TOWARDS is curated by Francesco Scavetta and organised by Vitlycke – Centre for Performing Arts, in collaboration with Sekoia – Artes Performativas.
OBS! Accommodation is included for a limited number of participants.
For inscriptions, fill up the form: https://goo.gl/forms/K1N6CxawG4TnrCbg2
If you have any questions, please contact: towards@vitlycke.org
Supported by the Swedish Cultural Council.
Vitlycke – Centre for Performing Arts is supported by: Västra Götalandsregionen KSU and Tanum Kultur & Fritid.
16.04 - 06.09
TOWARDS is a cycle of intensive workshops that include physical praxis, evening lectures, video screenings and live performances. It’s the metaphor of aiming at something – to expose and engage ourselves in physical investigations and conceptual challenges that can foster creativity and encourage discoveries. TOWARDS sees pedagogy as a continuous intellectual provocation, an occasion for inspiration through paradoxes and awakenings and as a desire to overturn common sense and question what we have learned. TOWARDS is a state of mind. It means not being there yet, being on the move, being on the way. It’s a constant rediscovery and involves being aware that distance starts from proximity: that to go far, we have to start from close by. From here. From where we are. We take many small steps and see how things transform. It’s a kind of utopia of the body where the result is unimportant: it’s about the challenge. It’s not taking anything for granted, enjoying the departures more than the arrivals and experiencing the emotion of each new beginning.
To be TOWARDS means to have passion and discipline, curiosity and carefulness, eagerness and patience. It’s to learn that sometimes it is more important to forget than to remember. It’s erasing expectations by pushing the reset button and starting again. It’s about not being acquiescent with where we are, but rather remaining curious to move somewhere else. It’s about finding a silence in the body that can transform the way we understand the movements we embody. It’s simply to set out, even without destination.
TOWARDS is the desire for an epiphany of vision. It’s the need to go beneath the surface and search for innocence and the ability to be amazed. It’s about treasuring moments that bear small revelations with great simplicity, seriousness and (why not), a sense of humour.
TOWARDS offers the occasion to explore the work of renowned international artists, gaining an insight into their practice and methodologies as well the philosophical and poetic worlds that trigger their creative research.
The project started in August 2018 with Julyen Hamilton’s workshop, ‘Making Dances – compositional and poetic richness’.
In 2019, the workshops will be organised in three blocks of two weeks. Each week will include:
- a lecture for sharing theoretical reflections
- evening video screenings
- a final performative event
TOWARDS: 2019 Workshops:
1 / 6 APR (6 DAYS = 30H)
German Jauregui Allue
“Ultima Vez vocabulary: technique + partnering work”
8 / 12 APR (5 DAYS = 25H)
Judith Sanchez Ruiz
“Your Own God: improvisation workshop”
27 / 31 MAY (5 DAYS = 25H)
Frey Faust
“The Axis Syllabus”
3 / 7 JUN (5 DAYS = 25H)
Laura Aris
“Play Full Body”
26 / 30 AUG (5 DAYS = 25H)
David Zambrano
“Flying Low & Passing Through”
2 / 6 SEP (5 DAYS = 25H)
Francesco Scavetta
“Embodying semantic”
Scroll down for detailed info on the workshops
TOWARDS: 2019
1 / 6 APRIL
German Jauregui Allue (BE/ES)
Ultima Vez Vocabulary + Partnering
During the workshop, floor work and partnering will be combined. We will study and practice some basic tools and principles, which will allow us to find precision, organicity, and the right intention while we dance, as well as to explore different movement qualities and physical states. The movement will be considered as a theatrical act rather than as a technique.
We will familiarise with concepts like: risk, trust, moving with necessity, instinct, self-protection, how to protect somebody else, speed, fragility, softness, weakness, tension. The work will allow us to discover how we dance, where the limits are and how we can go further. We will find answers to these questions and new questions may arise.
Biography
German Jauregui is a director, choreographer, dancer and teacher based in Brussels.
In 1998 he joined the company Ultima Vez and participated in the creations and the touring of the pieces: “In Spite of Wishing and Wanting” (1999), “Inasmuch as Life is borrowed” (2000), “What the Body Does Not Remember” (Revival of 2002), “Blush” (2002), “Sonic Boom” (2003), “Puur” (2005), “Spiegel” (2006). From 2016, he works as a choreographer assistant and rehearsal director.
Since 2007 he developed his own work through several creations and collaborative works. As a guest choreographer, he created pieces for different companies in Spain, Mexico and Canada.
In parallel with his creative work, he teaches internationally.
