Movementtalks

witch is an interdisciplinary annual exhibit created by dancers from around the world to raise money for charity, hosted by Nederlands Dans Theater (NL). Switch provides the dancers of NDT the opportunity to create an entire evening of art and dance. It serves as a chance to choreograph in a professional setting, take the organizational helm, and delve into the other aspects of this art form we may not always experience. It also serves as a platform for any kind of creativity.

It all started in 1988 when the dancers of NDT started informally creating their own choreographies in their free time. Interest grew and soon they decided to dedicate an evening in the studios to showcase their creations to their fellow colleagues, they called this evening ‘Workshops’. World renowned choreographers such as Paul Lightfoot, Sol León, Nacho Duato, Jorma Elo, Johan Inger and Medhi Walerski all began their choreographic careers with Switch. Over the past decades, Switch as a project has grown in both popularity and diversity, while developing into a full evening of dance. This allowed Switch to serve the greater purpose of supporting numerous charities and act as an ever-changing creative platform for all forms of artistic expression, becoming the Switch we know today.

Movementtalks had the chance to be in conversation with Cullberg managing director Stina Dahlström and choreographer Jérôme Bel. Here they share their opinion and goals concerning the emission of CO2 in the atmosphere and the contemporary world of performance.

Stina Dahlström was born in 1982 in Kiruna. She has an education in literature, dance, theatre, economics and project management at the University of Stockholm. Stina Dahlström has worked as a freelance producer, and as head of production at MDT, an international co-producing and presenting plattform for contemporary dance in Stockholm. As of 2016, Stina Dahlström is managing director of Cullberg, the national and international repertoire contemporary dance company in Sweden.

Jérôme Bel lives in Paris and works worldwide. nom donné par l’auteur (1994) is a choreography of objects. Jérôme Bel (1995) is based on the total nudity of the performers. Shirtology (1997) presents an actor wearing many T-shirts. The last performance (1998) quotes a solo by the choreographer Susanne Linke, as well as Hamlet and André Agassi. Xavier Le Roy (2000) was claimed by Jérôme Bel as his own, but was actually choreographed by Xavier Le Roy. The show must go on (2001) brings toghether twenty performers, nineteen pop songs and one DJ. Véronique Doisneau (2004) is a solo on the work of the dancer Véronique Doisneau, from the Paris Opera. Isabel Torres (2005), for the ballet of the Teatro Municipal of Rio de Janeiro, is its Brazilian version. Pichet Klunchun and myself (2005) was created in Bangkok with the Thai traditional dancer Pichet Klunchun. Follows Cédric Andrieux (2009), dancer of Merce Cunningham. 3Abschied (2010) is a collaboration between Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Jérôme Bel based on The Song of the Earth by Gustav Malher. Disabled Theater (2012) is a piece with a Zurich-based company, Theater Hora, consisting of professional actors with learning disabilities. Cour d’honneur (2013) stages fourteen spectators of the Cour d’honneur of the Palais des Papes in Avignon. In Gala (2015), the choreographer stages together professional people from the dance field and amateurs coming from different backgrounds. In Tombe (2016), performance created at the invitation of Opéra National de Paris, Jérôme Bel proposed to some dancers of the ballet to invite, for a duet, the person with who they would never share the stage. Posé arabesque, temps lié en arrière, marche, marche (2017) is a piece for all the dancers of the Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon based on the famous “Entrance of the shadows” of the ballet La Bayadère. Dancing as if nobody is watching (2018) and the reading of the Lecture on nothing by John Cage call for a contemplative aesthetic attitude. With Retrospective, Jérôme Bel goes back through his video archives and makes a cross section within his corpus, to better bring out the linkage between dance and politics. Isadora Duncan (2019) paints a picture of this choreographer. In 2013 Emails 2009-2010, written with the French choreographer Boris Charmatz, is edited (Les Presses du Réel). This book is published on line and in English, still by Les Presses du Réel, in 2016.

This interview was recorded with no CO2 emission.

Interviewees: Stina Dahlström and Jérôme Bel

Concept: Giacomo Della Marina

Camera: Erica Espling and Oskar Hökerberg (Stina Dahlström)

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Whistle While You Work is a platform lead by dancers, choreographers, and artists that calls out harassment, discrimination, and violence towards women and marginalized groups particularly while at work in the arts, especially in professional dance and performance. Initiated in 2017 by writer/artist Robyn Doty and dancer/choreographer Frances Chiaverini, the platform has given Open Forums in the US and Germany; workshops at dance festivals and conferences throughout Germany and has been featured in prominent dance magazines (US, UK, EU).

