INFORMATION BOOKLET 2007 - Daghdha

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR – MICHAEL KLIENDAGHDHA DANCE COMPANYINFORMATION BOOKLET 2007DAGHDHA DANCE COMPANYWWW.DAGHDHA.IE

02CONTENT 03“Choreography is not to constrain movement into a set pattern, it is to providea cradle for movement to find its own patterns – over and over again –to prevent a body – whether bound by skin or habits – from stagnation andenable lightness, a primal energy and possibilities only to be found oncerelations start dancing.” (Michael Klien – Artistic Director)Daghdha Dance Company is emerging as one of Europe’smost progressive arts organisations. Dedicated to a rigorousdiscourse in dance, choreography, art and culture, Daghdhahas distinguished itself through a unique combination ofout-of-the-box thinking, a purity of focus on dance andchoreography and at the same time, a deep interest in andgenerous attitude towards other cultural disciplines.Daghdha has focused its theoretical and practical energieson the investigation of new modes of inhabiting socialstructures and cultural forms through the primacy of bodilyexperience. By applying the aesthetics of choreography as apurposeful, creative and pro-active tool upon the surface ofconsciousness, Daghdha has been passionately exploring thedifferences between ‘the way man thinks and the waynature works’.In 2006 Daghdha Dance Company launched acomprehensive cultural programme, presenting its ideas in anumber of innovative formats, platforms and activities. TheCultural Programme 2007 includes the world-renownedMamuska Nights, the Framemakers Lecture Series as well asGravity and Grace – an International Dance Festival revisitingthe notion of dance improvisation. The DaghdhaMentoring Programme in Choreography and Dance (DMP),run in conjunction with FÁS Employment Services, is cominginto its fourth year offering emerging dance-artists andchoreographers financially supported full-time positionswith the company. Against this backdrop, artistic directorMichael Klien and his team of artists have been developing agroundbreaking choreographic repertoire of internationalrenown.PRODUCTIONSCULTURAL PROGRAMMEPROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENTINITIATIVESPOSITIONS ON CHOREOGRAPHY AND DANCE0511141517DAGHDHA DANCE COMPANY | INFORMATION BOOKLET 2007DAGHDHA DANCE COMPANY | INFORMATION BOOKLET 2007 | CONTENT

04PRODUCTIONSNEW PRODUCTIONS05DAGHDHA’S HOMELocated in Limerick’s city centre, Daghdha Dance Companylives in beautifully restored historic buildings; the DaghdhaSpace, St. John’s Church and No 1 John’s Square (formerlythe Limerick City Museum). Daghdha is run as a livinglaboratory for its artists, associate artists, local dance artistsand the Love Spotters, who are currently in residence atDaghdha. Designed by local architectural company QuinnSavage Smith, the buildings were officially opened byMinister John O’Donoghue in May 2005. The refurbishmentproject was funded by the Irish Government under theNational Development Plan, the Arts Council/an ChomhairleEalaíon, the Limerick City Council, the Department of Arts,Sports and Tourism, the Limerick County Council, ShannonDevelopment, local businesses and individuals.FIELD STUDIES – AN EXCAVATION OF MIND AND NATUREMichael Klien’s new work for Daghdha Dance Company takes the form of twenty-two interrelated choreographic fieldworkstudies dispersed throughout the year. The project will begin as a collaboration between Daghdha dancer Elena Giannotti andKlien himself. Out of a series of preliminary investigations, a soft network of ‘intimate world building’ will emerge. FieldStudies is an artistic, systematic enquiry into the field of mental patterns and their relationship to the concept of unfathomablecomplexity in nature. As the work explores the active insertion of the dancer’s perception into the lived world throughoutthe period of a year, the Field Studies project can never be presented in its entirety. Various fragments and findings will beperformed, exhibited and presented for discussion during Daghdha’s cultural calendar in 2007 and 2008. Field Studies will beat the heart of Daghdha’s work in 2007 with individual sections being presented during the Cultural Programme as part ofMamuska Limerick, Framemakers and Gravity and Grace.View manifestations of the Field Studies in 2007:DAGHDHA SPACE, ST. JOHN’S CHURCH, JOHN’S SQUARE, LIMERICK13 