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How did the following aspects affected my work:

General:
What has affected my work more than anything in modul-dance could be summed up with the word "tailoring".

As I have joined modul-dance a little less than 2 years ago my main topic (apart from my project proposal) was how to tailor this opportunity to my real needs. I suspect modul-dance as a supporting network is introduced differently to different artists depending on their own home venue by which they were suggested and the role and the production conditions of that venue. In short, an interesting realization was that artists adopt the kind of approach to this opportunity that is suggested or presented by the home-venue. I am mentioning this as my situation was a bit different – suggested by Plesna Izba Maribor as my motherboard organization, yet based in Germany, in Frankfurt at the time of being introduced to the network.

This presented me with an interesting insight at the very beginning, starting to understand that although modul-dance is an umbrella for independent dance artists, with a concrete proposal and a fixed system of nominating, awarding membership and supporting the production of their work, it is also an experiment, experiencing it much more alive when understanding it as proposals and suggestions, trials, showings, gathering and exchanging rather than rules and regulations, requirements and criteria.

Development / Modular system:
Personally I have struggled with understanding the scope and the concrete possibilities the network can offer. Although very suggestive with its name, modular system was something that seemed to me a “solution” to something. It sounded as if there was an estimation of the then current productions and residencies and perhaps an observation that the artists lack a clearer vision or articulation of their process, therefore a modular system could be something to give a little push or present a suggestion/advancement of their methods and processes. It would simultaneously help the productions houses themselves to get more suitingly involved. It seemed as an encouragement to deepen one's interest and work and go pass the one-month processes where things are rushed and squeezed in. That is how I perceived it at the beginning. In that regard I must say that “insisting” on one project for 2 years proved to be very fruitful in defying the normal time-conditioned production modes. However, I had some issues with it; extending a project over two years, with a residency in every 5-6 months affects the continuity heavily. My personal practice already incorporates involvement with a specific project for longer period of time, so sustaining the focus and engagement with the subject is not a problem. The purely practical level, hardware of it however is – the project grows and changes thorugh time and the venues cannot always meet these new requirements of one's development. I found myself often compelled by the conditions to rigidly insist on my initial proposal, when in fact the phases of research or residencies brought about new, more suitable pathways to pursue, demanding different conditions than speculated at the beginning.

I have envisioned my proposal with three people at the begining; I have then started a research phase alone, continued with a residency with two other persons, the next one with only one, ending with another research phase where I was working with a group of local dancers. An obvious break in continuity here was due to many reasons – the conditions and possibilities of the hosting venues, the misalignment of the time schedules with the performers I have invited to work with and similar. Although not leading me to the desired outcome, each of the opportunities was still a step forward, expanding and enriching my proposal. Tensions between the aforementioned factors resulted too often in a compromise I had to reach within myself to progress instead of an act of balancing.

Speaking of different phases (research, residency for example), as much as it seems like a good model, it hasn't proved to work well for me. A matrix how a process is unwinding comes across as a valuable suggestion, yet it is something individual, very specific in each case. As it may be beneficial for a group of partners supporting an individual artist to bring about a full-fledged production, I found the modular system a bit over emphasized as it had little correspondence with the phases my project would have undergone otherwise, more organically I assume. On the other hand, it has worked wonders to be practicing such adaptability – using conditions to serve you and not the other way around or simply looking for the best in every opportunity. To conclude on the modular system, I have found myself to start considering the needs of my project and design necessary stages a bit late in my “modul-dance time”, focusing more on how to meet the ends – my needs and venues' offers. So after a year and a half of residencies I am only now at the stage where I'm clear with what is absolutely necessary for the project to be realized and what is less urgent and can be compromised.

