“Ex nihilo”, a piece for 25 dancers with 7 musicians and 1 conductor by Georg Reischl (choreography) / Christiaan Richter (music), is a great challenge as it brings together the voices of different artists and will find its final form in a live stage performance.

In the beginning of the process Reischl aims to get to know the dancers. He guides them through physical exercises that allowed them to practice coordination, focus, partnering, tempo, skill providing them with the opportunity to let them show who they are as people and artists. This gives the dancers the time to get to know each other and to find a platform to communicate and work with each other in an open and relaxed way.

Out of this rehearsal mode, Reischl creates the main combination which is the basis for the piece. The main combination, with its physical rules and laws, contains all the physical information of the piece.

Reischl  finds  great inspiration in the big bang theory and loosely integrated some of these principles into the working process.

“Everything is in motion at all times. It is in my interest to create a language that suits and challenges the dancers and allows me to create a piece to express my vision. I would like to create a basis for the dancers so that they can make clear decisions within the movement concept, not masking them with a character or story, but to give them the ground to find freedom in a physical world that I will create and form with them together in the studio. Next to soli, duos and quartets I will create a system for group-work that will demonstrate relationships, distance and spatial dependency.” Georg Reischl

After having found the movement material and structure of the piece Reischl relates the choreography to the musical score “Titania nanotubes for solar energy and catalysis” by Christiaan Richter: “Titania nanotubes for solar energy and catalysis is a development – not in the classical sense, but more like a process. Step by step, the music unfolds into different states. It evolves very gradually, and because of that the music sometimes seems to be almost static. Still, it does need both change and direction to hold course, and even a minimal change can have huge consequences.”  (Christiaan Richter)

it works!

both the composers finished their pieces, an amazing job by Christiaan who had to get in to the project and finish a piece within a month and did manage almost in time. Benjamin was a bit later and wrote a much more complicated piece for the musicans, so it was hard to have a recording finished in time befor the choreographers satrted to work. This is not a qualification but just a conclusion on the material to cope with; the quality of a piece is not depending on it’s complexity.

Regardless their age we invited two young composers who are already mature composers and quite experienced with larger forms and working with professional musicians. So my talks with them were merely focussed on the extreme circumstances for the performances and this process is still the main subject. The placement of the musicians on the stage the audibilty of the music for dancers and public, also because of the intrinsical qualities of the compositions. So we are now rehearsing and recording at the same time, sometimes bit by bit, to realise a workable recording for the choreographers.

Georg already visited such a rehearsal and I understood that he is quite happy with the music, not being his favorite as what he would choose when in charge, but very suitable and fitting the project. Some small changes and wishes still under discussion, but their atmosphere is  good, so that doesn’t cause any troubles. Main reason is to be aware of the acoustical quality and therefore limitations of the ensemble and limitations of the presence of the sound on the stage with regard to cues, tempo changes, audibility when there are heavy physical movements and so on.

The form of their pieces was discussed between them, of course I urged them to do so and to be very precise, but as long as they seem to communicate I am on the side. Both of the pairs have now a recording which gives a fair impression of the final result and a workable for the rehearsals. If needed we will make a new one as we proceed in preparing the pieces. So we’ll be spending most of our time now rehearsing and Benjamin’s will take still some time because of its textual complexity, although I don’t think that will be noticed by the public.

I expect to see Ivan and Benjamin together next week and I will visit them working with the dancers. I didn’t manage to visit Georg but he seemed quite satisfied and if needed I can still come over to Cologne and see what’s happening.

The musicians are:

Marije van den Berg / Jacqueline van Brink – flute

Hans Witteman – clarinet

Sabine Laar – saxophone

Sjoerd Pauw – trumpet

Jeroen van Dijk – horn

Wilbert Zwier – trombone

Paul Vos / Ezequiel Mealled – electric guitar

Wim Boerman – conductor

On some occasions we have to work with doubles because of the performance dates, so the coming rehearsals will consists of doublings to be ready before we leave for Valencia, because there is no time for rehearsals in between.

Well, I hope this enough of an answer for now and hope to meet you very soon again, all the best, wim

The seminar explores through a combination of practice and theory possibilities to broaden understanding about the body and gender concepts.  Working with three texts by Judith Butler, Ann Albright and Adam Benjamin we ask how a gender is to be discovered in bodily formations, in the hierarchies of interaction, and in aesthetic decision making.

The seminar is designed to make students aware that gender is not so much an issue of roles, stereotypes and physical appearance, but can be regarded as an underlying structure and part of human actions. Concerning the arts, gender is as much a question of process as of content. The three sets of theory allow formulating critical questions toward gender stereotypes as well as to aesthetic principles.

The seminar is also designed to deepen the level of dance analysis within the perspective of gender. Gender is used here as a framework to rethink one’s own perspective and to broaden the scope of understanding the relation between the arts, power structures and bodily formations.

During the seminar literature will be discussed in relation to watching a selection of choreographic works in real time or on video. Also, the students will be invited to participate in practical work that demonstrates the difference between showing gender (playing), being gendered (as part of a habitus) and doing gender to challenge physical norms through specific exercises. .

