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La edición n° 14 del  Encuentro "Crear en Libertad" será del 18 de septiembre al 1° de octubre en Asunción, Paraguay.

Es una cita anual, no competitiva, que impulsa y promueve la creación, la experimentación y el intercambio de lenguajes, ejercitando el Encuentro desde la afirmación de nuestras identidades y diversidad cultural.

Para ver la programación completa y por más información haz click aquí.

Itamar Serussi was selected for the modul-dance project after being proposed by Danshuis Station Zuid Tilburg. During the modul-dance conference that took place in October 2012 in Tilburg, Serussi talked with us about Mono, the piece developed under the project and inspired while buying a pram for his newly born twins. The advertisement said "In three clicks from mono to duo". In effect, mono is about several effects, directions, decisions and happenings coming together, and thus creating something new. Things that somehow "click" in place as well. As his own life does right now with the birth of his two kids, the international acclaim he experiences and this first chance to make a full-length dance piece for the theater.

More modul-dance videos on Numeridanse.tv.

Compartimos los resultados de la convocatoria para participar del 10° Festival Internacional Danzaextrema a realizarse entre el 18 y el 28 de octubre en Xalapa, Ver. México.

Por más información sobre el festival haz click aquí.

In May 2011, the Slovenian artist Jasmina Križaj wrote the following article for a modul-dance newsletter regarding her experience in the framework of the project.
Working period: from 04/04/2011 - 15/04/2011
Where: in Poznan, Poland - Art Stations Foundation
Who: Anja Bornsek, Cristina Planas Leitao, Jasmina Križaj and Tarras Some

Into the Out

Being in Poland was the first time for all of us. Have to admit I didn't know what to expect. There was a chance that it will feel like home and there is also very strong and in my opinion still somehow "fresh" historical memory. In some way it did feel like home.

After a long time I didn't feel like stranger while walking through the streets of another country.

We spend most of our time in the studio, which by the way, felt like a big privilege. It is a great theater/studio space, with beautiful made of red bricks back wall for great photos or video. The fact that the studio is in a shopping mall, gave us kind of perverse feeling. We are used to work far from so called normal human life, especially commercial one. But it is special when at and consumerism meet. I like the fact that somebody who doesn't reach so after art words but prefers commercial entertainment suddenly has both in one space. Maybe that changes people's perception about art. That it is not something just for privileged, that it is not something separated from our daily life, but it is actually like itself.

I was also giving technique classes of Flying Low. Have to say that I was very surprised by the speed and precision of working of Polish dancers. Really appreciate I could share my knowledge with them.

The work we did was very simple. But as they say "Less is more" was valuable also this time. The simplicity of the approach to the topic of Nervous System opened so many new chapters. Going deeper and deeper on physical, mental, philosophical and even emotional and spiritual level enrich and reveled many new possibilities but of course in the same time raised many new doubts and question. But I have to say those first two weeks of research were very productive and a good starting point and also a good take off for future research.

In the end I would just like to mention the generosity of the Art Stations Foundation team. Thank you very much!

Text written after an hour of shaking:

I feel like Leonardo DiCaprio in What's eating Gilbert Grape. With restless body. Swallowed back muscles like a puffy dove. Lying on the floor I feel the big mass of my heart. The weight of my heart. Its greatness and also whole its heaviness. I started fearing I could break the muscles/fibers that are attaching it to the sternum, if I continue shaking. I feared I would break my heart.

Wish to experience a slow motion fall. Maybe my legs don't shake, cause I believe that shaky legs represent weakness? So many tiny habits just in the fingers and those. Jazz took me. Then left me. Then allowed me to compose an e-mail. I sorted my mind. It eased my anger and have. Left leg and kidneys stayed as they are-exhausted, sucked, lonely, uncooperative.

Constant thought, every recognition has to be understood, constant trying to do, to try, to experience. Trying not to try. How are we spending our thoughts? Do we move because of discomfort, because of the pleasure that follows after releasing this discomfort?

Picture: © Saša Kuzjak

Emma Martin has been named by the Tanz Magazine as 1 of the 3 Hoffnungstraeger ("bearers of hope") 2014 in its yearbook. Read here the whole article in German.

Since the premiere of Tundra last May, the reviews of the project have been excellent. Read here some of them.

The Loose Collective was selected for the modul-dance project after being proposed by Tanzquartier Wien. Here, an interview with two of its members, talking about the process of creation of The Old Testament According to The Loose Collective.

More modul-dance videos on Numeridanse.tv.

I Description

The performance is in the form of a circuit situated in a horticultural nursery on the outskirts of Cologne. The circuit consists of three buildings whose interiors are divided and semanticised during the course of the performance: a big, brick-walled greenhouse, a small glass greenhouse and a hothouse with a solid sliding door and side sheets. These buildings are at right angles to one another, with the small glass greenhouse, about 2x3m, at the intersection.

