DAS Theatre Summer Presentations 2021

At the end of the first year, DAS Theatre participants are invited to share part of their artistic research. This year Summer Presentations take place on June 16th and 17th, at the Hembrug terrain in Zaandam. During these two days, Agat Sharma, Carolina Bianchi, Claudio Ritfeld, Ainhoa Hernández Escudero, Ebana Garin, Luis Guenel and Venuri Perera will open up their studio practices and draft performance ideas, making these processes accessible to others.

Find out more about the artists and their work below.

Ébana Garín ­- Bailar la Ruina (Dancing the ruin)

Bailar la Ruina (Dancing the ruin) is a research that questions the meaning of “home” and “to live” in a historical moment in which our hyper­capitalist society thrives every day to kill off the local identities of territories. The research seeks to reflect on how capitalism and gentrification charge forward globally at a frightening speed, homogenizing local identities, tending to sanitize individuals’ tracks in the name of supposed progress, eliminating gradually the humble rural home, and the small corner shop to make way for modern architecture that serves only consumption. Human beings cannot live alone, they need ties, landscapes, whether to find or lose themselves in, after all a home is made with others, the community, neighbours.

In the context of a global pandemic, the research asks about possible futures. How much time do we have left? What future are we building when we exhaust our natural resources, obliterate our memory and submit ourselves to untiring productivity? In an era obsessed by progress we wish to reflect on the ideas of house and home, this space that we’ve been confined to in the last year, and from where we can imagine times to come, how to construct communities and re­establish our social fabric. We bring these ruins with the hope of transforming them into a small ray of light, around which love can revolve, and our beauty can re­emerge. The beauty of being together once again, even though our bodies are in ruins.

 

About Ébana Garín

Ébana Garín is a Chilean actress, director and filmmaker, based in Amsterdam. She has developed a line of scenic and performative research focused on "undisciplined" bodies on stage; both performers and spectators. The question that has circulated in her work is how to blur the biopolitics frontiers and limits that delimit disciplines, communities, geographies and also demarcate bodies. Her work has been shown in Latinoamerica and in Europe. www.ebana.cl / www.cuerpoindisciplinado.cl 

Carolina Bianchi ­- The book of the electric eel

Mary Shelley says that when she wrote Frankenstein, a book of horror and science fiction, she preferred to spend her days immersed in this imaginary, accompanied by showy creatures ­ than to inhabit this reality, the one we understand as reality.

Every time I go to take a step forward I go back half a century.
And my feet slip to the sides, and so I affirm that it is only through the edges of History that I can speak of History. So I go back to the first time I invited a ghost to work with me, the ghost of Mary Shelley.

How to give flesh to the double, to the ghost? How to feel alive?

I share with you paths of a kind of thesis journey, wet, bloody, confuse, involving centuries, a obsession for vitality in theatre, voices from many insisible presences, and Frankenstein.

Conception, text and direction­ - Carolina Bianchi / Performers - Fernanda Libman, Helena Bittencourt, Ira Brand and Carolina Bianchi / Sound - Miguel Caldas / Advising -­ Veza Fernandez / Colaboration - Paula Montecinos, Marina Matheus, Carolina Mendonça, Ainhoa Hernandez, Venuri Perera, Ebana Garin, Cara de Cavalo (BR) /Tutor­ - Edit Kaldor

About Carolina Bianchi

Carolina Bianchi is a brazilian theatre director, performer and dramaturg, currently based in Amsterdam.
Her research inhabits spaces between theatre, performance and coreography, dealing with problems related to patriarchy, phantasmagoria, historical pacts, gender as crisis, colonial heritages, and over eroticism. Her research includes physical practices that converse absolutely with the imaginary, in an attempt to interfere in the historical line and the attempt to destabilize the patriarchal order.

Carolina Bianchi is the director of the collective of artists CARA DE CAVALO [HORSE FACE] in São Paulo, and her last works are: O Tremor Magnífico [The Magnificent Tremor] (2020), LOBO (2018), the performance Quiero hacer el amor [I wanna make love] (2017), and the lecture performance Mata­me de Prazer [Kill me with Pleasure] (2016).

Agat Sharma ­- Come Sit On My Face One Last Time

As part of his Birth of Cotton project Agat Sharma presents the performance Come sit on my face one last time. Via the frame of participatory performance we interrogate our culpability in the suicide wave amongst cotton farmers that has occurred since the beginning of the 21st century in India. Come sit on my face one last time starts out as a participatory performance in which the audience put together a piece of furniture, only that it doesn’t know what it will build in the end and how it will raise questions about collective responsibility and individual culpability.

At the Summer presentation we will present a proof of concept on aspects around performative and theatrical transitions of the work and share early explorations that are shaping this work.