APRIL, 10 MAY, 1 JUNE, 21 JUNE, 5 OCTOBER, 25 OCTOBER, 15 NOVEMBER, 14–16 DECEMBER 2007P-HOUSE, TOKYO7 MARCH 2007DUBLIN FRINGE FESTIVAL, DUBLIN8 SEPTEMBER, 15 SEPTEMBER, 22 SEPTEMBER 2007Further dates tba.MICHAEL KLIEN – ARTISTIC DIRECTORMichael Klien is one of Europe’s choreographic pioneers. He was born in 1973 in Vienna and has worked as a choreographer,curator and producer of numerous touring productions, installations and events. He has been guest choreographer for BallettFrankfurt and artistic advisor to William Forsythe. His works have been performed at many venues across Europe. MichaelKlien developed a series of new choreographic methods and procedures (including non-linear choreography and distributedchoreography) and has been a central figure in the development of choreography as an autonomous aesthetic discipline, themain focus of his work. He was co-founder of the enigmatic Barriedale Operahouse in London, the web’s leading choreographyweb forum Choreograph.net, and the Framemakers project – a series of events dedicated to choreography as a patternlanguage. Michael Klien has been artistic director of Daghdha Dance Company since 2003.DAGHDHA DANCE COMPANY | INFORMATION BOOKLET 2007DAGHDHA DANCE COMPANY | INFORMATION BOOKLET 2007 | PRODUCTIONS

06PRODUCTIONSREPERTOIRE – MAJOR PRODUCTIONS07YOUR TRUTH DOESN’T INTEREST ME. I KNOW NOTHING OF SUBSTANCE,AND I AM STUMPED BY WHAT YOU CALL REALITY3 LECTURESA series of three public lectures by artistic director Michael Klien and renowned dramaturge Steve Valk(formerly Ballett Frankfurt) presents fundamental and far-reaching socio-cultural developments. Thelectures Choreography as An Aesthetics of Change, Dance as a Metaphor for Thought, Social Choreography/SocialDreaming focus on choreography as an emerging autonomous discipline, the consequencesfor dance as well as the conceptual framework for new creative thinking and engagement within thesocial sphere. Drawing from various sources (Bateson, Beuys, Derrida, Badiou, Hoffmeyer, Keeney, etc.)Klien and Valk outline and contextualise the profound paradigmatic shifts happening in contemporarywestern cultural practice. International dates tba.Daghdha productions are available for national and international touring.For bookings, please contact:RÓISÍN KINSELLAPHONE +353-61-467872 | EMAIL ROISIN@DAGHDHA.IECHOREOGRAPHY FOR BLACKBOARDSDURATION/FORMAT: 60 MINUTES/2 DAYS +CHOREOGRAPHY: MICHAEL KLIENDRAMATURGY: STEVE VALKELECTRONIC MUSIC: VOLKMAR KLIENLIGHTING: DAVE GUYREMOTE IRELAND TOURA national tour that puts the concept of Social Choreographyas developed by Daghdha Dance Company into practicearound remote locations in Ireland. This production seesdance-artist Daniel Vais travel to various remote locations inIreland during July 2007. Vais and numerous guest artistswill create improvised, socially inclusive, choreographedgatherings at remote locations involving local people andspecial guests. A photographic and video journal of this tourwill be presented in Daghdha Space, St. John’s Churchduring Gravity and Grace in December 2007.Michael Klien’s new work for six blackboards, a time-based installation to be performed in galleries andmuseums, is a carefully constructed choreographic structure. Five participants, chosen both locally andinternationally, work on six monolithic blackboards spread throughout a large open space. Activelydrawing on the blackboards over a set period of time, they follow exact, rehearsed procedures, developingand exchanging insights and individual expressions in various, immediate communicative forms,weaving their relations into a concentrated collective dance of minds. (strike the surface) A silent andcommunal matrix of five individuals (dreaming the real) imprints a landscape of marks and meaning onthe surfaces of blackboards.LIMERICK TRILOGYDURATION: APPROX. 55 MINUTESCHOREOGRAPHY: MICHAEL KLIENMUSIC: LOCKERUNGEN BY VOLKMAR KLIENLIGHTING/STAGE: DAVE GUYLimerick Trilogy, a choreography for three dancers, sheds adistinct light over an artist’s enquiry that, far detached fromthe clichés of social representation, probes deeply into thefunction of human consciousness and social coding. LimerickTrilogy is a recollection of movements, processes andthoughts uncovered and woven together at Daghdha.Michael Klien in collaboration with the dancers has developednew choreographic and compositional methodologies,which filter and reconfigure the sediments of everyday lifeinto patterns and movements. Limerick Trilogy outlines anunassuming, rudimentary aesthetic – a primer in the life ofsteady movement. This delicate process lays bare the humancapacity for sensitive knowing. Its manifestation in movementyields a simple and nameless beauty.“As creators and investigators of every movement, there is anearnestness and truthfulness behind every action.”(The Irish Times)DAGHDHA DANCE COMPANY | INFORMATION BOOKLET 2007 | PRODUCTIONSDAGHDHA DANCE COMPANY | INFORMATION BOOKLET 2007 | PRODUCTIONS

