Project Timetable

January - April 2011

Week 1: INTRODUCTION SEMINAR

Thursday 13th January 2011, 12.00 -3.00pm

Focus: Defining Parameters and Paradigms: Choreography in the 21st century: a process? A system? A network? What is artistic research? Setting the tasks of the research proposal.

Weeks 2-4: INVESTIGATING CONTEMPORARY CHOREOGRAPHIC PRACTICE

Focus: Investigation of contemporary redefinitions of choreography: choreography as a question of ‘the body’, choreographic presence, states of being and changing physical conditions, debunking narratives and languages of dance, social choreographies. Each artist has suggested some published material – in some cases written by them - that discuss the themes, concepts and general ideas behind their work. It will give you access to critical readings seen through the lenses of the particular dance and choreographic perspective of each artist. It will also give you the chance to see how artists engage with ‘theory’, adopting and adapting key concepts for the evolution of their method of practice. The PDFs will be made available electronically to participants.

January 18th , January 20th
Ana Sánchez-Colberg

Nothing to do with Movement Languages:
The Body in Contemporary Choreography

The workshops with Ana are focused on confronting conventional attitudes that limit dance to a ‘language’ and the medium of dance to a platform for a choreographer to ‘say something’. Her work questions the orthodoxy behind concepts such as “the message”, “intention” that perpetuate the perception of dance performance as an act of “reading” and prolongs the dichotomized opposition between narrative or no-narrative,between total authorial control and naive laissez-faire. Ana’s proposals aim to open ways to consider dance as a phenomena, “held” between performers on stage, together with the audience, and is a moment of life process, not of cultural product and exchange. The workshop will explore alternative understandings of “narrativity” in relation to evolving identities of both work and artists engaged in the process, unraveling the particularities of current dance making where in many instances the artists are subject-instrument-and tool of the “narratable” event. The sessions will ask; what, therefore, is been narrated? The process is guided by the philosophical perspective of Jean Luc Nancy’s idea of the singular-plural and his proposals on sense-touch.

January 25th, January 27th
John Paul Zaccarini

Staging Failure: Risk in Contemporary Choreography and Physical Theatre

Drawing from his work in circus, John Paul’s session will explore how the specific tensions in circus movement, a staging of possible “failure” and the notion of working at a certain (super)human limit can be considered in the context of dance and choreography. When working with circus equipment the artist is faced with certain restrictions and physical conditions. The session will explore the creative possibilities that open up under such constraints to movement.How to explore these notions of tension, constraint and failure without a piece of circus equipment? What choreographic potential is there in the clown, who fails the most spectacularly of all? This workshop, on the cusp of the theatrical, inspired by circus, deals with human failure in movement and its relation to the tragic and the comic. 

February 1st , February 3rd
Michael Kliën

Choreography as an Aesthetics of Change or
What Worlds do your Creations Build?

Klien’s sessions propose to fundamentally rethink the relationship between dance and choreography, examining personal artistic practice against wider ecological, social and political structures. The workshop readily entangles practice and theory, drawing from various fields of human knowledge production, such as anthropology, fine arts, theology, physics, philosophy and system theory. At the end of both sessions participants will have a practice-based experience of Klien¹s methodologies and ideas and will have gathered an insight into numerous new directions in the field of dance and choreography. Participants will be able to use the session¹s material (exercises, ideas and theoretical insights) to further develop their own personal practice, whether as a choreographer and/or dancer.

Week 5: LAB TIME: February 8th, February 10th, February 15th, February 22nd, March 1st.

Focus: development of independent projects with mentor support, research proposal due.

Weeks 6-8 COLLABORATIVE ENTERPRISE

Focus: Exploring interdisciplinarity and choreographic practice, establishing common disciplinary parameters, languages and methodologies.

February 17th,  24th, March 3rd 

Kiriakos Spirou (composer, pianist)

Improvisation and Composition in Dance & Sound Collaborations: an interdisciplinary approach

In exploring sound and choreography, the sessions will consider the idea that ‘sound’ and space in performance constitute a ‘subject’. What is the relationship between this sonic- spatial ‘subject’ and the bodily subjects of the dancer-choreographer? How can sound be approached as a performer, an object that is really a subject, a phenomenon that establishes itself as presence in space, thus providing no easy way out of it and demanding to be listened to, walked through, taken in and be lived ? Furthermore, how could this approach to listening be applied to the visual plane, the sense of seeing, therefore art forms like painting and architecture?

Week 9: LAB WEEK: March 8th, 10th

Focus: development of independent projects with mentor support, planning the presentations.

Week 10:  March 15th, March 17th

Chris Clow

Archiving and documentation of practice

Focus: Alternative means of presenting and disseminating choreographic works.

***On the evening of Wednesday 16th March as part of the studio’s Happy Hour events, Chris will premier his new film-documentary 45,46,47, The Unbearable***

Week 11-12 INDEPENDENT REHEARSAL TIME WITH FEEDBACK

March 22nd, 24th, 29th, 31st

Week 13: PRESENTATION AND PERFORMANCES

Evenings of the 5th & 6th April 2011. Schedule to be agreed and finalized once the projects are finalised.