The performance begins at the front of the large brick greenhouse. The five female performers – all “experts in everyday life” – plant flowerpots lined on a trolley, each bearing a sign. On each pot is a label for different gender identities, key concepts of gender studies, names from queer culture, general expressions of uncertainty, symbols and lettering in Bengali. Each of the small flowerpots is planted together with a colourful piece of candy: “Take a goody – take a fixation”, the installation seems to say, “Both are sweet – and neither are natural”.

After the flowerpots are planted, the five performers move to their respective positions, among which the audience can move freely and decide for themselves where and when to enter and leave the on-going performances (I also jumped from one place to the next, meaning that the following cannot be a full representation of what was going on).

Annonya and Katha stay at the large greenhouse. They are both hijra, representatives and activists of the “third gender” in Bangladesh, and trained dancers. They begin by presenting the hijra culture from its ritual colourful side. Flanked by two canvases showing films from their everyday lives and urban and rural street life, along with familiar religious moments, they erect a ritual space with silver vase-like vessels and colourful gift boxes, lining it with Bengali lettering in flower potting soil. Here they dress in traditional garments, speak and sing into microphones, thereby illustrating the traditional role of the third gender of blessing families at weddings, house-warming celebrations and births of children. There is something double-edged about the processes throughout; the performers seem ironically distanced and at some point a shifting occurs that is unavoidable if the hijra are not to be idealised but realistically portrayed: the pictorial Bengali façade breaks. The performers move towards the audience, clapping. “Hey, hey, hey, we’re hijra. We’re poor, give us some money”. They leave the ritual space. In a monotone green-planted part of the greenhouse, Katha erects upside-down hammers, sheathing the stems with condoms. She plants the colourful Bengali condom packaging amid the green monoculture. Poverty and forced prostitution: the dark side of the otherwise colourful third gender, which in modern secularised Bengali culture has no alternative income. Katha is instructed in her sheathing of the hammers by Annonya, who (we learn from the performer biography in the programme) also works as an activist and sex worker consultant in Bangladesh.

At the end of their multi-faceted performances and stories, the two dancers move into a tent located in front of the large greenhouse, where they prepare food on gas stoves and eat until the end of the event: a working day consisting of conversation, feast, charity, education and paid sex reaches its humble end.

In the second position, the small greenhouse, there is a red sofa. Here, Cuban native Melissa Marie García Noriega tells the story of her life – sometimes face-to-face, sometimes simply lost in her own thoughts. A carefree childhood, in which no one was bothered by the boy behaving girlishly; then a rape, the knowledge that the girl in her had been abused; a lack of family acceptance of her feminine demeanour at puberty, the grotesque urge to become a Cuban macho, then, finally, deliverance. Art studies, psychotherapy, the birth of a son, the possibilities of a new self-determination in living with a man and eventually her sex change to become the woman she had already been. Melissa still lives with the same partner; the audience is caught up in the sweet relief of a happy ending. During all these stories, which may have given rise to either concern among the audience or, even worse, the feeling of psychotherapeutic authority, the dancer and choreographer succeeds in remaining dominant throughout. The red couch is not a Freudian spot for self-exposure, but an arena in which Melissa moves through gloom, aggression, ironic poses, excitement and truly refreshing directness. The amiability that she arouses in doing so, the self-confidence that she exudes, catches the audience and turns it into a close friend – and if there were not the other “stages” yet to visit, one would stay to listen to her much longer.

Melissa’s story alternates between her experiences in Cuba and Germany, the greenhouse serving as an intercultural intersection which connects the Bengali scenery in the large greenhouse with that in the hothouse opposite. The latter are dedicated to gender approaches in Western culture. Initially, the sliding door of the hothouse is open and we see earth grooves in the fore room, jackets on hangers above. In perspective, the “asparagus field” – masculine connotation attended – stretches out into a monoculture of pansies. The trained mathematician and physicist Michelle Niwicho begins to label the sliding doors with the milestones of her life. Then she closes the door from the inside and it takes a while before the audience discovers that they are not locked out, but can observe the interior through the rolled-up sheets at the side. At first, one feels forced to a voyeurism, but the inner actions soon clarify that the opposite is the case. There is a need for the construction of this interior, or rather, this inner life, in order that messages may be sent out of this mentality of security.