08PRODUCTIONSREPERTOIRE – SHORT PIECES09SEDIMENTS OF AN ORDINARY MINDDURATION: APPROX. 55 MINUTESCHOREOGRAPHY: MICHAEL KLIENMUSIC: VOLKMAR KLIEN (IM FETT IN COLLABORATION WITH WEIPING LIN)LIGHTING/STAGE: DAVE GUY, MICHAEL KLIENA thought is a physical act. Sediments of an Ordinary Mind, a work for four dancers, is an enigma ofhuman idiosyncrasies and extraordinary traces of the ordinary. Michael Klien has devised a range ofprocedures guiding the dancers to embody their personal ‘streams of consciousness’ in real-time onstage. Thereby an artefact is created that actively and purposefully channels the existing personal andsocial setup of the four dancers. A world that is as real as it is fake, utilising underlying dynamics of thehuman condition: learning, faith, love, trust, hate, remembering and forgetting, trial and error … insearch of the social glue. Daghdha Dance Company has commissioned Irish writer Jeffrey Gormly to writea book documenting and exploring the choreography and processes behind Sediments of an OrdinaryMind. The book will be published during 2007.“Michael Klien doesn’t necessarily embrace randomness, but he trusts his methodology to articulate hisvision.” (The Irish Times)“A beautiful piece of pure movement.”(Irish Examiner)ONCE BENEATH THE SKINDURATION: APPROX. 55 MINUTESCHOREOGRAPHY: MICHAEL KLIENMUSIC: GOLDBERG VARIATIONS BY J. S. BACHPIANO: FRANÇOISE PAPILLONLIGHTING: DAVE GUY, MICHAEL KLIENOnce Beneath the Skin is a meeting of two works, Bach’sfamous Goldberg Variations and a dance-duet choreographedby Daghdha’s artistic director Michael Klien. Klien’sexamination of the semantics of Bach’s work is reflected inthe choreographic structure of the duet. The pieces,although sharing the same stage are very much sovereign,allowing the dance as well as the music, the time and thespace to unfold. Synergies appear and dissolve, are createdand abandoned. During Once Beneath the Skin the dancersexplore their most precious personal memories, facingdemons and reliving moments that formed them, creating aphysical album of what has been and what is left behind.Endless stories embedded in a directed stream ofconsciousness.“Once Beneath the Skin is refreshingly less about the ego ofthe director and more about the interior of the dancer.”(Irish Independent)All pieces are choreographed by Michael Klien and can beperformed as part of a shared bill.IM FETT (2003)DURATION: APPROX. 10 MINUTESMUD (2005)DURATION: APPROX. 9 MINUTESDUST (2005)DURATION: APPROX. 12 MINUTESEINEM (2002)DURATION: APPROX. 20 MINUTESPRODUCED BY BALLETT FRANKFURT, ZKM AND TQWDAGHDHA DANCE COMPANY | INFORMATION BOOKLET 2007 | PRODUCTIONSDAGHDHA DANCE COMPANY | INFORMATION BOOKLET 2007 | PRODUCTIONS

PRODUCTIONSPERMANENT PROJECTS10CULTURAL PROGRAMME 11SLATTERY’S LAMPCONCEPT: MICHAEL KLIENTECHNICAL DESIGN: DAVE GUYPROGRAMMING: NICK ROTHWELLMichael Klien’s installation of a street-lamp, previously situated in Limerick has been selected to joinIMMA’s (Irish Museum of Modern Art) permanent collection in Spring 2007. Originally conceived as aninstallation complimentary to Klien’s choreography Sediments of an Ordinary Mind, the lamp presents aworking mind spread across the fields of the social, the ordinary and the in-between. The lamp istechnologically equipped with the capabilities to gain knowledge, to build meaning and to express itselfin a limited manner. It gathers information in a public space and uses its light to communicate itsfindings. To fully perceive and engage with Slattery’s Lamp is an exercise in trust. Slattery’s Lamp wasoriginally produced as part of EV+A 2004.IRISCONCEPT/CHOREOGRAPHY: MICHAEL KLIEN, DAVIDE TERLINGODESIGN: RAFAL KOSAKOWSKICommissioned by Cork 2005 (European Capital of Culture),and supported by Absolute Events, Iris saw the distributionby Daghdha Dance