Posts in Category: Diary
Expanded Choreography research workshop at University of Bern
We were delighted to be invited back to the University of Bern between 6-8th May (we were last there in March 2022), to take part in the workshop exploring The limits of expanded choreography: Eurocentric paradigm or critical potential? curated by Anna Leon and Johanna Hilari.
We were together with the following wonderful practitioners and thinkers: Charlotta Ruth, David Castillo, Freda Fiala, Marcel Kieslich, Moss Kaldi, Willimann/Arai and Dawit Seto
New book ‘Walking as Artistic Practice’ features us!
Ellen Mueller wrote to let us know that we are included in her latest book ‘Walking as Artistic Practice‘. Following this, she invited us to contribute an interview about our work on her blog, which has just gone live.
A fireside dreaming session at Hildegard
We’d love you to join us at Lucy Powell’s Roots in the Ruins at Hildegard, a beautiful garden on the outskirts of Berlin this Saturday 7 Sunday 8 October between 4-7pm (NB postponed a day because of rain) for a fireside dreaming encounter we call Another Green World. Entrance is free.
Drossener Straße 16, 13053 Berlin, M4 Feldtmannstr
ROOTS IN THE RUINS
TRANSFORMATIVE PRACTICES FOR FUTURE FLOURISHING
a series of participatory performances, discussions and workshops
in a wild garden in Berlin Alt-Hohenschönhausen
presents
Another Green World
a fireside dreaming with plan b
Saturday 7 October from 4 – 7 pm
followed by drinks and soup
As the autumn sets in and winter draws near, we invite you to dream of better, greener worlds to come. Having gathered rosemary, lavender, wormwood and sage we will bind the herbs ready for you to take home for future dreaming and cleansing.
While we do this, we will collectively enter into future visions beyond the eminent damage to this world and encounter another green world. What does waking up and stepping into this world feel like, sound like, smell like?
Afterwards, sipping lemon balm tea, a wormwood tincture based on a recipe by Hildegard herself and a hearty soup, we will warm ourselves around the fire as we share journeys through the collective imaginary.
Choreographic Milieu established as Fonds DaKü evaluation
As part of Fonds Darstellende Künste’s evaluation of their funding programmes, Sabine Zahn, Alice Chauchat, Ghyslaine Gau and Dan have been asking ourselves what performance and movement work in the urban environment needs in terms of support.
We feel ourselves part of a connected group of artists with similar concerns, a milieu. In September, we invited 12 other artists to present their work and discuss common issues at the Floating University. The artists invited were: Jason Corff, Paula Kramer, Clément Layes, Sophia New, Katja Münker, Gabi Reuter, Josh Rutter, Karol Tyminski and Siegmar Zacharias.
Dan in two dance performances in Schöneberg with Alice Chauchat
Dan is taking part in two dance performances initiated by Alice Chauchat.
A Stroll, A Song, A Doubt, An Echo is a one-on-one performance walk in the urban space, with words and silence. Made by Alice Chauchat, Ghyslaine Gau and Dan, who live in Nollendorfkiez, the piece proposes a walk together, discovering how you can meet places with the support of words, song, and dancing. Strolling through the Nollendorfkiez at nightfall, you experience the city as a space of sensorial and imaginary encounters, where intimacy and distance are constantly rearranging. Every evening at 20:45 near Nollendorfplatz in Berlin between 17 April and 3 May. Register through this Eventbrite link.
Dance Gathering is an invitation to dance together from a menu of social dances proposed by Alice Chauchat. Dance Gathering is free and open to all participants and also takes place in Berlin Schöneberg. You can either get involved in preparing for the events as hosts every other week on Tuesdays 11/4, 25/4, 9/5, 23/5 and 6/6 between 7-9pm (register at dance.together@gmail.com) or just come along to the open air dance parties on 11, 18 and 25 June 6-8pm. Exact location in Schöneberg to be confirmed.
Dan in 3 forthcoming choreographic pieces
Dan is being a busy little performer this month, performing in 3 different movement pieces, all before the end of September.
There is another chance to see the very wonderful This is Still Not Normal conceived by Arantxa Martínez and Juan Domínguez at the Uferstudios in Berlin Wedding. There are two performances every day at 5pm and 6pm from Thursday 8th – Sunday 11 September. Details on the Tanzfabrik website.
