Anne Rooschüz
Anne Rooschüz graduated in 2003 from the Mime department of the Amsterdam University of the Arts, whereupon she immediately furthered her studies through the Artist Teacher programme. In 2011 she gained a master’s in Performance Studies from Hamburg University. Ever since graduating from the Mime department Rooschüz has working with her long-time collaborator Norwegian artist Karen Røise Kielland under the collective name Blood for Roses. Sometimes as a performers, but more often as authors and directors, they construct performances at the transection of nature, science and theatre. In their stage work the duo navigates the realm between documentary account and hyper-theatrical dissociation, adding in an audacious mix of poetry and popular science in word and image. Blood for Roses performs in a variety of contexts – whether at galleries, black box theatres or site-specific locations – often with contributions by scientists or experts on the everyday.
In recent years, Rooschüz’s interest has grown in projects connecting art and society, and she and Andreas Bachmair from Urban Gorillas have set up three major projects, the largest involving more than 100 local people. As well as making her own work, Rooschüz has performed for director-choreographers Nicole Beutler and Roy Peters, and she is a former artistic assistant to David Weber-Krebs.
The score as a tool for participatory performance
Artists working with non-professionals on social performing arts projects repeatedly encounter the same obstacles when reaching out to people who have no (or barely any) experience of theatre or performance art. How can we persuade them to participate? How do we make sure the context we are proposing feels safe enough for them to take that step and join in?
‘The score as a tool for participatory performance’ (‘Scores als tool voor participatieve performances’) is a research project exploring ways of using scores as a tool for making an participatory event in the public space – here, a score is defined as a written or drawn instruction that clearly indicates the frame of action without verbal communication.
This research was prompted by the performative event Schrei-orte, which Rooschüz made with Hannah Georgi and Greta Granderath for her Performance Studies master’s at Hamburg University. The performers asked passers-by to select a ‘scream-score’ and to perform it themselves or have one of the performers do so. This research project is also a follow-up to Scores and Instructions in Fluxus and Contemporary Performance, Rooschüz’s workshop at the Mime department of the Amsterdam University of the Arts. The aim of the project is to identify and collate the various forms of score notation and the various ways in which scores can be used as a creative tool.