Company of almost 10,000 stainlesssteel rings throughout Cork city in 2005. Each ring is asymbol of an expanded community; an invitation to activelyengage with each other, acknowledging potential inseemingly ordinary encounters. Each Iris ring comes with aset of five simple, written instructions, inviting the wearer ofa ring to show a physical or mental response whenever he orshe meets someone wearing the same ring. Here, thechoreographers’ work was centred on facilitating a socialdynamic. The work created; the human patterns of beingand moving, become a choreographic work at once ephemeraland playful, the ring becoming the key to a world ofinvisible links.SEE WWW.YOUCOULD.NETEstablished in 2006, the Daghdha Dance Company Cultural Programme presents innovative activities and formats led by anextended view of choreography and dance. These activities have already emerged as a powerful reference in the culturallandscape of Limerick and Ireland. All events compliment and contribute to Daghdha’s overall artistic vision immersing bothparticipating artists and the public in a shared environment. In 2007 Daghdha’s Cultural Programme comprises of MamuskaLimerick, Framemakers, Gravity and Grace, and Soundings.“Because there is always time for a bit more consciousness.”GRAVITY AND GRACE – INTERNATIONAL DANCE FESTIVAL13–16 DECEMBER 2007CURATOR: MICHAEL KLIENRunning since 2003, Gravity and Grace is Daghdha’s annualpre-Christmas dance and performance festival. Opening withperformances from Michael Klien’s new production FieldStudies, the 2007 Gravity and Grace Festival will focus onextraordinary, improvised contemporary dance and performancework drawn from around the globe. A tight programmewill be running daily, offering the finest dancing against thebackdrop of a relaxed and socially inclusive environment. Fora detailed programme consult Daghdha’s website or pick upa flyer closer to the date.DAGHDHA DANCE COMPANY | INFORMATION BOOKLET 2007 | PRODUCTIONSDAGHDHA DANCE COMPANY | INFORMATION BOOKLET 2007 | CULTURAL PROGRAMME

1213SOUNDINGS29 MARCH, 18 MAY, 12 OCTOBER, 23 NOVEMBER 2007CURATORS: JÜRGEN SIMPSON, ROBIN PARMARSoundings is a continuing performance series designed toopen the senses to new forms of music, sound art, andmedia interaction. Sound art is considered as wide aspossible, incorporating compositional, algorithmic, improvisationaland interactive modes of production. Some of theaxes of exploration might include technology-environment,noise-music, stasis-dynamicism, internal-external, abstraction-representation,ephemeral-concrete, micro-macro,theory-praxis … Soundings is supported by the Universityof Limerick.SEE WWW.SOUNDINGS-IRELAND.BLOGSPOT.COMMAMUSKA LIMERICK2 FEBRUARY, 13 APRIL, 1 JUNE, 5 OCTOBER, 14 DECEMBER 2007, 8 PM | FREE ADMISSIONDAGHDHA SPACE, ST. JOHN’S CHURCH, JOHN’S SQUARE, LIMERICKCURATOR: DAVIDE TERLINGOOriginating in 2004, Mamuska Limerick continues to inspire both artists and audiences with its unique flavour and formatbuilt around informality and a true sense of artistic experimentation. Mamuska Limerick is an open and accessible platformconceived to challenge established notions of performance and theatrical space. Mamuska Limerick is an unique occasion topresent and view evolving works, raw ideas, minimalist perfections, trials and errors, short masterpieces, first steps … all inthe context of an informal choreographed environment with the freedom to chat and move around at any time. In the waveof its success, Mamuska Limerick has inspired the growth of an international network sharing a common ethos and activelypromoting collaborations and artistic exchange.To submit your work for an upcoming Mamuska Limerick, please contact:DAVIDE TERLINGOPHONE +353-61-467872 | EMAIL DAVIDE@DAGHDHA.IESEE WWW.MAMUSKANIGHTS.BLOGSPOT.COMFRAMEMAKERS – CHOREOGRAPHY AS AN AESTHETICS OF CHANGE10 MAY, 21 JUNE, 25 OCTOBER, 15 NOVEMBER 2007CURATORS: MICHAEL KLIEN, STEVE VALK, JEFFREY GORMLYFramemakers – Choreography as an Aesthetics of Change is an ongoing series of projects enquiring intoa world understood in terms of relations, order and ecologies. Framemakers poses the question of howwe can move things in an ever-changing and deeply interconnected world, how we can imaginativelyorder and re-order aspects of our personal, social, cultural and political lives. Framemakers 2007 presentsa series of lectures and short performances investigating choreography as the creative act of settinghumans, actions, ideas and thoughts in relation to one another, to create order, channel energies andexplore dynamics. Framemakers is supported by the Limerick City Council.SEE WWW.DAGHDHA.IE/FRAMEMAKERSDAGHDHA DANCE COMPANY | INFORMATION BOOKLET 2007 | CULTURAL PROGRAMMEDAGHDHA DANCE COMPANY | INFORMATION BOOKLET 2007 | CULTURAL PROGRAMME

