenings, lectures, talks and an exhibition of her scores.
Born in New York, Lucinda Childs started her career at the Judson Dance Theatre in 1963. In 1973, she formed her own company, with which she has created over 50 works. Since 1981, she has choreographed more than 30 works for major companies, such as the Ballet de l’Opéra national de Paris, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, the Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, the Berlin State Ballet or Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Company, and for theatres such as the Los Angeles Opera, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein or La Monnaie in Brussels. Her choreographies are known for their minimalist movements and complex transitions, transforming the slightest movements into intricate choreographic masterpieces.
28 February:
Screening of the film LA GRANDE FUGUE (2017), by Marie Helène Rebois
2 March:
Lecture Lucinda Childs, Page in Hand, by LOU FORSTER
2-11 March:
Exhibition Lucinda Childs, Nothing Personal 1963-1981.
Curated by Lou Forster, mobile exhibition by CND Paris
2-4 March:
Film screening LUCINDA CHILDS
Written and directed by: Patrick Bensard
2-4 March:
Lucinda Childs and Philip Glass: DANCE
Interpretation BALLET DE L’OPÉRA DE LYON
3 March:
POST-PERFORMANCE CONVERSATION with Lucinda Childs
Moderated by journalist and dance history teacher, Bàrbara Raubert
3-4 March:
Dance On Ensemble, Works in Silence
4 March:
Screening Cèl·lulaLAB – CALICO MINGLING (1973)
Open presentation of the transmission laboratory of the piece by Lucinda Childs for non-stage spaces and for 8 dancers. Led by TY BOOMERSHINE within the programme CÈL·LULA_LAB.
A production about the power that lies in being out of step, performed by a seventeen-strong, atypical corps de ballet made up of unique personalities.
The heterogeneous group of dancers between the ages of 18 and 71, with diverse backgrounds and track records, find and strengthen each other on stage. In any attempt (…) they seek their own voice within the dance and beyond, looking for an idiom that fits them like a glove. One by one they claim their place on stage, without cutting off the others for all that. A horizontal exercise in giving each other the necessary space, while being careful not to steal the limelight. In times of extreme polarization, this group sets social dogmas aside to recognize and embrace a range of distinct identities. Being uninhibitedly themselves – in both life and art – with the stage as their ideological testing ground.
A body that is outwardly still and inwardly vibrating – what processes does the energy undergo before it breaks through? How does it change when the body matures?
In his new production „MELLOWING“ Greek choreographer Christos Papadopoulos embarks on his inaugural collaboration with the dancers of the Dance On Ensemble. Incorporating their knowledge and experience into the creation, together they explore moments of perception and intensities of the moment that create a lively restlessness, a permanent vibration in which the spectator is inevitably involved.
Christos Papadopoulos’ works are fed by an intensely observant approach to movement and often unfold a lively and meditative power. His attention is focused on the minimal shifts of perception, the perpetual, often unnoticed and yet powerful movements that are ever-present in nature, in everyday life, within physical phenomena and political contexts. His debut “Elvedon” (2016) was inspired by Virginia Woolf’s novel “The Waves” and captures the continuous undulation of the sea. This was followed by “Opus” and his third choreography “ION”, an artistic exploration of the phenomenon of ionization and its underlying forces of attraction and repulsion. In his latest work, “Larsen C”, he turns his attention to the micro-phenomena of movement, this time inspired by the popularised iceberg of the same name, which lost a large part of its surface in 2017.
Production: DANCE ON / Bureau Ritter Coproduction: ONASSIS STEGI, Athens and Centre chorégraphique national de Rillieux-la-Pape / Direction Yuval PICK, as part of the accueil-studio programme.
Supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.
Due to delays in the renovation of our building, this performance cannot take place in STUK. It will be moved to 30CC/Schouwburg.
Works in Silence offers a unique insight into the early work and artistic development of Lucinda Childs, an icon of American modern dance and one of the most important choreographers of the twentieth century. Six dancers, from the 40+ ensemble Dance On, perform a selection of choreographies from Childs’s extensive repertoire: fascinating both for their rarity and undeniable influence on international dance and visual art. These works were performed throughout the 1970s in museums, churches and public spaces, yet most have hardly, if at all, been staged ever since.
In these dances, Childs has left behind props, objects, the spoken word, symbolic movement – all hallmarks of the era of the Judson Dance Theater – and chosen to focus on the passage of the body through space. To zero in on the essence of initial movement, which, for Childs, is the act of walking. From walking to running, to changing direction, to skipping, to leaping: the Works in Silence illustrate the evolution of movement into dance through the choreographic vision of Lucinda Childs.
These works express a fragility and a humanity that is a perfect example of the value of experience, and ideally suited to a group of dancers that bring with them their own abundant histories and knowledge. In the act of stripping away all artifice and theatricality, the beauty and truth of wisdom is confronted, shared, and exposed. A slice of dance history not to be missed.
In 2003, Magdalena Reiter and Mateja Rebolj created the intergenerational dance collective Forma Interrogativa. Twenty years later, their second collaboration Preludes and Fugues is a moving inventory of their artistic oeuvres, their dance life and their times.
Dancing to seven preludes and fugues from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Magdalena Reiter and Mateja Rebolj, enter into a dialogue with the time that has settled into their bodies.
„Every body, and especially the woman’s body, is a space where personal experiences, culture, society, collective and private memory collide and intertwine. The juxtaposition of two dancers in two different age periods thematically addresses the question of the body marked by time. Life’s motifs evolve and build on each other through the passage of time and each singularity, but in the end all the bodies play out the same topics.“
