AIR: Two editons of HALf6 on 3&4 September and a performance by Benji Hart on 5 September

Photo: Nelle de Boer

Published on

The second edition of the Artist in Residency programme Training the Future: Context, Difference and Awareness in Dance Education takes place from 2 to 6 September 2019. Students and teachers of the courses Expanded Contemporary Dance, Modern Theatre Dance and Urban Contemporary take part in this event, which is curated by Bojana Bauer and Angela Linssen. A limited number of students from other ATD courses also participate in the open programme with workshops, debates and performances, which take place in the afternoon and evening.

During this second AIR session the focus is on agency (self-determination, freedom of action). To what extent is dance about agency? And what can we learn about agency in general through dance? The participants will deal with these questions for a week in a rich programme of workshops, debates and performances.

We are very happy to announce the following guests, fellow artists and thinkers: Bertha Bermudez, Benji Hart, a Romain Bigé & Antonija Livingstone.

Programmme

HALf6 - Berta Bermudez
Reflection, Inscription, Transmission

Tuesday 3 September 17:30

HALf6 - Romain Bigé and Antonija Livingstone
We are not moving, we are being moved

Wednesday 4 September 17:30

Performance - Benji Hart
Dancer As Insurgent

Thursday 5 September 19:00 - Theaterzaal

Please Note: The performance starts at 19:00 !!! (and not at 19:30)

----

HALf6 - Berta Bermudez Tuesday 3 September 17:30
Reflection, Inscription, Transmission

These three nouns are core to this discussion within this Half 6 session. The perspective of the talk will depart from the personal experience of our HALf6 special guest Berta Bermudez as a dance documentalist, and its potential to reveal important knowledge of our dance practice.

The agency implicit in the act of documenting is based upon skills of reflection, analysis and synthesis. These skills are similar to the actions (we) dancers do, when dancing. Dancing and documenting are for me similar processes that differ in the ways results are exposed and transmitted.

Throughout human history, written documents, after their validation become memories and knowledge. The reading and regarding objects with the purpose of distilling knowledge from them, has become the learning patterns for all human education. Writing and reading seam essential in our society, to knowledge acquisition. In counterpoint all actions and experiences we do on a daily base, are built upon embodiment. It is within this reality, where our dancing agency is based upon. The fact that knowledge is acquired through reading and writing and memories become artifacts, through texts, images, audio etc…and seams that only them are valid to recall our memories and validate them, but not our mental and embodied memories.

Dance, counts with complex manners of inscription; the body and artifacts. Both ways of inscription; demand previous reflection in order to be created and are meant to be transmitted. Only the medium of inscription is the main difference. What is then relevant in our society to consider something knowledge, the medium of inscription or the content? Why has a document or artifact have a different value than a body? What is the agency of the body and the artifact?

In any way, the reflection process allows to order our experiences and events while making them prevail longer in our memories. Both the body and artifacts allow our memories to keep the agency of dance alive through time. Thus, why not invest more in our practice of reflection and inscription (in artifacts and body)? What can then become the role of documentation for our dancing practice?


HALf6 - Romain Bigé and Antonija Livingstone Wednesday 4 September 17:30
We are not moving, we are being moved

What can dance do to limit environmental catastrophe? Everything. During our Half 6 conversation with Romain Bigé and Antonija Livingstone, we will take this bold idea seriously.

Beware, we won’t be commenting dance pieces that are about ecology, and we won’t be discussing how to lower the carbon foot-print of dance industry. Instead we will try and find out how dance practices can help us redefine the very idea of what is « human » and its relation to other earthlings. We’ll consider dance as a precious space of experimentation in which we can try and disturb anthropocentric ideas of personal and collective agency.

We’ll proceed by asking a couple of simple and at the same time difficult questions: Who is moving? Am I moving, or am I being moved? Through different answers to these questions, we’ll try and embrace a multi-focal and multi-agent perspective of ourselves and of the world. In other words, through dance we will try and reach a shift in thought that makes the survival of our world imaginable.


Performance - Benji Hart Thursday 5 September 19:00 - Theaterzaal
Dancer As Insurgent

Dancer As Insurgent explores the dance form of vogue as a tool for radical social transformation. Through improvised movement and original spoken word, the piece traces the form’s roots back to its inception in Riker’s Island prison, grounding it in a history of queer struggle, and insisting that vogue is not only a source of individual empowerment, but a portal for revolutionary social and political reimaginings.

 

Photo: Nellie de Boer

Benji Hart

Share