Frances Chiaverini was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and she is based in Frankfurt. She is a performer, activist, choreographer.  She was a member of The Forsythe Company in its final seasons and has most recently performed with Adam Linder, Luisa Saraiva, Fabrice Mazliah, and Trajal Harrell. In 2017, she co-creates with Robyn Doty Whistle while you work. She is a 2019-20 Resident Fellow at NYU’s Center for Ballet and the Arts. She is a choreographic consultant for Anne Imhof for works at Tate Modern, The Venice Biennale, MoMa PS. 1, Pompidou, Hamburger Bahnhof, Art Basel, and La Biennale de Montréal. Her most recent works include The Body Violent (2017, PACT) Open Carry/Concealed Carry (2018), and she most recently created a new original work called It’s my house and I live here. (2019) supported by a grant from the Theaterförderung durch die Stadt Frankfurt am Main with  Julia Eichten.

Robyn Doty graduates in 2019 with an M.A. from the Goethe University Frankfurt where she studied and was active in Memory Studies and Transcultural Studies. In 2017 she co-organized a weeklong postcolonial studies Summer School about performance at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Since 2016 she has collaborated as a writer and dramaturg with BOHL (Frances Chiaverini and Katja Cheraneva); as a writer and dramaturg for Roderick George’s kNoname dance company’s DUST, FLESHLESS BEAST (Berlin); and with Katja Cheraneva on Cards Against Contemporary Dance. She has shown her own work at the Goethe University and has had her poetry and photography published by Belleville Park Pages. She is the project manager and dramaturg for Whistle while you work. She collaborated with Chiaverini for the creation of It’s my house and I live here., and is Chiaverini’s collaborator during their NYU CBA Fellowship in 2020. 

Julia Eichten danced with Camille A. Brown & Dancers, as well as Aszure Barton & Artists. Julia was a founding member of L.A. Dance Project. Based in Los Angeles, Julia continues to work with Gerard & Kelly as a performer and collaborator. Last year she assisted them on Solange’s collaboration with Uniqlo, “Metratronia” as well as a month of performances at Pioneer Works(NY) in, “Clockwork.” Julia is a proud founding member of AMOC* as a dancer and choreographer. Most recently Julia danced in Carly Rae Jepsen’s latest video, “Too Much” as well as working as an assistant choreographer for One Republic’s yet to be released new music and video, “Wanted.” As well as premiering two new original works, “She is Her,” at the Sweat Spot and “PHRASEHXR” at Highways Performance Space. She continues her daily practice of improvisation and video art and is pleased to have premiered with collaborator Frances Chiaverini earlier this season.

Contact: http://www.nobody100.com/contact

Website: www.whistlewhileyouwork.art

Interviewee: Frances Chiaverini, Robyn Doty, Julia Eichten

Concept: Giacomo Della Marina

Born in Barcelona, Spain, Daniel Mariblanca Sirmans began his professional dance career immediately after graduating from the L'Institut del Teatre in Barcelona. In 2016, after 15+years of dancing professionally around Europe, Daniel joined Carte Blanche. At the beginning of his gender transition, Daniel founded 71BODIES, a transgender inclusive professional dance and performance company based in Bergen, Norway. The company was born out of an urgency to both understand and document the complexities that lie within the transgender identity.

Photo: Skjalg Ekeland/BA

Boston Gallacher (25) is a contemporary dance artist originating from Glasgow, Scotland and currently working at Nederlands Dans Theater. They place importance on improvisation and imagery and endeavour towards a more inclusive working environment. As the first non-binary dancer at NDT they are shaping what it means to be non-binary in such a long standing institution and intend to implement enduring change in the system.

Arika Yamada is a coach and a professional dancer.

Arika Yamada was born in Detroit, Michigan, USA in 1987 to her parents who moved to Detroit from Japan in the mid 80’s.

She received her early training from The Joffrey Ballet School, Nutmeg Conservatory and EDGE Performing Arts Center in Los Angeles. In her teens she’s was represented by Bloc Agency and appeared in a European Coca-Cola Commercial. Her mentor and coach Elena Tchernichova privately trained her in NY and brought her to St. Petersburg Russia at the age of 15 where she was invited to train at The Vaganova School.

In 2009 Arika received her BFA from The Juilliard School under the directorship of Lawrence Rhodes. Upon graduation she joined Gallim Dance in NY and originated roles in multiple works with Andrea Miller such as ‘Wonderland’ which she has received recognitions for in The New York Times. In 2012 she also performed with Company XIV, a 28 show run at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

In 2013 Arika crossed the pond to Holland to join Spenser Theberge at Korzo Theater (Den Haag) where he created ‘I Saw, She Saw’ which they performed as a part the production ’ Here We Live and Now.’

