RESIDENSSIvaihto

Vuoden 2023 työryhmä työskentelee Oulussa ajalla 4.9.-17.9.

Työryhmä järjestää alueen tanssin ammattilaisille ja ammattiin opiskeleville sekä muille improvisaatiosta ja ilmaisusta kiinnostuneille avoimen ja maksuttoman The Viewpoints-työpajan 7.9. torstaina Tanssikoulu Vamoksella klo 10-12. Ilmoittaudu mukaan: leea.alatalo@jojo.fi. Voit saapua myös suoraan paikan päälle! Työpaja pidetään englanniksi.

The Viewpoints-workshop, Frieda Gerson/ Thursday 7.9. at 10-12, Vamos (Upseerinkatu 8)

Viewpoints is a method of improvisation and stage training designed for performing artists of all disciplines, whose practice focuses on collective creation: actors, dancers, musicians, directors, choreographers,  performers, art therapists, and more. The method enables artists to develop great spontaneity and stage awareness. It stimulates group complicity as well as individual presence and autonomy. The collective spirit is trengthened by a common language that is never codified.

Developed by choreographer Mary Overlie (1946 – 2020) while teaching at New York University’s Department of Experimental Theater, the Viewpoints method ”grew out of observations and experiments” which she then organized to create ”a systematic approach to performance art.” In Overlie’s Viewpoints, the stage is seen as a physical entity, thus allowing the artist the opportunity to encounter it in a different way, well before the act of creation. Elements of stage creation such as
time, space and movement are seen as of equal value, and any hierarchies among them are temporary.

Residency artists

Originally from San Francisco, Frieda Gerson began circus at an early age. After studying physical theater at the École Jacques Lecoq in Paris, Frieda immersed themself in Viewpoints with the SITI Company in New York and masked theater with Matteo Destro in Italy. Co-founder of Kallisti and the Collectif en Cours, Frieda also works with Yaëlle Antoine / Cie d’Elles and the Cie des Corps Caverneux, among others. As a director and author, Frieda’s transdisciplanry work explores themes of identity, free will, gender, and connection. Their show PARASITE, combining circus, theater, dance and biology, premiered at the Théâtre National du Luxembourg in June 2022. As director and dramaturge, Frieda also collaborated on Desire Lines with the Ampersand Variations collective, as part of Esch 2022 – European Capital of Culture.

Born in Rwanda, Luxembourgish soprano and vocal artist Marie-Christiane Nishimwe studied singing and vocal technique in German, French and Italian at the Conservatoire du Nord in Luxembourg. She graduated in 2014 from the Konservatorium in Vienna and went on to specialize in opera singing. She has since performed as a soloist in Vienna (Burgtheater, Konzerthaus, Musikverein, Musiktheatertage, Dschungel, Volksoper), Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, Residenztheater München, Luxembourg (Grand Théâtre, Philharmonie, Mierscher Kulturhaus, Rotondes, Théâtre des Capucins), Oper Köln and the Bregenzer Festspiele. Marie-Christiane is passionate about poetry and Lieder, and regularly performs in chamber music concerts and contemporary interdisciplinary shows. insomnia is the third collaboration between Frieda Gerson and Marie-Christiane Nishimwe, following the transdisciplinary site-specific shows Trajectoires Éphémères and Desire Lines x Acoustic Picnics, which Frieda directed.

Shirley-Soa Bernard is a multidisciplinary artist, singer, dancer and actress. Trained from an early age in choir singing (Conservatoire and CJOP de la Philharmonie de Paris), she studied musical theater at the Cours Florent in Paris. As a dancer Shirley-Soa specializes in hip-hop, waacking and electro and teaches for Highlights, a collective of queer hip-hop dancers. Her multidisciplinary work has led her to collaborate on projects combining dance, theater, and music, such as 30 nuances de noir.es (30 Shades of Black) directed by Sandra Sainte Rose Fanchine, as well as with directors such as Charles Mounal, Alexane François, Prince Sadjo Barry, Déborah Dahan, and Rosa Barba.

Other members

Fer Flores is a graduate of both UNICAMP (University of the State of Campinas, Brazil) and ÉsacTo’Lido (Ecole Supérieure des Arts du Cirque de Toulouse), specializing in visual arts and aerial hoop. Their artistic career was marked by 15 years of daily training in ballet and tap dance. While still in Brazil Fer took part in art exhibits and worked as a musician and performer for circus, dance and theater groups. In Europe Fer was worked on hybrid projects with companies such as Peeping Tom, Cie My!Laika and Cirque Galapiat. Fer is currently touring with the act they created at ÉsacTo’Lido, while simultaniously working for on design and communication for various performance projects.

Composer Emre Sevindik was born in Luxembourg in 1973 to Turkish parents. With over 20 years of professional experience, he composes for dance, theater and film. Many of his original compositions are available on Bandcamp, and his recently released mini-album Moon Fish can be found on Spotify. Emre created the soundtrack for PARASITE, directed by Frieda Gerson, as well as Songe d’une nuit d’été, directed by Myriam Müller at the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg.

Residency project: insomnia

insomnia is a transdisciplinary movement project in which we explore metamorphoses and identity as seen through the lense of our ever-changing bodies within a world in flux. Inspired by authors Octavia Butler, Paul B. Preciado, and Donna Haraway, we will use movement and voice to share stories of transformation, aging, and becoming.

Donna Haraway inspires us to look deeply at the ways in which stories are (re)told, and to step out of a human-centric vision of storytelling and performance towards mutli-layered compost stories, with the potential for dreams of desirable futures, for ourselves and for the planet.

Thus insomnia is also about the space between present narrative and future dreams. We place ourselves at the intersection between the stories we inherit and those we invent, in the liminal space between the no-longer and the not-yet.

Thus insomnia is both the dreams that keep us up from sleep and the ones that help us get through the night. Constructed of cinematogrpahic images and the aburdity of reality, the project is about time as spiral, and the changing and aging body on stage. It is the ways in which our stories are told and retold. Time and space converge as movement and insomnia becomes itself: a multitude of possible translations of our ever-evolving identities as they relate to our physical bodies and the “multiplicity of the cosmos.”

The nightmare of the end of the world is also the dream of a new beginning. insomnia is at the frontier, a collection of images that bring to the stage interstices of i·reality, a de·construction of imagined binaries between utopia and dystopia, euphoria and dysphoria.

insomnia, a hybrid creation directed by Frieda Gerson, is divided into two art-bodies: a circus-theater piece with text; and a prelude combining contemporary-urban choreography and opera. Both pieces are composed to work site specifically, in abandonned or reclaimed spaces.

Writing workshops will be offered throughout the creative process, so that the text of the theatrical body is nourished by the dreams of the many amateur authors. The texts will have their own de·composition, and the two pieces will come together like a photograph with multiple exposures.

Production
Kallisti (FR) in association with Ampersand Variations (LU)

Coproducers (confirmed)
Chapiteau Raj’ganawak / Asso les Planches Courbes (FR)
Le TROIS C-L – Centre de Création Chorégraphique Luxembourgeois

Other partenaires, residencies, and support (confirmed) :

JoJo – Oulu Dance Center (FI), as part of the residency exchange program with TROIS C-L
CELL – Center for Ecological Learning Luxembourg, as part of project F.U.T.U.R.E
La Kulturfabrik (LU)
Le Bâtiment4 (LU)
La Grainerie – fabrique des arts du cirque et de l’itinérance (FR)
La Chaufferie / Cie DCA – Philippe Decouflé  (FR)