Michelle constructs her workplace: desktop, laptop, mouse. Here (as in real life) she writes a blog that can be read both on the PC screen, and on the canvas located at the inner side of the sliding door. The text is about the decision to live as a transgender woman, about the problems arising from the fact of being a father of three when she finally came out, of the bureaucratic difficulties of being recognised as a third gender in Germany; but also about acceptance in one’s own family, managing one’s career, rising assertiveness and wonderfully grotesque moments of everyday life. Following Michelle’s words as she writes, her correction of spelling errors, the search for the right phrases, produces a similar emotional closeness as to the life story told by Melissa in her greenhouse.

While she writes, Michelle gets up and with a pair of pliers cuts the wires holding the jackets one by one, letting them fall to the ground. Every time a male garment is removed, she pulls a cord, and female clothes grow from the asparagus beds... like Spartoi springing from dragon’s teeth: the ancient warriors of Thebes – the modern struggle of the transgender woman.

At the back, in a field of yellow blooming pansies (also cropped with high heels), the Brazilian performer Greta Pimenta removes her female clothing and puts it on hangers, much like the jackets at the front. She showers naked for almost the entire performance and presents her female body with male genitals. She remains silent throughout. As always when an audience is confronted with nudity, there is irritation, and the mixture of sexual markers certainly intensifies this. But the fact that the performer is naked for over an hour, in which she never gives the impression of being watched or feeling embarrassed, alters the perception of her bi-gender body to a normality: it belongs – to both the performance and the utopia of a free society.

As a whole, the two areas of the hothouse function as the union of two aspects of transgenderness: Michelle’s intellectual approach, which does not shy away from self-doubt, and Greta’s unquestionable confidence: two states of an inner life, intellect and body, which is presented to the audience with a permissiveness that annihilates the exploitative habit of voyeurism.

II Relation to spatial theory

The production convincingly works with the cultural semantisation of the physical structures: the “otherness” of the Bengali hijra in the large greenhouse, the link of interculturality in the smaller greenhouse, and one’s “own” culture in the hothouse, all logically connected on a circuit through which the audience is allowed to wander freely. The venue thereby becomes the representation of a larger circuit or (according to Foucault), a Heterotopia, which draws opposite and remote elements together in a microcosm representing the whole.

Another interpretation is provided through the performers’ biographies, which form one of the fundaments of the production. The individual nature of these prohibits any cultural generalization. There is a variety of body concepts depending on the individual performer and his cultural frame, reaching from the mythical connotations but social exclusion of third genderness, to hormone treatment and finding deliverance in the revised body, textural reflections of the gender shift and the self-confident presentation of both sexes in one body. All of this is presented to the audience not in a brash, but in a quiet, sensitive, humorous, thoughtful and very rich visual appearance. And with this, transsexualism proves itself to be far “more natural” than the dominant heteronormativity and sexual binarity of our society. This allows an intercultural and transgender discourse to be personally experienced, intellectually as well as emotionally. An experience like this makes it clear that talking merely about the third gender is not enough to achieve an acceptance that includes all aspects of sexual versatility.

The spatial semantics of the place itself, the municipal horticultural nursery, is an elementary constituent of this combination of interculturality and transsexuality: the greenhouse as the epitome of our “will to breed”, of the artificial and authoritarian compulsion to frantically produce normativity: a non-place in the pejorative sense, deindividualising and alienating (Augé); monocultures as symbols of a society that wraps a hostile tristesse around non-conforming bodies, compelling them to adapt. But in the end, these bodies look more natural in the eyes of the audience than the compulsive order of “asparagus vs. pansies”. Thus, the imagery of the performance generates an effect of great sustainability in the viewer’s mind, giving her/him a glimpse of utopia.

Also, the production cleverly points beyond the confines of the nursery, as it stands in the shadow of the phallus-like tower of Cologne-Poll’s Technical Control Centre (TÜV). This is not just a place for general (and in this case typical German) normalisation, but had also been the birthplace of the DIN standards for breast implants – a cradle of normalised gender features which the colourful activities of ID-Clash contrasts with the image of versatile self-determination. If one adds the sadness of the adjacent monotonous rows of graves of the Deutzer cemetery or even the nearby (and even more German) allotments with its garden gnomes (including pompously phallic jelly bag caps), it becomes clear that a better location can hardly be imagined for this performance.

In addition, it is worth noting that the 1st of November 2013 finally saw the “third gender” legally recognized in Germany: Hiesl and Kaiser’s performance, which is to run again in Dresden in 2015, can be seen as a celebration of this event. Or better still, an accompanying ritual, which converts the deindividualising place of monoculture and gender norms into an utopian space of intercultural and transgendered freedom.

Picture: Cologne 2013. © Roland Kaiser

Developing our piece Pausing within the context of modul-dance has been a significant experience for us. As in our work, we are always interested in sharing voices through collaboration, we found this context of modul-dance somehow corresponding to this desire - a group of dance houses collaborating in order to bring forward an idea and allow creation to emerge.