Alessandro Sciarroni is an Italian artist active in the field of Performing Arts with several years of experience in visual arts and theater research. His works are featured in contemporary dance and theater festivals, museums and art galleries, as well as in unconventional spaces and involve professionals from different disciplines. In 2019 he was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Dance by the Venice Bienniale.

Photo: Andrea Macchia

Dana Caspersen is conflict engagement specialist, award-winning performing artist, and author. She has developed teaching, communication, and public dialogue models and practices that integrate traditional conflict engagement strategies with choreographic methodologies, engaging thousands of people from diverse communities across the globe. Her book, Changing the Conversation: The 17 Principles of Conflict Resolution (A Joost Elffers Book), has been translated into 8 languages and is widely used as a training tool by organizations, schools and individuals worldwide. She has a master’s degree in Conflict Studies and Mediation and an MFA in Dance.

As a leading collaborator of the choreographer William Forsythe for over 30 years, Caspersen has co-created and performed across the world as a principal artist with the Ballet Frankfurt and the Forsythe Company. Their collaborations range from the visual arts, as in the creation of work commissioned by Artangel in London, to the development of award-winning stage works such as Eidos : Telos and I Don’t Believe in Outer Space. Dana has received the Bessie Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in the United States and was nominated for the Lawrence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in England.

For more information on Dana’s work, please visit danacaspersen.com

Photo: Dominik Mentzos

Isabel Lewis (1981, Berlin) is an artist of Dominican and American origin who grew up on a suburban island off the coast of southwest Florida. She lived in New York City where she danced for many choreographers and where she has shown commissioned works from 2004 onward at The Kitchen, New Museum, and Movement Research at Judson Church among others. Lewis is based in Berlin since 2009. Trained in literary criticism, dance, and philosophy her current work takes the form of hosted occasions which are celebratory meetings of things, people, music, smells and dances and have been presented internationally and most recently at Tate Modern.

Lewis' interests circle dance (as a cultural storage system, as a technology of the self) and aesthetics in the space of social encounter. In the format she calls hosted occasions, particular conditions are created for a celebratory meeting of things, that conjure perhaps the ancient Greek symposium, where philosophizing, drinking and the sensual were inseparable. The entire human sensorium is engaged including the sense of smell with scents composed in collaboration with Norwegian chemist and smell researcher Sissel Tolaas.

In the last years Lewis has been working and crafting a specific way of performing which combines the skills of the dancer, the DJ, and the orator. In this way of performing a dancer becomes a host crafting the atmosphere, and attending to her guests offering stimulus and sociality in a space that is imagined as a kind of indoor garden and meeting place. It is a space for the exercise of the aesthetic, the spiritual, and the political.

Different from theatrical dance performances that create a space of distanced observation and intellectual contemplation and work with the excitement and anticipation of the "event," this format works towards creating the conditions for a bodily experience of relaxation and well-being. In this new format sound, smell, and touch play as important a role as sight. As the host Lewis unfolds a dramaturgy specific to each occasion, its guests and their energies, that includes dances, smells, music, and spoken address in a way that allows for conversation, contemplation, dancing, listening, or just simply being. Her regular collaborators are Sissel Tolaas and Juan Chacón of architecture collective Zuloark.

Ph: Isabel Lewis by Joanna Seitz

Marina Mascarell (Oliva, Spain,1980) is a choreographer based in The Netherlands. Resident Choreographer at Korzo Theatre in The Hague between 2011-21 and Associated Artist at Mercat de les Flors in Barcelona since 2018.

In her art the reflexions, inquiries and concepts turn into a poetic fight, where thought transforms into corporeality and movement. Marina is interested in a rebellious body characterized by questioning ‘normativity’. In the dancing body as a form of resistance, deeply rooted in a political and social action.

Beside her independent work Marina has also been commissioned to create pieces by different institutions such as GöteborgsOperans Danskompani, Biennale de la Danse of Lyon with Lyon Opera Ballet, Skanes Dansteater, Dance Forum Taipei or Nederlands Dans Theater.

She collaborates as well with fellow artists in the fields of visual arts, film, music and theatre. Her work has been seen in The Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Italy, France, Greece, Taiwan, China, Korea, Brazil, Argentina and Chile.

She has been recognised and awarded with several prizes along her career such as BNG Excellent Dans Award 2015 and the past years she has been nominated by Barcelona Critics Awards and Butaca Awards. Along side with her work as a choreographer Marina has developed a practice which is strongly linked to her choreographic process. A method focus in movement research and the increase of body awareness. She teaches workshops at different festivals, institutions or schools.

Ph: Jubal Battisti