Madeline Ritter, the artistic and executive director of Dance On, gives a talk on the theme of „Movement as Memory“. The talk is part of the programme of public events around the exhibition „THIS MAY BE THE PLACE. Performing the museum“ curated by Javier Arozena. Ritter talks about how in dance, knowledge is passed on in a very direct way from generation to generation, from body to body. If this fragile chain is interrupted, the knowledge is lost forever.
The presentation by the German artist duo WILHELM GROENER is a playful hybrid between lecture and performance. It reflects their current artistic research, which is entitled „performing archive“. The rhythms and connotations of the archive provide the structural threads from which visuals, body, sound and space are woven into a performative fabric with multiple narratives and enduring transformations.
WILHELM GROENER: In 2001, the visual artist Mariola Groener and the dancer Günther Wilhelm combined their names to form the WILHELM GROENER label. For the artist duo, their Alter Ego is a kind of third space in which their multi-layered work is created in constant expansion, friction and transformation. So far, WILHELM GROENER’s oeuvre covers 25 stage works, numerous stations of their ongoing performance project 33 SKIZZEN, several video works, art editions, publications and exhibitions.
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.
On 24 April 2023, Cultural Studies (KU Leuven) and STUK House for Dance, Image & Sound host Dancing diaspora: Opening up European Contemporary Dance, a symposium that brings together speakers from different theoretical fields with dance scholars, practitioners and interested audiences to think about dance and diaspora cultures.
Despite its air of neutrality and inclusivity, European contemporary dance has for a long time systematically excluded choreographers of colour and dance styles that originate within culturally diverse communities, or has included them through mechanisms of cultural appropriation and exotification. In the last 10 years however, choreographers of colour have increasingly claimed their position in the European field of dance. Building on different cultural experiences and references, these choreographers have introduced new choreographic strategies and have drawn attention to underrepresented aesthetics and forms of (embodied) knowledge.
Funmi Adewole (performer, dramaturge and dance researcher), Fabián Barba (choreographer, performer and dance researcher), Cecilia Lisa Eliceche (mother, dancer, choreographer and campesina).
The Symposium is followed by the Research Seminar Dancing diaspora: Rethinking Contemporary Dance discourses on Tuesday April 25th. Organised by the KU Leuven, Ghent University and Antwerp University, the Seminar welcomes (PhD) students and academic researchers as well as artists, dramaturges and practitioners who are engaged with the theme.
CT#7 focuses on the notion of dance practice. Since the 1960s, everyday dance practice has been established as a type of everyday dance work where dance artists explore their work and occasionally share the results of this exploration with the public.
With this event, we provide affirmation and visibility to dance practice, and its practitioners examine what dance practice can and could become in our wider environment at this moment in time? In addition to Deborah Hay, four of her collaborators from different periods of her and their work are invited to Choreographic Turn #7 to expose the notions, forms of work and outcomes associated with dance practice.
Curated by Lou Forster, a mobile exhibition by the CN D Paris.
The first retrospective exhibition on Lucinda Childs was held in 2016 at France’s National Dance Centre (CND Pantin) under the curatorship of Lou Forster as part of the Festival d’Automne in Paris. It was based on the American choreographer’s archives, which are located at the CND. The exhibition we are now presenting is an adaptation produced on the occasion of the constellation dedicated to Lucinda Childs. The exhibition features her graphic works (choreographic scores, drawings, diagrams), as well as unique documents from artists with whom she has collaborated. The overall purpose of exhibiting these documents is to offer a journey of discovery towards the formal invention of dance which, in the words of the choreographer, is “nothing personal”, showing how dance transforms the places it occupies. It is a collection of documents that traces Childs’s career from her first steps at the Judson Dance Theatre in the 1960s to her involvement in New York’s alternative scene and finally to her theatre work in the early 1980s.
Curator Lou Forster / Exhibition Mounting and Archive Manager Laurent Sebillotte (CND) / Document Researcher Juliette Riandey (CND) / Producers Chloé Pérol, Auréline Roy (CND) and the Mercat de les Flors team / Technicians Mercat de les Flors team
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.
4-5 March:
Ruth Childs, Judson Program: Pastime (1963), Carnation (1964) & Museum piece (1965)
The Open Sketchbook exhibition consists of drawings made during the observation process of the Silver Gold project development, executed by an intergenerational dance and choreographic collective. The materials are part of a procedural work and are a visual response to the kinetic situations of contemporary dance practice.
Dragana Alfirević, the initiator of the Silver Gold project, invited visual artist Đorđe Balmazović to follow the process as an outside observer, but his role soon turned into that of a documentarist and co-creator. With a gaze that intersects the visible with the sensual, the artist has thus begun to transform dance into kinetic figures, bringing them into a field beyond their fleeting immediacy. In this way, images of dance in dance itself were created, as the hand that is drawing itself moves and at the same time folds, curiously searching, exploring, deciding, and last but not least, with its presence, supporting the bodies in movement. This exhibition is a kind of homage to dance, and at the same time it is dance itself.
Đorđe Balmazović is a member of Škart group, founded in 1990 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. In the 1990s, the collective produced poetry fanzines and distributed them in street actions. In 2000, Škart founded two groups – the Horkeškart Choir and Orchestra and the Women’s Embroidery Group. Since 2012, the collective has been running workshops for children, migrants and the elderly.
Curator: Bojana Piškur
CoFestival 2022 can be divided into three thematic strands. The first one deals with choreographic material through collective or subjective time (Moritz Ostruschnjak, Michiel Vandevelde, Mateja Rebolj and Magdalena Reiter, Alma Söderberg with Cullberg), the second one observes the body and life through the prism of virtual and digital landscapes (Yuske Taninaka, Aleksandar Georgiev with his team, Barbara Matijević and Giuseppe Chico), while the third transforms the contemporary moment into a poetic image that inevitably flows out into the wild (Věra Ondrašíková and her collective, Mala Kline).
This edition of CoFestival will be accompanied by a discursive programme with talks, book presentations, a film programme and the launch of a new publication marking the tenth anniversary of the festival.
In recent years, Slovenia has also witnessed a tremendous growth in tours of the capital through the prisms of different communities or cultural-historical highlights, in which visitors learn about the stories hidden behind the walls of buildings and institutions, our past and present, on a two-hour walk.
This year’s guided tour will not be special in this respect, as participants will once again learn about the many architectural landmarks of the city and historical facts related to the development of Ljubljana and Slovenia, along with interesting stories, but on this occasion the focus will be on contemporary dance and theatre.
On this walk we will get to know the venues of the first contemporary dance schools in Ljubljana, the period of its coexistence with ballet; we will try to clarify the causes and consequences of their separation, the venues and struggles of extra-institutional artistic practices, the establishment and development of the alternative and the most significant festivals as well as other gathering places as major pillars of social life. Rok Vevar, the guide, will be reflecting on this tour around Ljubljana through the prism of uncovering an overlooked part of history, highlighting in particular the role of women artists and their unwavering stance when confronted with the numerous obstacles of a masculine-centric world.
Rok Vevar is a theatre scholar, writer, researcher, curator and historian of contemporary dance, who has been a multifaceted presence in the field of contemporary Slovenian performing arts for more than two decades. He is the initiator and founder of numerous festivals and initiatives, as well as the Temporary Slovenian Dance Archive (2011) and, last but not least, the author of the monograph Ksenija, Xenia: Ksenia Hribar’s London Dance Years 1960–1978, in which he focuses on the early period of the artistic career of this dancer and choreographer, who is considered one of the central figures of Slovenian contemporary dance history.