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT 14INITIATIVES 15DAGHDHA MENTORING PROGRAMME IN CHOREOGRAPHY AND DANCERunning since September 2004, the Daghdha MentoringProgramme in Choreography and Dance (DMP) is a full-timeprofessional training and development programme gearedtowards dancers and emerging choreographers engaged inthe field of choreography and dance. Run in association withFÁS – Ireland’s Training and Employment Authority – theDMP aims to develop and support the artistic, practical andcreative work of select participants while integratingindividuals into the wider framework of what is one ofIreland’s most progressive arts organisations and premiercontemporary dance companies.Throughout the year DMP participants engage with variousaspects of the company’s creative and production workparallel to pursuing personal projects. Access to techniqueclasses, choreographic workshops, screenings and seminarsby distinguished international guests are complemented byopportunities to observe or participate in company rehearsalsand productions, special events, promotional activitiesand new initiatives. Through the provision of free rehearsaland work spaces, access to a media lab and equipment andthe facilitation of financial allowances from FÁS, the DMPaffords select participants a unique opportunity to focustheir energy for an extended period of time (up to one year)on the creation of work, the acquisition of theoreticalknowledge and the development of practical skills as artists,academics and entrepreneurs. In an open laboratory settingthis programme aims to develop an extended view ofchoreography and dance, testing borders and distilling newforms of knowledge. The programme is suitable for danceartistsas well as individuals wishing to pursue a career in thefield of choreography, curation, dramaturgy and artisticdirection or production.Applications are accepted year-round and can be downloadedat:WWW.DAGHDHA.IE(CLICK ON THE HEADING DMP)For further enquiries, please contact:THE LOVE SPOTTERSThe Love Spotters is a collective group of performers withapparently special needs and certainly with other magicaltalents. Daniel Vais founded the Love Spotters during the2005/06 Daghdha Mentoring Programme in Choreographyand Dance. The dancers are mainly drawn from the GarveyEnterprise Centre, a day centre for people with specialneeds. At the core of its work the Love Spotters focuses ondance, movement and live art, experimenting with differentstyles and forms. Currently there are 12 members in thegroup with mild to moderate disabilities (Down syndromeand other unspecified disabilities). To date the Love Spottershave performed to full houses in Limerick, Dublin, London,and Frankfurt. Since January 2007, the Love Spotters areofficially in residence at the Daghdha Space, St. John’sChurch.EDUCATION CONTACT POINTThe Education Contact Point puts schools and teachers intouch with professional dancers and dance teachers.Providing a comprehensive list of recommended dancepractitioners the Education Contact Point is a resourceavailable for all levels of dance teaching, including schoolsand special needs.To avail of the Education Contact Point services, pleasecontact:PHONE +353-61-467872 | EMAIL MAIL@DAGHDHA.IEDMP PROGRAMME COORDINATORPHONE +353-61-467872 | EMAIL MAIL@DAGHDHA.IEDAGHDHA DANCE COMPANY | INFORMATION BOOKLET 2007 | PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENTDAGHDHA DANCE COMPANY | INFORMATION BOOKLET 2007 | INITIATIVES

