Category: Dream On

STUK invited 20 participants from many different generations and backgrounds to join Daniel Linehan, Michael Helland and Anneleen Keppens of the dance company Hiatus for one week for an interactive workshop on the themes of ‘time’ and ‘work’.

In Vita Activa a group worked together for a week, playing with concepts of work and time. The workshop was an artistic project that turned the dance studio into a free space for people, with or without artistic background, who have never worked together before.

The participants investigated the role of work in society. They were given tools to look at their skills and knowledge in a new way and to search for possibilities to share them. The process was a creative game full of interactions. A different experience of valuing work arose, blurring the borders between types of work. The aim was to grow into a temporary community with an alternative economy.

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Dance belongs to everyone and is meant for everyone. Hence, in this festival, we proudly present another edition of Good [old] Times, our biennial production crafted for dancers aged 55 and older. This edition holds special significance, diverging from previous productions that predominantly explored themes associated with aging, such as melancholy, nostalgia, and unfulfilled dreams. Under the artistic direction of choreographer Lonneke van Leth, the seniors, this time, find their stage on the schoolyard. In a vibrant family performance tailored for both the young and the old, Van Leth and her dancers revisit the place where childhood hours unfolded—a place brimming with memories, both delightful and less rosy ones.

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Premiere

After their last piece “Tideland”, the amateur performers of the Dance On Lab are now exploring emotional memories of ‘love’ for this new production, including everything that we associate with the word: falling in love, breaking up, jealousy… Fragments come together to create images that are expressed through dance, the body and the voice. A feeling of “butterflies in my stomach” can develop into an improvised solo, while a feeling state of “hurt and abandoned” may result in a group choreography.

The piece was developed by the group in collaboration with Nicole Berndt-Caccivio, a Swiss dancer, choreographer and lecturer in contemporary dance. She is the artistic director of the Age Company in Vienna, founded in 2009, which deals with art for and with older people. With the project “Collective Spheres”, which she founded in 2020, she connects with younger dancers and choreographers on different artistic, pedagogical and performative levels.

Miki Orihara and Marco Volta of the Dance On Ensemble and Laura Böttinger, the artistic director of Dance On Participation, offer three dance workshops at Studio EDEN in Berlin Pankow. No prior experience necessary.

The workshops will be followed by a public showing of Tideland by the Dance On Lab, a group of amateur performers aged 60+ who meet regularly to explore dance and choreographic practice.

Tideland premiered earlier this year at the Elixir Extracts Festival at Sadler’s Wells in London.

3 December:

10-11.30 Graham work | Workshop with Miki Orihara

12-1.30 Invisible threads | Workshop with Marco Volta

4 December:

3.30-5.00 Choreographic Lab 50+ | Workshop with Laura Böttinger

6-6.45 Tideland | Performance with dancers of the Dance On Lab

This afternoon performance celebrates the joy that dancing has on people’s lives, whatever age you may be. The show features performances by a range of non-professional groups from the UK and beyond, including Sadler’s Wells’ Company of Elders, Dance On Lab from Berlin, and Three Score Dance Company.

Sadler’s Wells’ Company of Elders presents Relive on stage, and in its original form – a short dance film created during lockdown in early 2021. Created by Eleesha Drennan, both the film and performance poignantly look at human connection and isolation. Relive unpacks the theme of memory through stories about what matters most in life: the people we share it with.

Dance On Lab, a group of mature non-professional dancers based in Berlin, presents Tideland. Working together since 2016, they are part of the DANCE ON initiative that values age in dance. This performance reminds us that only very special images remain in us, our bodies and our memories. In Tideland, they search the common and individual understanding of things.

Linked to the work of psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin, Alone Together by the Three Score Dance Company looks at the motivations of human action; the need for different types of attention and the reaction to the attention we receive. The work utilises Harry Escott’s score to create a haunting atmosphere that evokes the human experience.

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This year’s mini festival celebrates creative ageing and presents a range of workshops, films, artist talks and performances by mature performers.

The festival includes performances by acclaimed professional artists along with the opportunity for non-professional dancers to showcase their work.

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