CONTENT
SPAZIO is a programme focused on the artistic development of young dance makers. Each year 6 promising young makers will be selected, who will take part in the full programme of five residencies. SPAZIO merges education with creation and theory with praxis. The participants will get a broad overview of the dance creative process, will be challenged to question themselves as makers and will experience what different interdisciplinary themes and elements can mean to them and their work. The final residency offers them the possibility to show what the programme has contributed to their own artistic work and to show the audience (consisting of different professionals from the performing arts field) how they have grown as a maker. Of similar importance will be the international network of acknowledged artists that will be opened up for the participants and through which they will get the chance to discuss, learn, meet and present themselves as an artist. After the full year programme they will have an extended network that they can fall back onto and that they can use for their professional live.
FORMAT
SPAZIO is structured as a one year programme divided into five residencies, each of them lasting 10 till 18 days and taking place each time at a different European institution that is part of the SPAZIO partnership.
The main theme of SPAZIO is the Dance Creative Process but it will focus specifically on the interdisciplinary approach that influences the contemporary dance making process. All partners believe that dance making deals with more than dance and the body itself and that the interaction with other disciplines is an unavoidable reality of nowadays creation process, nevertheless we are for a dance which keeps the moving body as its most important tool of expression. The goal is to take a look into the interaction with other art disciplines as a way to learn, confront, enrich and redefine our own discipline, Dance.
SPAZIO is a collaboration project initiated by ICK in Amsterdam and joined by CSC Dance House in Bassano del Grappa, Art Stations Foundation in Poznan and the Croatian Institute for Movement and Dance in Zagreb.
Each city and institution will specialize in one interdisciplinary area of the dance creative process.
For this, concrete themes are selected taking into account the existing expertise as well as the needs the institution and art & local community of that institution have:
- dramaturgy in dance and film
CSC Dance House, Bassano del Grappa (IT)
- tradition and innovation in body training and creation
ICK, Amsterdam (NL)
- dance & interaction with new technologies
The Croatian Institute for Movement and Dance, Zagreb (HR)
- dance and visual arts (light design)
Art Stations Foundation, Poznan (PL)
RESIDENCY #1 : DRAMATURGY IN DANCE AND FILM
CONTENT
The residency in Bassano del Grappa aims to introduce the young choreographers in the theme of dramaturgy, by exploring the relations, similarities and differences between dance and film dramaturgy. The format is shaped to bridge theory and (physical) practice in order to understand and experience the importance of dramaturgy for dance creation. It opens the participants perspective to the cross over between other art forms, always with dance as a starting and ending point.
“How can dance dramaturgy influence the creative process of film and the other way around? What are the similarities and differences? Can the look at different formats of dramaturgy help us define it? “
The programme consists of:
Physical workshops
The day will always start with a movement session of two hours. The main tool to be used during this residency will be the workshop DoubeSkin/DoubleMind that introduces some of the basic principles of the movement language of Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten.
Creative Labs
The afternoons are fully dedicated to the Creative Labs where participants will be coached to explore their
creative potential while being confronted with the use of film and video.
The residency is divided in 2 blocks. During the first block Lucy Cash will introduce the participants in the discipline of Film making from the point of view of screen dance, choreography for the screen.
During the second week Nicole Seiler will focus on the use of video in a dance production.
On Sunday there will be a special workshop lead by Dany Mitzman and focusing on soundscapes and dramaturgy through sound.
Lectures, discussions and other activities
Several evenings have organized activities linked to the theme of the residency.
There will be a lecture by Gitta Wigro, a round table on dramaturgy moderated by Giulia Galvan and a visit to the city of Vicenza on Saturday night, to witness performances by emerging local choreographers taking part in the GDA prize competition.
Besides, each of the teachers involved will give a lecture/presentation about their artistic work.
PARTICIPANTS
The 6 participants of SPAZIO 2012 are:
Tiziana Bolfe (Italy)
Jesús de Vega (Spain)
Aleksander Georgiev (Macedonia/Bulgaria)
Iza Szostak (Poland)
Imre Vass (Hungary)
Petra Zanki (Croatia)
These young makers are the core group of SPAZIO and take part in all activities. Besides, there will be local filmmakers and local dancers joining the physical workshop and parts of the Creative Lab.