Community of artists / Network of trust and colalboration:
Another point I would like to comment on is the community of artists. I have to say it was something I would have wished for more opportunities to engage with others. Meeting people at conferences made sense for me when the format was flexible enough to allow both – a presentation, performance as well an insight into individual's ways of working. I have been inspired by so many artists, connected with few and will for sure keep in touch with them in the future. It has been of great help to meet the rest of 50 something artists and exchange a bit on our development during the modul-dance support. This was the eye opener on how to use or benefit even more from the network, how to “tailor” it individually as I mentioned before. It seemed to me a bit like hearing the testimonies of other's “rules of the game” they have created for themselves.

Also very important was connecting to the programers or let's say everybody else involved that are not the supported artists, from different environments. It was definitely “insider's” information in sense that I got to learn how production is approached to and tackled. What is the venues' approach, values, requirements and criteria, how they treat the audience, and similar for sure expanded my own understanding and influenced not only my future management skills, but artistic approach to some degree as well – be it opening it up to new factors considered in what contributes to dance-making, be it becoming more protective and appreciative of my own artistic visions and beliefs.

However, not only community of artists, but the whole modul-dance community is something I did not expect to start to feel part of. Having heard negative experience of the past generations, jokingly naming it a "market for the programmers", I had my doubts of course, left a bit confused about what to expect. In retrospective, believing one only gets what one expects, I did get confusion, but also and most importantly got the support to develop my work. Both through time & space enabling 'em to work as well as developing skills needed for independent dance maker to create and expand. Although the premiere is not on the horizon yet, I can see already the development of my work and the side-effects of it on a broader scale – how I communciate and integrate in my current environment. All these changes and opportunities were however possible only through a good personal contact I had with each of the partner, mostly finding a common interest and therefore a good connection purely on a personal level, engaging in a chit chat, sychornizing energetically more than any kind of pre-concieved plan and aimed for connection.

The only thing left to add is that this experience has vastly influenced my “positioning” in the most broad sense of the word, to even think of it as a part of my vocabulary when reflecting on my work, it had been testing the range of my permeability – how, when and for what purpose am I exposing my artistic process intentionally or unintentionally and it added sparks to the already ignited desire of mine to have a future opportunity to be part of a tighter artistic community, where the flow of exchange is the motor, curiosity the fuel and integration and support the destination.

Picture: © Zoe Alibert

Trailer for Baby it's you not me from The Mob on Vimeo.

Conceiving and creating a new work is like capturing the detailed minutiae of a dream, except it’s in the future… I don’t think we surrender ourselves to the wild plains of our imagination enough. Art is about creating an elemental experience of life, which the audience is invited to participate in along with the performers.

Within modul-dance, I’ve had research modules at Art Station Foundation in Poznań, Poland and at Plesna Izba in Maribor, Slovenia; and residencies in CSC Bassano del Grappa, Italy and CDC Toulouse in France.

In Poland, in March 2013, I spent half of my time in Poznań, writing, working alone in the studio, chatting to other artists and spending time with an enthusiastic ethnography student from Adam Mickiewicz University, listening to polish lore and folk stories; and the second half in Warsaw, dwarfed by the wind-chilled, wide grey boulevards, and felt the constant shadow of Stalin’s Palace of Science and Culture, absorbing the vibrations (and -8 degrees celsius temperatures) of this multi war surviving “phoenix city”.

In May I travelled to Bassano del Grappa, where I worked alone for the first 5 days of the residency, which I often find difficult to do, particularly as I don't usually choreograph for my own body.

I spent a lot of time reading and writing, and being in another place without the everyday burdens, really helped. Roberto arranged a trip up the mountains for me, led by a young academic fountain of knowledge, Sebastiano Crestani, to see some ancient etchings. Unfortunately the Alpine rain cancelled our hike, and instead we went to Padua, where I saw an exhibition on the ancient Veneti people and an amazing 6 mt wooden horse made in 1466.

For the second week I invited Justine Cooper to join me, a performer with whom I already developed some ideas. We shared some ideas with a wonderfully engaged and generous audience there before we left. We also got to sit in on a rehearsal of an all male choir, singing old Italian and Alpine folk songs, a real treat to watch a committed group of mean aged 30-80 singing like angels!