16POSITIONS ON CHOREOGRAPHY AND DANCE 17RESIDENCY PROGRAMMEWorld-renowned dance artist Jean Butler is currently creating a new dance piece Does She Take Sugar, inpartnership with the Project Arts Centre and supported by the Arts Council. Daghdha Dance Company issupporting this initiative through a three-week residency at Daghdha. Residencies are granted at thediscretion of the artistic director to complement Daghdha’s overall artistic aims and objectives.To enquire about residencies in 2008, please contact:PHONE +353-61-467872 | EMAIL MAIL@DAGHDHA.IERICERICE embodies a new and growing consciousness about howhuman activity transforms the world. Initiated by DaghdhaDance Company, RICE choreographs unique social situationsthat allow a deeper surface to become apparent, enablingcitizens to sense the encompassing systems within which weperform our private and public lives. RICE is led by JeffreyGormly and Steve Valk, and supported by the Limerick CityCouncil.CHOREOGRAPHY AS AN AESTHETICS OF CHANGEChoreograph (v.): bodies in time and spaceChoreograph (v.): act of arranging relations between bodies in time and spaceChoreography (v.): act of framing relations between bodies … ‘a way of seeing the world’Choreography (n.): result of any of these actionsChoreography (n.): a dynamic constellation of any kind, consciously created or not, self-organising or super-imposedChoreography (n.): order observed …, exchange of forces …, a process that has an observable or observed embodied orderChoreograph (v.): act of witnessing such an orderChoreography (v.): act of interfering with or negotiating such an orderCHOREOGRAPH.NETChoreograph.net is a web forum hosting a number ofdiscursive initiatives fostering choreography as an autonomousdiscipline. It advances the development of choreography’smethodological bases, challenging established notionsof choreography, re-examining its definitions by posing it inrelation to different fields of human activities and subjectmatters. Since 2002 Choreograph.net has grown into themost important online-reference for choreography.SEE WWW.CHOREOGRAPH.NETChoreography has become a metaphor for dynamic constellationsof any kind, consciously choreographed or not, selforganisingor artificially constructed. It has become ametaphor for order, intrinsically embodied by self-organisingsystems as observed in the biological world or superimposedby a human creator. If the world is approached as areality constructed of interactions, relationships, constellationsand proportionalities, and choreography is seen as theaesthetic practice of setting those relations – or setting theconditions for those relations to emerge – choreographicknowledge gained in the field of dance or harvested fromperceived patterns in nature should be transferable to otherrealms of life. The choreographer, at the centre of his art,deals with patterns and structures within the context of anexisting, larger, ongoing choreography of physical, mental,and social structures, whereby he/she acts as a strategistnegotiating intended change within his/her environment. Asan aesthetics – a sensitive knowing – the discipline ofchoreography can be applied to enquire into the dance oflife, effortlessly merging observation, theoretical writing andphilosophy with practical rigor and personal expression tocreate works of art. The stage becomes a laboratory, thelaboratory a stage for the governing and steering of existingmind-dynamics and processes, whether physically expressed(such as the body or a flower) or not (such as evolution orlearning). Applying the aesthetics of choreography as apurposeful, creative and proactive tool upon the surface ofconsciousness, proves a healthy disregard to virtual boundariesof human knowledge production which have arisenthrough habit or otherwise, transgressing through realmsknown as sociology, philosophy, psychology, religion,biology and history. This approach engages everyone’sperception and knowledge of ‘how things move’, inquiring ifand how individuals can imaginatively order and re-orderaspects of their personal, social, cultural and political life. Itexamines the role of the choreographer as an active agentof change within an ever-changing environment. Theseprocesses present a paradigm shift of thinking aboutchoreography: choreography as the creative act of settingthe conditions for things to happen, the choreographer asthe navigator, negotiator and architect of a fluid environmentthat he/she himself/herself is part of.MICHAEL KLIEN – ARTISTIC DIRECTORDAGHDHA DANCE COMPANY | INFORMATION BOOKLET 2007 | INITIATIVESDAGHDHA DANCE COMPANY | INFORMATION BOOKLET 2007 | POSITIONS ON CHOREOGRAPHY AND DANCE