The lectures and presentations are open for the general public.
PROGRAMME
Workshops
Double Skin / Double Mind by Barbara Meneses
The workshop Double Skin / Double Mind represents the basis of Emio Greco | PC creative work. This workshop has developed through the years a structure in which participants are challenged to explore their own creativity by learning new ways of dealing with their bodies. Using breathing exercises to create length and space inside the body, long lasting rebounds, changes of rhythm, freezing moments and extreme expansion and reducing of the movement, the class aims to provide the dancer with an acute awareness of the inner body and to explore the physical borders and the intentionality of movement beyond the actual form.
Soundscapes by Dany Mitzman
"My work involves telling stories through sound. I have to paint a picture that a listener can appreciate without any visual elements. Words are important but it’s the sound itself that adds the true ‘colour’. If I go to interview fishermen, you have to hear the sound of the waves but also the sound of them dragging their boats down to the water and preparing their fishing tackle…perhaps even catching a fish! If I interview a chef about how to make the perfect ragù, you need to hear the chopping and frying, stirring and simmering. It’s the sound of those ingredients cooking that make you hungry, even more than the words of the chef.
Sounds give extra depth and 3-dimensionality to the context. They have the power to make what you’re describing, whether speaking on the radio or dancing on a stage, more credible and authentic.
I’ll bring a couple of examples of how I do this for the participants to listen to. We’ll discuss how they use sound in their work, how much importance they give to it, and how they might like to develop this area.
After that, we will do some individual ‘sound walks’ during which time participants will be able to choose anywhere they’d like to go in Bassano and listen in a very ‘active’ way through headphones, while recording what they hear.
It’s an interesting experience because our brain tends to filter out background sounds in the world around us so that we often don’t even notice them. To illustrate this, participants will have the chance to use 2 microphones: 1 which filters sound and focuses on the sound nearby, much like we do automatically when we’re listening to something or someone; the other which picks up everything, without filtering. The exercise can work as an ‘ear-opener’ for understanding the importance of sound for creating context, giving them food for thought for further explorations of sound in their work.
After the sound walks, we’ll all meet together again to compare individual experiences. We can listen to the recordings and discuss whether the exercise has been useful and how the participants might use it in their work."
Creative labs
Visual Rhythm, Choreography And The Screen by Lucy Cash
This Creative Lab will address choreography for the screen and how movement relates to both the film image and editing. The working sessions will consider:
- embodied looking - working with a camera as an extension of a movement practice.
- creating choreography for the camera
- sound and its relationship to image
- dramaturgy and structures of film
- how to translate performance ideas into film ideas
The Lab will be a chance to explore the above ideas in relation to your current practice. Depending on the number of participants each participant will either work on his / her own project or collaborate in a small group with others. During the sessions we will combine different modes of working: watching and discussing film examples in a group, responding to small film tasks individually, and developing and then making a short film project.
Not square and not flat by Nicole Seiler:
Nicole Seiler's Creative Lab will be based on her own work that combines dance and video. The basic questions will be:
- using video projections in space
- thinking of video projections as light and not as image
- projecting video onto other surfaces than a screen
- what are the issues and consequences of using video whit in a dance production
The Lab will have the form of an atelier in which each participant will work on his/her own project. Nicole will be there as a coach and the issues, problems and solutions will be discussed within the group.
Lecture by Gitta Wigro:
Gitta will give an overview of dance film from the early days to current practice.
BIOGRAPHIES
Lucy Cash is an artist and filmmaker. Her background in performance making and choreography informs her approach to the work she now makes in different media, and she continues to explore innovative forms of collaboration – working with people from a range of communities and fields of expertise. Her moving image work has been shown on television, (Ch4, Filmfour, BBC4 and BBC2) and internationally at both film festivals and in galleries. In 2010 she received a Screendance Fellowship from South East Dance and in 2010 – 2012 she was an associate artist with South East Dance. Since 2007 Lucy has been an associate artist with Artsadmin. Alongside Becky Edmunds, Lucy has recently created straybird - a platform for co-directed moving image works and curatorial projects.