Dan will be working with Arantxa again and join Sabine Zahn and Alice Chauchat in the continuation of Sabine’s unique urban movement practice Into Dwelling #2 which takes place on Alexanderplatz, also programmed by Tanzfabrik (ticket details on their website). There are performances at 12 midday on two weekends: Thursday 15 – Saturday 17 and Thursday 22 – Saturday 24 September. The choreography Into Dwelling #2 creates the conditions for minimal interventions into the habitability of the city. 4 performers take 8 participants on a devised parcour around the microlocations of Alexanderplatz to provisionally occupy subtle situations and movements.
Dan then continues working with Arantxa and Alice to be part of Alice Chauchat’s social dance work Dance Gathering at 6pm on Saturday 24 September at the Uferstudios in Berlin Wedding. This one is free, so come and join us in the courtyard of the Uferstudios for an evening of dancing pleasure. “[Dance Gathering is] an experimental choreographic work becomes a local contemporary folk dance. Prepared in collaboration with the local community in Wedding, Dance Gathering is an open-air party in the public space where professional dancers and amateurs invite visitors to dance speculative relationships. Steps and rules are replaced by guesswork, engagement and curiosity.”
Dan performing in This is Still Not Normal
Dan is performing in the choreographers Arantxa Martínez and Juan Domínguez’s project This is Still Not Normal at Radialsystem and Uferstudios in Berlin.
The project promotes a public discourse about intimacy using nakedness, the performer’s own sexual stories, performative encounters and conversations. “Over the course of an intimate journey, the project negotiates situations and encounters that immerse us in unexpected juxtapositions of bodies, identities, experiences, fantasies and desires”
The Radialsystem dates are 25-28 August and Uferstudios dates are 8-11 September. Check the Radialsystem or Uferstudios web sites for times and ticket information.
Another Green World workshop at Art Laboratory Berlin
We are running a workshop on Sunday 14 August at Art Laboratory Berlin, Prinzenallee 34, 13359 Berlin.
Using green space in the urban context of Wedding in Berlin, plan b invite participants to this outdoor workshop to collectively envision another kind of green, urban world, one that might sustain us in an uncertain future? Building on techniques of perception and imagining developed by the environmental activist Rob Hopkins, pioneer of the transition movement and author of From What Is to What If, we use the radical, transformative power of our imaginations to assess what we already have and taste what is nearly in our grasp.
Cost: 12 EUR / 8 EUR
Register here!
The workshop has a very limited capacity, therefore registration is necessary.
Sophia contributes to workshop on storytelling at FU Berlin
On May 27th 2022, Sophia was invited by Kirsten Maar and Mila Pavićević to give a talk at the Institut für Theaterwissenschaft, FU Berlin, within the workshop on “Storytelling and Autofiction as Dramaturgical Tools”. The workshop addressed feminist dramaturgical procedures and its lineage with traditions and re-writings of history, and the potential to re-think the past in order to re-conceptualize the present and to re-envision the future. Sophia talk was entitled ‘Using one’s life as source’ which it examined some of plan bs past works that used performative stratgies to specifically draw upon personal and shared material be it that of songs or memories and reflections in the Last Hour as well as the ongoing practice or recording indivdual movement as a means of of a creating a self portrait based on where one goes. Lastly Sophia shared an excerpt from her video work The Matter Between Me and You which she made with Ruby about the personal respond to the physical biological matter that they shared and stored in the freezer.
Autumn 2021 Catchup
Even though juggling online and presence teaching through our Guest Professorship at the UdK Studium Generale for Interdisciplinary Artistic Practice and Theory, finishing a PhD at Exeter University (Sophia) and teaching still at the HZT, Berlin is taking a lot of time and energy we thought we’d let you know what else we have been up to….
At the invitation of Sandra Noeth, we gave a talk at https://hallning.se/ in June which is still available till March next year called The pros and cons of being digitally vegan (we start at 41:14)
Dan continued his collaboration with Sabine Zahn in August and September with the project Into Dwelling, where they made a site responsive performative study of the area near Alexanderplatz.
Sophia and Ruby took part in a podcast series that Sheena McGrandles initiated called Don’t Mother Me For the upcoming podcast they discussed the video they made together in 2014 called ‘The matter between me and you’ which they then showed as part of an accompanying exhibition taking place during Sheena’s latest performance, Dawn – a Musical on Reproduction at the end of September
Dan is currently rehearsing with She She Pop on their latest production, Dance Me which is currently scheduled to premiere in January 2022 at Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin