DANCE & DATA: MIXING SCORES, SENSES, TOOLS AND REFLECTION, Frankfurt, Germany

[Marlon Barrios Solano]

Motion Bank Workshop No. 1 April 2011

From the 26th to the 30th of April 2011 at The Frankfurt LAB.

DANCE & DATA: MIXING SCORES, SENSES, TOOLS AND REFLECTION

This first workshop in the series aims to increase awareness of tools and systems being used to score, notate, create and document dance. The following internationally recognised practitioners will provide insight into their latest activities through workshops and discussions: Paris-based choreographer Myriam Gourfink, video artist Philip Bussmann, Zagreb-based Performance Collective BadCo., and Ana Vujanović and Petra Sabisch from Everybody’s.

In addition, renowned neuroscientist Dr. Wolf Singer, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, joins our Thursday evening Salon.

Please click HERE for an overview of the schedule. A detailed schedule is listed under each of the following descriptions. Biographies are at the bottom of this page.

Participation fee for all workshops (except Petra Sabisch and Ana Vujanovic) is 85€ / reduction 65€ (Students). For participation in two workshops: 120€ / reduction 100€ (Students). Free entrance to the Thursday evening Salon.

For Registration contact: motionbank -at- theforsythecompany.de (Nathalie Denis)

For More Information contact: workshop-moba -at- theforsythecompany.de (Célestine Hennermann)

Workshop with Petra Sabisch and Ana Vujanovic (Germany/Serbia)

For information about this workshop contact: Stefan.Hoelscher -at- theater.uni-giessen.de (Stefan Hölscher)

Everybodys and Walking Theory propose / modes of production: games & discussions

The procedure of the workshop emerges from the encounter between the platforms Everybodys and Walking Theory, by trying to develop theory out of the artistic work. We will investigate the use of games and discussions as modes of production in contemporary dance and performing arts. We will analyze, problematize and systematize these practical proposals in order to reflect on the invention of new forms of practicing and/or producing. Hence, the workshop invites artists, choreographers, theoreticians, performers, producers, or in one word, practitioners in the cultural field.

Detailed Schedule:

Sunday, 24 April: 15-18h
Monday, 25 April: 11-17h30
Tuesday, 26 April: 11-17h30
Wednesday, 27 April: 11-17h30
Thursday, 28 April: 11-13h

In cooperation with the Institut für angewandte Theaterwissenschaften from the Justus-Liebig-Universität and The Forsythe Company/Motion Bank.

Workshop with BADco.’s Tomislav Medak and Nikolina Pristaš (Croatia)

Whatever Dance Toolbox

Whatever Dance Toolbox is a product of a long-standing research-oriented collaboration around computer-dancer interaction between BADco. and German human-machine interface developer and artist Daniel Turing. It is a suite of free software tools designed to assist in generating, analyzing, developing and rehearsing choreographic work. Simply put, tools employ different types of visual analysis, delay, reverse-play, jitter and slow motion functions, together with long exposition function, to allow dancers and choreographers to study, refine and enrich their movement choices and relationships. Getting familiar with working in technologically conditioned environment, understanding how the machine “sees” the space and movement, working with divided attention, approaching improvisation in terms of montage, learning how to use technology in order to analyze dance and induce a change in the quality of movement, reinventing the quality of relations to other bodies in space are some of the experiences participants will have using WDT.

“Regardless of the fact that we developed this software for the sake of dance analysis it is equally interesting to non-dancers because instead of explaining dance only as expression of the dancer’s self or as self-referring choreographic object, it brings to light relational aspects and thinking procedurally in dance creation.”

During this three day workshop Tomislav Medak and Nikolina Pristaš will make an introduction into technical and practical aspects of working with WDT, explain basic concepts they derived from working with it and will move with the participants through a series of practical tasks.

Detailed Schedule:

Tuesday, 26 April: 11-17h30
Wednesday, 27 April: 11-17h30
Thursday, 28 April: 11-13h

Salon with Dr. Wolf Singer (Germany)

On choreographic organisation

An open conversation on how models from neuroscience might shed light on the creation and performance of choreography. Facilitated by Scott deLahunta and linked to the “Dance Engaging Science” interdisciplinary research meetings

Detailed Schedule:

Thursday April 28, 19h

Workshop with Philip Bussmann (Germany)

Technology and Technique: Documenting Dance

The video camera has been a standard tool of the trade of theater professionals for capturing rehearsals and performances for over a decade. Improvisations are filmed, runs are analyzed and recreated, shows are documented for archival purposes. Video artist Philip Bussmann has been creating stage video and dance films since the mid nineties. Pulling from examples from his own work and those of others this workshop will investigate the possibilites, shortcommings and challenges of documenting dance using »traditional«, non-interactive video technologies and techniques and turning these documentations into artistic works of their own rights. A special emphasis is placed on the problem of recreating the original energy of a dance performance on film and the challenge to convey the impact of a live performance on a theater audience on a video screen.

Detailed Schedule:

Thursday, 28 April: 14-17h30
Friday, 29 April: 11-17h30
Saturday, 30 April: 11-17h30

Workshop with Myriam Gourfink (France)

language

Myriam Gourfink will explore the connection between weight and breathing and notation. These two factors raise the question of pre-movements. Our most hidden and deepest motor resources. The continuous interaction of this data (weight/breathing) creates a kind of general “sweeping” happening as much inside the body as in the space around it. The quality of concentration that emerges from the awareness of every psychological and corporeal movement, the performer’s personal inner upheaval and the moment itself is what Gourfink will try to approach through formalizing a language based on Labanotation.