08 / 12 APRIL
Judith Sánchez Ruíz (DE/CU)
Your Own God Intensive Improvisation Workshop
The workshop will trigger the un/comfortable zone of the participants. A ‘pull-out’ from the present moment and within it, of an unpublished present of chaos and vulnerability.
Judith Sanchez designed the «Radio exercise» – a practice that allows radical changes of states, provoking shifts of action in the brain, combining spontaneously determined information and making space for complexity and coincidence. All these explorations are an integral part of Sanchez’s processes as a choreographer, that both influence and structure her creative work.
“I will guide you to look for the unknown exploration of different approaches to movement, and we will learn how to develop movement in composition with space and in relationship with others. I will encourage you to own your movement, find precision and wildness all together, but overall, live in your dance!”
Biography
Judith Sanchez is a choreographer, performer, and improviser. She worked with Sasha Waltz & Guest, Deborah Hay, Trisha Brown Dance Company, DD Dorvillier, David Zambrano, Mal Pelo Company and DanzAbierta Company, among many others. Since arriving in Europe, JSR Company premiered several works: Micro Revolution (2015); Sebastian Schunke Meets Judith Sánchez Ruíz; the improvisational project Mirror Equation and Encaje.
She often teaches professional dance companies and dance schools as well as in festivals and summer workshops.
More info: "http://judithsanchezruiz.tumblr.com":http://judithsanchezruiz.tumblr.com
27 / 31 MAY
Frey Faust (US) The Axis Syllabus
The Axis Syllabus recognizes both broad general commonalities as well as unique individual qualities and proportions and invites the student to work with rather than against their body’s resources. In his workshop, Frey Faust invites the participants to practice joint centration and dynamic alignment, explore various options for optimal articular motion and practice turning physics to their favor for both large and small-scale movements.
Biography
Born in 1960, Frey began performing at the age of 8 with his family as a traveling troubadour. He is a second generation contact improviser and an alumnus of the 80s New York dance scene. Some of his more important early influences came from: Shekhinah Mountainwater, Nita Little, Pavel Rouba, Rene Bazinet, and Janet Panetta. He has worked with and for a number of artists, among others with: Ohad Naharin, Donald Byrd, David Parsons, Gina Buntz, Howard Katz, Merce Cunningham, Meredith Monk, Randy Warshaw, Bob Een, Stephen Petronio, Danny Ezralow.
He founded or co-founded three dance companies, and has created or co-created over 40 choreographic solo and group works. Following an independent study of anatomy, biomechanics and physics, he has been able to build a pedagogical approach that has made him a sought after teacher, personal coach and technical counselor.
After 15 years of research, he consolidated his findings in a book – The Axis Syllabus – Human Movement Lexicon – which he continues to edit with the help of the Axis Syllabus International Research Community. Founded in 2009, the ASIRC is a rapidly expanding group of experts from many related fields in the human movement and education sciences. Recently, his work on the AS has been focused into the construction of a symbol set with the potential to streamline movement documentation and analysis. He also makes shoes, speaks four languages, continues to create and perform dances.
For more details: freyfaust.org
3 / 7 JUNE
Laura Aris (BE/ES) Play Full Body
Technical exercises and improvisations with a clear framework will be the starting point for a work in group, couples or individuals. We will look for creative impulses that, when released, offer us new possibilities for achievement. We will observe how, sometimes, extreme qualities maintain a balanced tension; that the tension attracts attention and that many times silence speaks.
Biography
Laura Aris is a performer, choreographer & international teacher. Her performing experience includes a decade as a formal member of the Belgium company Ultima Vez/Wim Vandekeybus, Lanònima Imperial and General Elèctrica artistic collective, in Barcelona. Currently, she is working as a freelance artist developing her own creative practices, creating several solo works and many collaborative performances.
More info: "https://www.lauraaris.com":https://www.lauraaris.com
26 / 30 AUGUST
David Zambrano (NL/VE) Flying Low + Passing Through
Flying Low
The technique developed by David focuses mainly on the dancer‘s relationship with the floor, earth and ground. Simple movement patterns involve breathing, speed and the release of energy through the body in order to activate the relationship between center and periphery and between joints and skin.
Exercises will focus on moving in and out of the ground more efficiently by maintaining the state of being centered. Emphasis is placed on the skeletal structure, which will aid to improve physical perception and alertness. The class includes partnering work and movement phrases, which explore the primary laws of physics: cohesion and expansion.
