Exhibition Todas las variaciones son válidas, incluida esta (All Variations Are Valid, Including this One), presented by the Museo Reina Sophia, 2017-18
All Variations Are Valid, Including this One (p. 64-65)
Eric Satie, Écrits (Paris editions Champ Libre, 1977)
Her work adhering to the Minimalist and Conceptual Art initiated in the 1960s, with Stéphane Mallarmé, Georges Perec, John Cage and Fluxus the points of reference, along with aspects of feminism from the time.
Esther Ferrer, in fifty years of dedication to art, has assembled a multidisciplinary and profoundly critical body of work in the tradition of process art, redrawing the boundaries of language and time, placing the body in the center, and then turning it into both subject and object.
B-E-L-E-Z-A, nunca vi tanta fúria em uma rainha, amanhã vou lançar vídeo dessa perfomance que foi puro AFROOOOOOOOO. #perormance #mypower #dançaafro #afrocentrada #afrohairstyle #afropuff #afrodance #afrovibe #afrodance #afrohousekuduro #dance #dancerlife (em Parque União Complexo da Maré Brazil) https://www.instagram.com/p/CDg4QcGp6hH/?igshid=8e71qaycsasj
Sweet like a chocolate: talk with Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten
Interview by Theater Bellevue
This Christmas holiday, for the first time in 30 years of history, there will be a dance performance at the Bellevue Lunchtheater. We invited the prestigious dance company ICK Amsterdam that is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. We spoke to the artistic director: Pieter C. Scholten and Emio Greco about their performance Sweet like a chocolate.
ICK presents the very first dance performance at the Bellevue Lunchtheater! What can we expect?
Emio: Our work is characterized by a specific dance language, the intuitively moving body is always central. We regard the body as intelligent and autonomous. We work with the power of the body and feed it from the senses instead of the brain. This is what we try to achieve with the audience: that you are physically touched, before you try to find out what the performance is about.
But that's exactly what we want to know!
Pieter: It is a solo for dancer Maria Ribas, accompanied by her shadow. Or rather, several shadows personified by one dancer. In the solo her fantasy gets a life of its own.
Emio: Sweet like a Chocolate is a reworking of Double Points: Hell, a research project we made at the invitation of the Festival d'Avignon in 2005. In our view, hell was the schizophrenic search for who you are, what your identity is. Maria goes through different phases and moods in the search for her own self. The figure around her can be real, but also something that arises from her imagination.
Pieter: It was the first time we made a gender codified piece, about being a woman. In general, we don't have men's and women's roles in our performances. It's about the personality of the dancer, apart from gender. Sweet like a chocolate, in this time of #metoo, also gets a different meaning. It's about seduction and power relations and how far you can go in this. Today, in dialogue with the public, this can be interpreted more politically.
In Sweet like a chocolate the Fifth of Beethoven is used, why did you choose this music?
Emio: That piece is cultural heritage. Everyone knows it. It almost feels like blasphemy to dance on it. But that, too, fitted in with the process of this performance: a study of the inappropriate, experimenting with things that wouldn't be appropriate in other circumstances. In addition, the music is very evocative, almost ecstatic, which fits well with the solo.
Pieter: We have also worked with Ravel's Boléro and Bach's Matthäus-Passion, among others. This is part of an ongoing research to shed new light on commonly known pieces of music from the perspective of dance. The dancers do not move on the tones or the rhythm but react intuitively, from a certain physical consciousness. This opens up a new perspective on - and new entrances to - historical thinking.
How do you create performances?
Emio: In general, I start working on the choreography by myself. I first have to understand where it comes from, so that I can work with it and fine-tune it. The moment it is handed over to the dancers, we enter a whole new phase of the creation process. The material is, as it were, re-created together with them.
Pieter: Sweet like a chocolate is a re-interpretation of older work with new dancers and will therefore have its own creation process. We are always looking for people who can surrender to the material and at the same time allow their own personality to show in the language we offer to them. Maria and Victor will enter into their own dialogue with the material.
What are your expectations for performing two weeks in a row at lunchtime?
Emio: In Avignon we also had a long series of performances in a row. It is enriching to have a daily appointment with your own performance. An enormous luxury, too, because the performance really gets the time to grow. When traveling, you have to adapt every day to the conditions of each theatre, which causes some things to get lost. And although there is of course a different audience every day, you still build up a sense of recognition and familiarity. You create an alliance with the theatre, and through the theatre with the city and the people who live there. Lunchtime opens a new window in the day. It is less ritualistic than performances in the evening. People are fresher; perhaps more open? I expect it to be liberating.
SWEET LIKE A CHOCOLATE
18/12 - 28/12 at 12h30 BELLEVUE LUNCHTHEATER Amsterdam
An intimate spectacle with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony as an open end.
In Sweet like a chocolate a woman dances with her shadows, alter ego, companion and voyeur. It follows her, accompanies her, dances and fights with her. It’s a double, dance partner, lover and opponent, it is familiar and dangerous. Balancing between love, trust, female sexuality and violence, Sweet like a chocolate reveals existential questions.
What’s your show about?
The show is about not having a show and really not wanting to do one. There are plenty of things that bother me with British stand-up and it came from that. However, I realised it was actually a show and things have had happened to me over 2015-16 that I wanted to talk about. In short, it’s a show about love and relationships. I wanted to do a show.
Is this your first time coming to Leicester – anything you’re looking forward?
I live in Leicester as of May 2016 and I love it here. I originally came here for University, moved back to Cambridgeshire for four years but was always coming back to Leicester to see friends and do comedy. I’m looking forward to being able to walk to venues from home.
Any favourite memories of Leicester Comedy Festival?
I’ve loved it every year but to pick one, I would say performing in the old Magazine Gateway building. It was for Tour du Comedy, and a really cool thing to say I’ve done.
What shows are you looking forward to seeing in Leicester Comedy Festival?
Jordan Brookes (I stayed at his flat last year in London, his pug pissed on my sheets) and Brennan Reece (I never caught his show in Edinburgh).
If a giant Octopus was terrorising the earth, what weapon would you use to save humanity and how?
I would admit defeat and accept the Octopus as our new Lord and Saviour.
Thanks Jack!
Come and see his show:
Boy Girl Brain
Thursday 16 February, 7pm - 8pm
£5 / £3 / £8 when booking for both Boy Girl Brain and Brennan Reece - Everglow
For 18+ years
A brand new comedy show detailing what was happening in this (then) 25 year old’s life from his own views on art and his childhood to break-ups and falling in love.
In 2014 Jack Campbell won English Comedian of the Year and the following year he debuted with his first stand-up show at the Edinburgh Fringe.
I much prefer live performances. Even if some little technical flaws happen, it doesn’t matter because the most important thing is the contact with the public.
This video is compulsory viewing for all of my clients. Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk introduces us to the idea that our body language affects not only how other peoples perceive and respond to us, but MORE IMPORTANTLY our own psyche. She demonstrates how adopting a posture of confidence can help us feel more confident, affecting testosterone and cortisol levels in our brain.