Specifically for us, during the creation we went through the residencies in the Duncan Center in Athens and Graner in Barcelona- places which without the frame of modul-dance would be difficult to get to. The two houses were extremely inspiring and rich for the work - the space in Duncan center as well as its amazing surrounding and atmosphere which Penelope nurtures had an essential impact on the process. Also the possibility to meet other artists and share like our meeting with the other residents at that time - Marcos and Pablo has been super inspiring and simply joyful.

The time in May 2012 in Graner has been just before our premiere and we felt we had to "wrap up the piece". Time was short but exactly this constraint of time allowed a concentrated and focused time of radical decisions when the piece finally got its shape - it was the 4th version of the piece already- and its structure today remained the "Barcelona version" after a tour of around 20 shows by now.

In terms of coproduction, we were supported by Hellerau in Dresden which also hosted us for shows in October. Again a very different house allowed the piece to evolve and adjust itself to the beautiful space of Nancy Spero in the theater. Last April we were invited to show the piece in Toulouse, during a modul-dance reunion which has been interesting for us - for the directors of the dance houses to see the work finalized more than a year after the first encounter in Barcelona and many shows.

It has been an interesting experience to be a part of this frame of modul dance, a different feeling than the "regular one" of independent houses supporting the piece. Somehow this feeling of connection and network feels like a new way that should be explored further. There is great potential in this way as a mode of functioning, a mode that can support more the contemporary dance field as it is today, than the so called standard mode of function of theater/festival and artist.

Picture: © Emmanuelle Bayart

My first encounter with the modul-dance network was in November 2012 in Barcelona when I presented my work and the idea of the piece Duel. I was trumphally pregnant at that time so I new that if I want to create that show I would really need some support. My budget was ridicoulously small and on top I wished to check for the first time how it is to direct the others without being at the same time a performer (regarding my condition but as well in order to change the way I used to work). And thanks to the modul-dance network I managed.

After the mentionned above presentation it took me a year to finalize the piece. I was already after a first research period. All the working phases took places in the associated dance houses. Luckily three of them coproduced the show (one came "on board" after the meeting in Barcelona). Besides that and a help of the Polish Ministry of Culture (received by the Art Stations Foundation) I did not get any other support. So the budget stayed small but what had mainly changed was the fact that I could offer to the team very good conditions of work. The modular system helped me to get distance to the created material and to continue working in the "between periods". It gave me more time to prepare the studio rehearsals were the whole team would gather together. It was needed as in the same time I was taking care of the production matters. That why I apreciated the fact that we have met everybody personally in Barcelona. It helped the communication process to become smooth and direct without any burocractic nonsense or stiff protocols. It was honestly a great relief and this "humane" aspect of the whole production process I appreciate the most. I find it harder to establish an easy going relation with the programmer than with the other artist but within the modul-dance network it all happened in a relaxed way. I guess because the rules were very clear: it was all about matching. The artists were looking for the right house to get the right support for his/hers work, the curators were looking for the right artists to help him/her develop the right work. And whatever right means it was clear from the beginning that there is no need to come along with everybody.

So now its end of April 2014. My son Leon is 16 months old and the Duel had its premiere in November 2013. But... the show is not over . The original crew of the piece hapilly decided to spread in the world with their own babies so now it is my time to perform the piece. At the moment I'm working with another dancer on an adaptation of Duel which will be presented in Poznań in Art Stations Foundation the upcoming June and later on in CND Paris in November (were I was invited for a residency to rehearse the new version of the show). So luckily, even after the premiere I still get the chance to work on the piece following the idea that the "final presentation" does not have to be the end of creation.

Picture: © Peter Fiebig

Está abierta la convocatoria hasta el 3 de octubre para enviar material al 1° Concurso Internacional de Videodanza.

El festival de Videomovimiento, tendrá su 8° edición entre el 24 de octubre y el 1° de noviembre.

Para descargar el formulario de inscripción y por más información haz click aquí.

Se realizará la 2° Muestra Latinoamericana de Danza Contemporánea - "Dança á Deriva" del 1° al 7 de diciembre del 2014 en Centro de referencia de Danza de la ciudad de San Pablo.

Radar Cultural Gestión y Proyectos llama a artistas independientes, compañías e colectivos artísticos de los países que integran América Latina (Brasil, Argentina, Colombia, Bolivia, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala y Perú) que desarrollen investigaciones de lenguaje en danza contemporánea a participar de la Muestra.

Están abiertas las inscripciones hasta el 7 de septiembre de 2014.enviados al correo electrónico (dancaaderiva2014@radarcultural.com.br) en un único archivo PDF hasta 3MB que conste de :

Costa Contemporánea: Danza en plena naturaleza - Artículo en el Club Express