My 4 day trip to Maribor (Plesna Izba) in June was planned to coincide with the annual FolkArt Festival, which is a bit like the dance version of Eurovision in it’s presentational format. Mojca had arranged front row seats for the 3 nights, and I sat there, blown away by these massive ensembles of predominantly amateur dancers (some pretty hefty guys) doing amazingly complex things, passionate about preserving their national dances. I got a private lesson from Vaska, a Slovenian dance historian, choreographer and choreologist of folk dances from the regions. It was here in Maribor where my attention began to focus more towards the crazy music of the Balkans.

My final 2-week residency took place in Toulouse in December 2013, and this time I brought along 5 dancers. It was the first time for us all to be together, and we spent the entire 2 weeks working in the studio. The facilities at the CDC were wonderful, in that we spent most of the time dancing, eating and talking, which resulted in a sense of ease in our environment and explorations. This ease allowed me to go places artistically I’d never been before. Newer, darker, funnier, stranger places. We had some visits from school children who sometimes joined in the warm ups and university students with whom we shared and discussed small segments of our work.

With Tundra I wanted to explore a familiar concept/myth/truth, depending on one’s beliefs, to reveal the poetry of “heaven and hell” and the instability and abysses that exists within us all and in everyday life. I wanted to somehow work with the potential of an unseen world, and feeling the breath of “the ideal”, without wanting to impose any sort of didactic notions on the work. But I am drawn to thinking about reason and logic being overcome by internal and external forces. By that I’m talking about intuition and the connection between our own instinct and a greater external force outside of our control and indeed understanding. Not wanting to sound too esoteric or ethereal, Tundra is a world that’s cosmically misaligned, where time and space lose their boundaries, inhabited by characters who are confronted by fear -of themselves, their existence, their actions and of the unknown, but ultimately they want to break through those barriers to a higher plane. I’ve been thinking about the cyclical nature of time, and how, historically, we can see patterns emerging, where at certain times everything goes into a state of flux and volatility. It looks like we’re in that state right now, and it is a time of insecurity, change and we have witnessed the exposure of a huge amount of human suffering and darkness. I'm endlessly interested in talking and exploring human nature but in particular our chaos, and struggle with desire and death. I enjoy delving into seemingly banal moments, which our mind and imagination has the capacity to make extraordinarily beautiful or horrific.

I like to allow the spectator to receive his own interpretation of each moment for her/himself, and to allow the mind to organize it in it’s own way. It’s an innate process that we naturally do anyway, so it’s not that any special intellectual treatment or analysis is required. But the aim is to allow the arrangement of all of the components of our creation to have an individual effect or Gestalt in the eye of each spectator.

Each piece of work requires a specific language, a movement one, a visual one, a musical one and sometimes a spoken one. And so for me the “sequence of steps” has to take a secondary position to the people who are actually doing them. An intelligent performer requires much more to keep her/himself stimulated than just repetition. And so that’s when the work becomes much more interesting when the performers are also creators and bringing themselves to it. I was really buzzed by the performers that I worked with on Tundra, which demanded a mutual act of searching from us all. They really brought themselves, their experience, memories and, most importantly, their imaginations into the room. The characters are emerged from them, which felt more truthful, than imposing mannerisms and alien stories on them. The performers are paramount to the work- they are the ones that distil, embody and deliver the energy to the audience, and I have been very fortunate to work with some really wonderful artists.

Tundra premiered at the Dublin Dance Festival in May 2014 and was packed up after it’s successful 4 -show run. What next? There’s a new work on the way in 2015, there’ll always be a new work. But it can be exhausting always creating new work for just a handful of performances, and hoping a DVD will magically enable a longer life for it or garner interest in the next new work.

As I Iook back on my modul-dance experience, and attempt to measure the result my participation has had on the work, there are of course lots of interesting and fruitful moments that come to mind, many of which I mentioned earlier. But I also wonder about how the participating artists affect the partners and modul-dance as an organization. This remains a mystery to me. And although it was an enriching experience to develop the piece in new, unfamiliar places, the question of "what next" will not leave my mind.