Detailed Schedule:

Thursday, 28 April: 14-17h30
Friday, 29 April: 11-17h30
Saturday, 30 April: 11-17h30

---

BIOGRAPHIES (in alphabetical order):

BADco. is a Zagreb-based theatre collective. The collective, a confluence of interests in choreography, dramaturgy and philosophy, is nowadays made up of Pravdan Devlahović, Ivana Ivković, Ana Kreitmeyer, Tomislav Medak, Goran Sergej Pristaš, Nikolina Pristaš, Lovro Rumiha and Zrinka Užbinec. Since it was founded in 2000, it has been systematically focusing on the theatrical and dance performance as a problem field – questioning the established ways of performing, representing and spectating. They approach the theatrical act as an unstable communicational exchange, a complex imaginary challenging the spectator to peer beyond the homogenizing media reality and reclaim her or his freedom of spectating. BADco. is invited to the Bienale of Venice 2011. Nikolina Pristaš is a choreographer, dancer and performer, one of the co-founders of BADco. Tomislav Medak is a philosopher with interests in constellations contemporary political philosophy, media theory and aesthetics. He is co-ordinating theory program and publishing activities of the Multimedia Institute/MAMA (Zagreb, Croatia, and free software and free culture advocate. http://badco.hr/

Philip Bussmann is a video artist and set designer. A native of Germany, he has been designing stage video for international dance, theater, and opera productions since 1995. Mr. Bussmann began his career in New York City at The Wooster Group, where he designed the video for House/ Lights and To You, the Birdie. At Staatsoper Stuttgart he created video for Die Zauberflöte, directed by Peter Konwitschny, and Tristan und Isolde, directed by Luk Perceval. His ongoing collaborations with William Forsythe include Kammer/Kammer, Decreation and You Made Me a Monster, among others. Recently he designed the video for Lost Highway at English National Opera in London, video, set and lights for Gotham Chamber Opera’s production of Il Mondo della Luna at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, both directed by Diane Paulus, and the set for Falling Man at Thalia Theater Hamburg, directed by Sandra Strunz. He also creates dance, performance and video projects with his own company, 2+. http://www.philipbussmann.com

With Contraindre (2004), This is My House (2005) or more recently Les temps Tiraillés, Myriam Gourfink has developed a demanding and personal choreographic body of work, drawing on a precise way of writing inspired by Rudolf Laban (who elaborated a theory on the notation of movement, known as « Labanotation », in the beginning of the 20th century). Based on yoga and respiration control, her approach inscribes the living process in an almost hypnotically slow space-time which goes against a culture that is ruled by speed an zapping. Myriam Gourfink works in close collaboration with composer Kasper T. Toeplitz, who constructs sound-spaces in real time, as well as with computer scientists, in order to explore, with the help of both dancers and digital devices, micro-movements in an intense synergy of mind and body. The goal of this research is to invite performers, via an open score, to create the dance together with the choreographer. http://www.myriam-gourfink.com

Petra Sabisch is choreographer & philosopher. Besides her own choreographic works (last method, unplugged, Berlin 2010 & conversation piece, Berlin 2008), and diverse artistic collaborations in Paris & Berlin (e.g. A. Baehr, J. Bel, A. Chauchat, F. Gies, M. Ingvartsen) Sabisch received the Doctor of Philosophy (London) in 2010 with her dissertation Choreographing Relations: Practical Philosophy and Contemporary Choreography in the works of Antonia Baehr, Gilles Deleuze, Juan Dominguez, Félix Guattari, Xavier Le Roy and Eszter Salamon (Munich: epodium 2010). Since 2005 she is involved in the application of open source-strategies for the Performing Arts with the open platform Everybodys (http://www.everybodystoolbox.net/) & in the development of the artist-run Performing Arts Forum PAF (France). Sabisch has published internationally and is teaching, e.g. at the Univ. of Dance & Circus in Stockholm, the Univ. of Giessen and the Inter-University Center for Dance (HZT) in Berlin. http://www.verandaproduction.net

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Wolf Singer studied Medicine in Munich and Paris, obtained his MD from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, and his PhD from the Technical University in Munich. Since 1981 he is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt am Main. In 2004 he was the founding director of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) and in July 2008 he initiated the foundation of the Ernst Strüngmann Institute (ESI) for cognitive neurosciences. Article about Dr. Singer on the Goethe Institute website.

Ana Vujanović (1975 Belgrade); freelance worker – theorist, writer, lecturer, organizer, dramaturge – in contemporary performing arts and culture from Belgrade, based in Berlin / Belgrade / Paris. Ph.D. in Theatre Studies. Editor of TkH, journal for performing arts theory, and a member of editorial collective of TkH platform for performing arts theory and practice, Belgrade (www.tkh-generator.net); from 2010 in residence in Paris, working at Les laboratories d’Aubervilliers (www.leslaboratoires.org). Lecturer at the Interdisciplinary post-graduate studies at the University of Arts, Belgrade. Engages in many artworks: performance, theatre, dance, video… (as co-author, dramaturge, performer); and organizes and/or gives lectures and workshops at symposia, conferences, and festivals. Her particular commitment is empowering the independent scenes in Belgrade (Other Scene), ex-Yugoslavia (Clubture, The FaMa) and in Europe (PAF). Publishes regularly in journals and anthologies. Author of the books: Destroying Performance Signifiers, An Introduction to Performance Studies with A. Jovićević, and DOXICID.