Nicole Seiler (born in Zurich in 1970) trained in dance and theatre at the Scuola Teatro Dimitri in Verscio (CH), the Vlaamse Dansacademie in Bruges (B) and at Rudra Béjart in Lausanne (CH). As a dancer and performer, she was engaged in numerous works with the Compagnie Buissonnière, Teatro Malandro, Alias Compagnie, Compagnie Philippe Saire and Massimo Furlan. Nicole Seiler founded her own company in 2002. On her artistic pathway, images and video have been of great significance. Her multimedia research, allying dance and video, has opened the way for multimedia dance shows, videos and choreographed installations. Over the last few years, she has been engaged in a cycle of works on the relationship between image and sound.
The Nicole Seiler Company has been enjoying international renown since 2004. In 2009, Nicole Seiler received the Fondation Vaudoise pour la Culture prize for dance. Since 2010, the company has been receiving much-valued aid thanks to a joint support contract with the City of Lausanne, the State of Vaud and Pro Helvetia.
Danielle (Dany) Mitzman is a British freelance journalist who has been based in the north Italian town of Bologna for 13 years. Before that, she worked in London as a producer for Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4. She makes features and documentaries for BBC World Service, BBC Radio 4, Deutsche Welle Radio and Radio Netherlands. Her reports are often rebroadcast on other networks, including NPR, CBC, ABC Australia and SABC. Her favorite areas are human interest, arts and culture and Italy's quirkiest news stories.At the end of 1998, Danielle decided to follow a nagging instinct she’d had since finishing her BA Honours degree in Italian and Film Studies. She made the decision to leave London and move to Italy. Since then, Danielle has worked in broadcasting: making radio features, documentaries and packages for the BBC, Deutsche Welle Radio and Radio Netherlands, as well as writing accompanying online articles.
Danielle mostly works as a correspondent from Italy, although she has made features and documentaries in Israel and, of course, in the U.K.. In Italy, her work takes her all over the country: from the Ligurian Alps to the stage at La Scala, a Tuscan monastery to the streets of Naples, the high security prison in Volterra to the tiny Sardinian island of Tavolara. The memorable people she has interviewed include a ballerina with no arms and a barefooted king.
Barbara Meneses Gutierrez studied dance in her hometown Barcelona before moving to Belgium in 1996 to study at contemporary dance school P.A.R.T.S where she graduated from in 1999. That same year she joined a project directed by Emio Greco and Pieter C.Scholten and became a member of their company til 2006. After a couple of years off from the dance scene she became a freelance dancer and teacher in Amsterdam and since 2008 a steady collaborator of ICK and EG|PC company, working as rehearsal director, teacher, occasional dancer and artistic coordinator of the Academy pillar.
Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten have collaborated in their joint search for new dance forms since 1995. They found a strong common interest in the possibility of a dance seen as the expression of a visionary body, with the theatrical space as the external influence on that body. In their performances, dance is regarded as autonomous, and capable of creating its own time and space. Dance is never brought into action as a medium for conveying, nor for dressing a theatrical space. Instead, dance is perceived as possessing an inherent logic, by which it is able to express the intelligence of the body without needing the addition of meaning or explication. All the elements of a performance – the space, the lighting, the sound – are applied throughout the working process with a view to eliciting from the body the impulses that are driving its self-examination.
Gitta Wigro trained as a dancer and choreographer at London Contemporary Dance School and Laban.
Over the last ten years Gitta has worked in artist development for organizations such as The Place, where she managed the annual Dance on Screen festival of dance film, as well as programming for international dance film festivals. Since 2006, she has been curator of the Video Dance project started by OperaEstate and AnticorpiXL. She combines this with her role at Arts Council England, the national funding body for the arts in England.
Giulia Galvan is a translator and interpreter, she also studied abroad, where she grew fond of contemporary arts. When she decided to go back to Italy she had a quite happy encounter with the B.motion festival in Bassano del Grappa, which had just been created. At first she started to work for the festival as an interpreter and a translator, then she attended the workshops of dance critique and of video dance organized by Operaestate festival, and she became gradually more involved in the documentation of the various activities undertaken by Bassano del Grappa. She worked as a traveling reporter for Choreoroam 2009, 2010 and 2011 and for Tryptich 2010 and 2011. Having followed the various Choreoroam workshops on how to give feedback, she became involved in B.motion as a facilitator during the roundtables with choreographers and dancers. In 2011 she was an outside eye for Elena Giannotti on her residency in Bassano.