Picture: © Ros Kavanagh

Te invitamos a a que conozcas Hipermedula, una plataforma digital de cultura iberoamericana donde podrás encontrar convocatorias, becas, eventos y diversos textos de interés cultural. Haz click aquí para acceder a la web.

Cuerpos en El exilio de Gardel. Tangos

Aproximación a la danza post

Trabajo final Posgrado Especialización en Tendencias Contemporáneas de la Danza / IUNA

Semiologías+semióticas+danzas: algunas historias

Voltado a artistas, pesquisadores e profissionais da gestão cultural, o seminário internacional “Conexões para Circulação de Artistas, Gestores e Ideias” tem o objetivo de contribuir para o aperfeiçoamento da capacidade de desenvolver ações culturais sustentáveis.

5 e 6/12 – sexta-feira e sábado – 10h às 13h na Oficia Cultural Oswald de Andrade, São Paulo.

Público: artistas, pesquisadores e comunicadores; estudiosos e profissionais da gestão cultural.

Seleção: primeiros inscritos.
Clique aqui para se inscrever nas mesas de debate.

Clique aqui para mais informações sobre o seminário.

One of the modul-dance project key elements is the promotion of mobility, so that artists receiving its support follow itineraries across Europe to develop their creative work and present it to different audiences.

Modul-dance presents a collection of modul-dance city guides. Each of the guides in this collection shows a city from the viewpoint of a local artist, who proposes his or her own particular route to artists in transit, seeking to put them in connection with their host city. While these city routes share some basic features, each one is different and in their differences lies a wealth of gazes, aesthetics, approximations to the local and much more. In a word, they form a mirror of the diversity that modul-dance has always fostered. Athens, Barcelona, Bassano del Grappa, Dresden, London, Stockholm, Vienna, Toulouse, Paris and Poznań ready to be discovered.

The ten city guides are available from this link: http://issuu.com/moduldance

Del 24 al 29 de noviembre se realiza el Festival Videodanza Ecuador en Quito, Guayaquil y Cuenca, con proyecciones de videodanzas, documentales y largometrajes. Habrá charlas con artistas ecuatorianos, un laboratorio de creación a cargo de artistas colombianos, y mucha, mucha videodanza.

Por más información del festival haz click aquí.

Te invitamos a que conozcan Plataforma /C , un espacio de formación on line para profesionales de la cultura.

Haz click aquí para acceder a la web.

<p class="first">In 2012 MOM/ELVIVERO proposed Lucy Suggate and Sonia Gómez to collaborate in an artistic project. <em>Dance Pals</em> was the first phase of their work together within the Carte Blanche programme in the framework of the modul-dance project, invited by Dansehallerne (Copenhagen) and Graner (Barcelona). <em>The inquisitive middle</em> is a production of the TNT Festival (Terrassa), Sonia Gómez-Lucy Suggate and MOM/ELVIVERO. With the collaboration of Dansehallerne (Copenhagen), Graner and Sâlmon&lt; Festival (Barcelona). Lucy Suggate is supported by Arts Coucil of England.</p>
This interview was done by Graner during their Carte Blanche residency in Barcelona (April 2013).

More modul-dance videos on <a href="http://www.numeridanse.tv/en/channels/moduldance/" target="_blank"><strong>Numeridanse.tv</strong></a>.

<iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/73133338" frameborder="0" width="500" height="375"></iframe>

Study of Pose - Coco Rocha & Steven Sebring

The German artist Irene Schröder visited Graner in October 2012 for a modul-dance Carte Blanche residency.

More modul-dance videos on Numeridanse.tv.