The seminar will be given by Prof. Dr. Yvonne Hardt from the University of Music and Dance Cologne in conjunction with a local specialist in the field.

The students are asked to read the following texts:

Ann Albright, Choreographing Difference: Body and Identity in Contemporary Dance, 1997 – the chapter on Techno Bodies (pdf attached).

Adam Benjamin: Making an Entrance. Theory and Practice for Disabled and Abled-Dancers, 2002 – chapter 6: Just moving: ethics, integration and the discipline of improvisation (pdf attached).

Judith Butler, Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory, 1988, available online: http://people.su.se/~snce/texter/butlerPerformance.pdf

Christiaan Richter – Some notes on my five scenes for dance

Georg Reischl

For me it was very important not to write music which always relates to the events on stage in the same manner. So sometimes the musicians try to push into the foreground and influence the dance in quite a violent way, in other passages the music is rather “composed silence” in order to leave air for totally independent happenings in the choreography.

The first scene is the longest one and consists of a large development to a shrill and energetic climax. Repetition as a rhythmical element is used a lot, but the ideas never come back in a really predictable way. The music is creeping in very carefully at the beginning, mostly noises are used. A kind of irregular pulse is established, a repetition of percussive chords like a heavy procession or march stays present at different layers throughout the whole first scene. While accompanying the dance very softly with some subtle air noises at the beginning, the music tries to take over the events on stage later, intending to attract attention by its complexity. It culminates in a musical catastrophe.

The following scenes are much shorter and represent different musical reactions to what has occurred.

The second one is “composed silence”. After the shock only the sound of breathing of the musicians is heard. It is like when a dancer has made some complex movements on stage with loud music and then the music dies away and he stands still: Then his heavy breathing caused by the exhausting actions he just performed reminds you of the energy of what just happened.

In the third scene the music tries to take over control again. With nervous repetitions it refers to elements from the first part, panicking at the end.

The fourth scene is a very soft moment maybe resembling a lullaby. The music gets a much softer flow. Maybe in this moment ensemble and dancers will be united and equally important in a special way.

The last scene is an intent to reinitiate the marching repetitions from the beginning. But this time the colours are weaker, it all goes slower and seems to fall apart in a way. This is the moment when a prominent motive from the first part comes in again and leads more and more to stagnation.

Is it resignation, redemption or something totally different? You will see when my collaboration process with Ivan Perez goes on.

Benjamin Scheuer

I have started work with the composer already. It is always a great privilege to have the music composed for a project.

For me the relationship dancer/music will be the main theme and biggest challenge, especially because the music will also be performed live.

As a choreographer, I consciously create a situation that allows me to focus on the dancer and on the movement. For me the human body is a tool to create motion and emotion, which is never  abstract in my eyes. I want to experiment with the idea of dance and make the dancers’ personalities visible through their bodies. It is not in my interest to tell stories.

I start with pure movement research and by reflecting on the theme I will try to put the movement in perspective. I will try to find a playful physical approach to the theme and a light relationship or counterpoint to the music. I will keep my ears and eyes open to guide the dancers to make the right decisions to result in a collective state of mind.

The very process usually starts outside the studio. A dance piece is a collaborative project that relies on many different aspects, which often start before the studio time. Concerning the content of the piece, very simple ideas often turn into a concept. These ideas are in my head sometimes a very long time before they can be realized:

For instance: One idea was that I wanted  to work in absolute silence to create the movement language for a different piece. That meant that I was also not allowed to speak in the studio with anyone to create the movement. Everything was transported by imitation and later analyzed with video footage. The material resulted in a piece called: “september  virgin” and was accompanied by one cello played live by Nina Hitz.

The dancers are fully involved in my work from the moment that we start working in the studio, which is the most important  time for me as a choreographer. This is the time to create, realize, communicate, try, exchange, fail, try again and succeed to bring the piece alive.

Communication is very, very important to me. The better I can understand the dancers, the more I can challenge them  and create with them. It is always a form of exchange or dialogue with the dancers that I am looking for. Each dancer is an individual that needs feedback and personal  care  to grow, and I will always make room for that to happen.

If I don’ t get the results that I am looking for I open up to the situation and will try to approach the situation from another angle. This can also mean that I start to change the way I am communicating, I lighten up the situation or I intensify.

For me the best way to choose the dancers is in a workshop in which I guide the dancers through a  format which is called “Body Awareness Training”. It gives me the possibility to get in direct dialogue with the dancers and give them the opportunity to show their skill in different exercises and tasks.

A dance- scene works for me when it is perfectly embedded in the structure of the piece and when the performers’ brilliance to show skill and knowledge can result in this one single moment of freedom and honesty, which is performance. As a viewer I  want to be challenged and surprised, even when watching my own piece.

The timeline for the piece is built step by step and in this situation in direct relationship  with the composer,  to find its final form on stage. In my experience this can happen at different stages of the process and can also change at different moments.  I purely rely on my intuition and sense of timing.”