About Agat Sharma

Agat is a Theatre Maker and artist from Jaipur, India currently based in Amsterdam. His interest is in working across disciplines and thinking about contemporary social political conditions through theatrical speculations. He is currently building an interdisciplinary project called Birth of Cotton that examines the history of the Cotton farming crisis in India. For this project he has been working with an Entomologist Dr. Emily Burdfield Steel to develop a performance called Moths Must be Moaning. He is also working with Kas Houthuijs on creating a genetically modified variety of Cotton which can record the history of the farming crisis in India. His recent projects include Fungus Sub Rosa, a collaborative story writing performance that imagines the end of humans and Sonic Sabarmati, a series of interventions at the Indian Institute of Technology to explore the intersections of ecology, art, and science. He has set up a biodynamic urban farm, a shared space for dialogue about agriculture, design and sustainability which he also considers as a long­term multi­species performance. Other works include Mutatis Mutandis, Edible Ontologies – How to make friends with a forest? and Zero Money.

Ainhoa Hernández ­- Dark mother, keeper of the key to the door between worlds, we summon thee

During the Summer Presentations I will open the process of Dark mother, keeper of the key to the door between worlds, we summon
thee
, the first chapter of the first season of Blooming­the saga: A choreographic series that speculate about different forms of making sense through oracular practices, dreams, spells, hallucinations, science fiction and interspecies knowledge. Dark mother, keeper of the key to the door between worlds, we summon thee is a choreographic piece. It is a ritual, the breath that swallows, the laughter of the hand. Halo, migraine, epilepsy. Satellite and nymph; fluorine color screaming from its orbit. Software. Ointment in the atmosphere, light that melts with the heat of presence.

On the other hand I will present my curatorial intervention Sorbito that tackles herbology and the effects that plants and food produce on our bodies. I designed specific herbal preparations to accompany my peer’s project and also the audience that will come to visit us.

About Ainhoa Hernández

Ainhoa Hernández (Madrid, 1989) Choreographer and curator based in Amsterdam. My practice unfolds into different formats in relation to the people I work with. I’m co­founder of the choreographic collective Twins Experiment within Laura Ramírez, I think and act Saliva, a long­ term curatorial research project, with Andrea Rodrigo; and I develop Bastante Algo, Other Furniture, together with Ignacio de Antonio, a project for the manufacture of furniture and objects that takes place at the intersection of design and choreography. I have shown works in contexts such as: Gessnerallee Zürich, Center for Performance Research NY, Arqueologías del Futuro ARG, Museo del Chopo MEX Zeitraumexit DE, La Caldera BCN, La Casa Encendida MAD, CA2M, MAD. I have worked with María Jerez, Valentina Desideri, Xavier Le Roy, Rosa Casado & Mike Brookes, among others.

Venuri Perera ­- Immaterial

How can we find exposure in the opaque? How can we dissolve boundaries between self, others and the world? How can we disorient hierarchies? How can we perceive the mundane and profane with a sense of wonder and curiosity?

About Venuri Perera

Venuri Perera is a choreographer, performance artist and curator from Colombo, Sri Lanka. Her works have dealt with violent nationalism, patriarchy, border rituals, colonial heritage, and class. Her solos and collaborative creations have been shown in Europe, South and East Asia. Since 2017, she has been exploring the power dynamics of gaze, sensuality and anonymity. Currently, she is searching for ways to create conditions for radical love and compassion in her work and life. Although mostly failing, she remains optimistic.

In collaboration with - Keerthi Basavarajaiah 
Dramaturgical Advice - Paula Montecinos
 

Claudio Ritfeld -­ Identification Obligation

Short bio, approx one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty twenty­one twenty­two twenty­three twenty­four twenty­five twenty­six twenty­seven twenty­eight twenty­nine thirty thirty­one thirty­ two thirty­three thirty­four thirty­five thirty­six thirty­seven thirty­eight thirty­nine forty forty­one forty­two forty­three forty­four forty­five forty­ six forty­seven forty­eight forty­nine fifty fifty­one fifty­two fifty­three fifty­ four fifty­five fifty­six fifty­seven fifty­eight fifty­nine sixty sixty­one sixty­ two sixty­three sixty­four sixty­five sixty­six sixty­seven sixty­eight sixty­ nine seventy seventy­one seventy­two seventy­three seventy­four seventy­five seventy­six seventy­seven seventy­eight seventy­nine eighty eighty­one eighty­two eighty­three eighty­four eighty­five eighty­ six eighty­seven eighty­eight eighty­nine ninety ninety­one ninety­two ninety­three ninety­four ninety­five ninety­six ninety­seven ninety­eight ninety­nine one­hundred words.

Identification Obligation is both a self­portrait and the construction of an artificial identity using sampling techniques borrowed from traditional Hip Hop culture.

Share