I was recommended by Plesna Izba Maribor as one of the modul-dance artists in 2012. They also promised to be the main producers of the performance and cover the premiere, so all I needed to get on board were at least three partners. I was seducing them in Barcelona and gave it all to catch their attention, which was not easy. It felt like I was a product on sale and they are buying. There was no big interest but in the end I got what I wanted; three research spaces/residencies, one in Portugal, one in Denmark and one in Slovenia. They offered working space, accommodation, travel costs and per diems, so all the basic needs were covered and I could focus on work, away from trivial obligations in my home town. Therefore going abroad seemed very beneficial for developing work and growing as an artist and as a human being.

New environment was refreshing and revitalising. Being in touch with a new culture opened up curiosity and senses, which was also helpful in the creative process because we were more alert for details. In Faro, Portugal we (Luka and me) were totally motivated for work out and discipline. We were waking up at around six in the morning to meditate, rehearsed through the day and went to run in the evening – across town, by the coast, pass the palm trees. It did not correspond with the laid back nature typical for the warm south but we were so grateful for the big, bright studio and the Mediterranean winds were giving us strength. In Copenhagen we rehearsed in a black box, after the theatre closed the season, so pretty cut off from events and other artists, which influenced the nature of our material. We produced something minimal, slow and intimate, which was really useful for us later on because I got pregnant before the premiere and we had to throw out all the dynamic material and forget about big movements.

We could take good advantage from the research and residency modules. The time we could afford to try out, think and re-think was precious. We could go to many places inside the creation, shifted ideas and had a chance to shape material that was developed through sharing our fascinations and knowledge. The premiered version of Working Title framed all those different off springs into a distinct composition, determined by fatal decisions concluded in the last faze of creation. Because we let the performance develop rather than forced it into a predetermined shape it got an unpredictable form and content, for which it seems to me, it was made with a force bigger than us humans. This life force was something we wanted to come through in the performance and touch the audience. We did not get much chance to try out the effect on audiences because I was not able to perform any more and after me giving birth we were not able to sell the piece. This is where we were not so successful. It was clear from the beginning that being a modul-dance artist does not promise you a tour but maybe the last two modules could be organized more carefully. Perhaps they could run another selection from all the finished works; meaning all directors of production houses would watch all videos and than they choose some to tour. Otherwise mostly those artist that got support from big production houses that have money get the chance for some re-runs. Probably too many artists accumulate over years for something like that. But in the end does size matter?

There are still ideas to make a new version of our performance and from a solo extend it into a duet. We will see about that after the next funding call. Before that I will dance in a piece called Hunting Season, choreographed by Malin Tomašik, so you better watch out for this one.

Picture: © Saša Huzjak

O projeto #tapiocatouch, apresentado no âmbito do 5.º Festival de Cultura Afro-brasileira, é composto pelos performers brasileiros Andrea Krohn (São Paulo), Priscila Patta (Belo Horizonte), Marçal Rodrigues (Porto Alegre) e a artista visual Thiana Sehn (Camaquã), responsável pelo trabalho gráfico. Três bailarinos e uma artista visual de diferentes regiões do Brasil tentam construir uma colaboração marcada pelas redes sociais, apesar de estarem fisicamente longe. Trocam gostos e ideias por e-mail e publicações nas redes sociais. Movem-se entre si pela memória digital usada nas tarefas de memória do corpo. Os limites do corpo – a tecnologia da vida quotidiana – e terabytes espaciais estão disponíveis para as performances. A ideia nasceu de uma inquietação sobre a utilidade das redes sociais para a produção artística de trabalhos coletivos com pessoas desconhecidas dentro deste tempo de corpo digitalizado, mediado pela máquina e a imagem.

Hoje dia 11 iniciam as performances aqui em Berlim com Andrea Krohn e seu solo: Ochsentanz.

        dia 12  Marsal Rodrigues apresenta ORI

         dia 13 Priscila Patta apresenta  A dança que digiro

#tapiocatouch

The modul-dance selected artist Eric Minh Cuong Castaing / Cie. Shonen is working on a new project. Entitled "School of moon", it will be a performance for 10 children, 6 robots nao and 2 dancers. The project is a metaphor for a new world colonized by miniature bodies, evocating a world of tomorrow. This dream resizes the stage, which is changed by the use of new technology too. This cel- ebration of the construction of a micro-society, between robotics and pagan dance, questions our im- pregnating abilities, fascination for artificial, and free will.