Passing Through
Passing Through takes the dancers through various exercises to manifest David’s philosophy that movement needs no leader in creation. The dancers will create dynamics that will be flexible and complex at the same time, getting the group to fit tight together, yet always keeping doors open for the unpredictable. The group moves constantly, transforming the environment of the dance, sensing a room full of invisible curved pathways. These pathways become visible as soon as the dancers start moving through the room. Thus Passing Through becomes a spontaneous composition. When the group becomes one mind, it can never get lost, it is always going somewhere. There is never one person leading or following, everyone is leading or following, depending on the situation. The whole group is constantly traveling, practicing infinite possibilities inside a defined environment.
Biography
For over 35 years, David has been a monumental figure in the international dance community, and his passion for cultural exchange continues to influence his work. Living and making work in Amsterdam and Brussels, and teaching/performing internationally, David is an ambassador and liaison across many borders, bringing together artists from all over the planet for his projects.An inspiring teacher, thrilling performer, and innovative choreographer, David has contributed generously to the field of dance in ways that have influenced many and impacted the dance world from several angles.
2 / 6 SEPTEMBER
Francesco Scavetta (NO/SE/IT) Embodying semantic
Embodying semantic is a new methodology that takes its starting point from the creative process of the performance, ‘Hardly Ever’.
In the workshop, after time dedicated to grounding physical references, procedures such as: SHOW and TELL / TELL and SHOW will be explored as powerful tools for creativity and performativity, and for articulating dramaturgical paths and conceptual landscapes.
In ‘Embodying Semantic’, the body of the performer is understood as a fiction upon which an endless possibility of fictions can be written.
Through different tasks, the participants will be invited to continuously manipulate their fictional worlds and creations using verbal statements and physical answers. Participants will engage in a physical cartography that can continuously formulate new meanings, connecting forms with significances we did not know were previously connected.
Biography
Scavetta has developed a reputation on the international dance scene for his wildly inventive work, playful humour and subversive intelligence and his company Wee is at the forefront of the Nordic dance scene. Established in Oslo in 1999, together with dancer Gry Kipperberg, Wee has produced 22 of Scavetta’s performances and toured in 37 countries -in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, North, Central and South America.
Wee’s creations have changed in format and aesthetic, yet they have continuously explored what theatre and performance can mean in contemporary life.
The core of the company’s investigation deals with fragility and paradox, epiphany and dream, empathy and surprise, avoiding narrative and physical cliché, while questioning reality and identity with humoristic disbelief.
“Wee creates performances that can engage and amaze, can evoke empathy and twist expectations, that can be both poetic and unusual, and that we experience as a challenge first of all for ourselves: that surprises us, as much as it talks to us and about us.”
More info: "http://wee-francescoscavetta.no":http://wee-francescoscavetta.no
About Vitlycke
Vitlycke – Centre for Performing Arts (CPA) was established in 2012 in Tanumshede, on the Swedish west coast, almost in the middle between Oslo and Goteborg. Surrounded by countryside, Vitlycke – CPA is located in a UNESCO protected area, visited for its famous Bronze Age stone carvings and is neighbour to the Vitlycke Museum.
Vitlycke – Centre for Performing Arts is a place for investigation and creation, for research, training and education. It is a place where companies can concentrate on their creations in a calm rural environment in the middle of nature, detached from the rhythm of the city.
A platform where artists can meet, rehearse and share their works.
Vitlycke – CPA dedicates its program to residencies, informal showings and performances, after-talks, workshops for professional dancers, master-classes for non-professional participants, concerts and music events, film projections and seminars.
Vitlycke – CPA has also a programme of performances and workshops for young audiences titled SEE/MOVE. In August 2017, it established HERE: a Biennial International Performing Arts Festival.
The facilities include a large lounge space, two fully equipped kitchens, 8 comfortable bedrooms and two studios. The main studio (227 m2) can be transformed into a black box with professional technical equipment.
Vitlycke – CPA is a non-governmental independent organisation, founded with the aim of providing an inspiring space for performing arts. Initiated by internationally renowned choreographer, dancer and teacher Francesco Scavetta, Vitlycke – CPA is a user-created, innovative informal institution. A meeting place for creative work within the fields of performing and visual arts, music, new media, theory and cultural production.
Vitlycke – CPA aims to constantly widen its outreach, hosting a variety of thriving projects focusing on performativity, education, social awareness and cultural development. It has an aim to expose its regional audience to Nordic, European and International projects that can encourage participation, a sense of community, integration and critically aware thinking.
Vitlycke – CPA works in close collaboration with several Institutions in Sweden and has initiated networks of collaborations with partners based in Nordic countries and internationally.