SCHOOL OF MOON : " robot, kid, war, love & dance..." from SHONEN on Vimeo.

More information here.  

When José Laginha, from Capa/Devir (a cultural structure in the sunny south coast of Portugal) introduced us to modul-dance network we knew very little of it, except that some other Portuguese choreographers (Tânia Carvalho and Cláudia Dias) had also been supported by it in the previous editions.

The meeting in Barcelona, in November 2012, was the first moment we got to grasp the dimension of this network. It was surprising to see the variety of artists, programmers and their specific projects/contexts of action. Although big in scale, the meeting seemed to have the right balance of formality and informality for an actual exchange to happen, and we were caught by its intensity and the way everyone was focused to make it significant and useful.

In that meeting we found affinities with a group of four partners that hosted our project - Satellites - in several residencies over the year. They were Arts Station Foundation, Dance Ireland, Duncan Dance Centre and El Graner. Each place had its own atmosphere and each had inevitably a very specific influence in the way we approached our research. It’s intriguing to notice that no matter how concrete and precise your artistic research is, the characteristics of the studio, its temperature, its privacy, the place where you sleep, the food, the streets you pass by, the familiarity or not with the language, the people you interact with and many other details will work on your research stretching it into unpredictable morphologies.

One can almost draw a big circle in a map connecting those four structures we have collaborated with, starting in Dublin, drawing a soft curve until Poznań, then down to Athens and from there making our way up again to Barcelona. Curiously, like Lisbon, all of these cities make part of some kind of geographical periphery. Not to force a geopolitical layer to this coincidence, but there is something quite interesting in our orbit through this constellation of countries that have a lot of similarities in their recent social and economical histories; specially when one of the main axis of our research in Satellites is about the tension between centre and periphery and the atomization of the centre.

Satellites' first residency was in Poznań and it was marked by a particular research on movement and voice. The residency happened in the same space we had presented one of our works, in the context of Malta Festival, half a year before. It makes a lot of sense when there’s continuity in the relation between artists and partners, and modul-dance just made this possible. As it usually happens, the first residency is where we end up doing everything we had previously thought about the project, as if to take those first preconceived ideas out of the way so that other things coming from the experience of doing may emerge. Not to forget the open class we were invited to give to a vigorous and enthusiastic local community.

Then, in Dublin, we've continued the research ending with an informal open-doors rehearsal where we could share some of the embryonic material with a few spectators and discuss the concepts that were being set as a basis for the work. Work-in-progress showings are something that we tend to avoid; yet, the thing that made sense wasn't exactly what we shared but that it served as a pretext for dialogue. We had also the opportunity to discover and be inspired by Casement’s complex and wonderful life (thanks Paul, for The Black Diaries).

In Athens, we've worked for a week mainly on sound and text, using the surroundings to capture different sounds and test a few ideas about the interaction of the body with the space mediated by a recorded voice. It's impossible not to visit the city and be completely drawn into one of he world's oldest cities, especially when the person who's hosting you is such a passionate guide. In the following week we presented a piece of ours in Arc for dance Festival that had a small focus on modul-dance artists.

Finally, in Barcelona we where able to invite two collaborators of our project, and share some of the ideas that we had been exploring previously, testing them with other bodies and amplifying their possibilities. In El Graner, the term residency was accurately employed because we would sleep and work in the same building. Other artists were also developing their own projects and the fact that we shared a physical space together fostered a genuine curiosity for each other's works.

Now that modul-dance's edition is coming to an end we feel privileged to having been part of it. It is clear that it isn't just about the time you spend in the network, or the obvious benefits of being supported by it; but it's also about encouraging dialogue and setting out grounds for future collaborations.

Picture: © Sofia Dias & Vítor Roriz