1819DANCE AS A FIGURE OF THOUGHT“Why does dance dawn on Nietzsche as a compulsory metaphor for thought? It is because dance is what opposes itself toNietzsche-Zarathustra’s great enemy, an enemy he designates as the ‘spirit of gravity’. Dance is, first and foremost, the imageof a thought subtracted from every spirit of heaviness.”(Alain Badiou)SOCIAL CHOREOGRAPHY“For the human psyche is one of the great forces of nature, and what is most frightening about this space-time technology isthat it exposes us to this force within us as nothing else has. We are standing in the storm of our own being. We are standingin a world not created by God, except indirectly, but by our psyches. It is undeniably our fate, so we must face the fact … thatit may be … our natural habitat.” 1Dance allows the thought-body to show itself, it is the showing of a body in thought, independent ofwhat constitutes such a body, whether its boundaries are made of skin or constitutions played out inlaws. Dance is a form of certain configurations of thought, expressed in manifold ways by the birth ofideas or the shivering of a body. That is why evolution, animals and states are said to be dancing attimes, because certain conditions are met allowing a system to be flexible and its emerging dancing bodyto be naked, anonymous and selfless. This is what constitutes dance. Hence dance is a manner ofthought pointing towards the possibility of change as inscribed in the body. For the spectator to perceivedance is an exercise in trust, demanding the audience’s absolute gaze, oblivious to representational décorand fully focused on the underlying nakedness of a flexible body in thought. Our civilisation has beenturning dance into a perversion of itself, applying to and onto it, everything that will prohibit its existencein the form of predetermined rigid time, space and action. It might be the need to capture that,which is ephemeral, to prolong what only exists in the presence of and in a general resistance to mortality’sgrip. Maybe the reasons are to be found in the dominant muddle of language, which in Bateson’sMICHAEL KLIEN – ARTISTIC DIRECTORwords ‘stops us from thinking straight’ and from dancing ingeneral. Dance is a manifestation of improvisation – first ofall opposing the ‘spirit of gravity’. To govern dance is initself a misleading conception, a seemingly vain attempt tofence off its mortal nature, putting shackles on what can notbe tamed without turning it into an empty shell, a signpointing towards something other than it is. To choreographdance conventionally sets movement in stone, whilst tryingto re-create it proves an illusion. Dance is dance and cannotbe tempered with, just as Bateson reminds us that Godcannot be mocked. Dance has been crippled by conventionalchoreography for centuries. It is time to release choreography’shold on dance and let it simply be.“We are all in the bowels of this giant machine, the modern global economy, being used as instruments toserve its ends. We have created this machine collectively, but we feel trapped individually. We’ve shiftedthe burden so much to the machine that we don’t see a lot of options even though they may be reallythere. We can’t go into the woods and live happily off the land anymore. So we ‘deep freeze’ our abilityto sense what is actually going on. We deny the larger consequences of what we are doing.” 2When we look at our present situation as a species, it is clear that the seething surface of our revolvingplanet is the dance that now most urgently concerns us. The effects our human actions are having on theinterweaving patterns of that dance are of the most vital importance and urgency. We are faced withlearning to overcome what Einstein referred to as ‘the optical delusion of our consciousness’, whereby weexperience ourselves ‘as something separate from the rest’, disconnected from nature and the primacy ofour own bodily experience.“The dancer (the fragile self) points us in the direction of what the will is capable of learning.” 3Out of a growing awareness of the ever-widening gap between ‘the way man thinks and the way natureworks’, choreography, traditionally understood as ‘the art of movement in time and space’, has begun todraw away from ‘the ideal world’ of the stage and has instead begun deploying its creative sensibilitieswithin and upon the wider field of social relations. Step by step it has emerged from the shelter of itshistory and has now arrived at ‘the guts’ of its own creativity. Choreography has come face to face withthe pataphysical reality and unfathomable complexity of the biological world.STEPS TO AN ECOLOGY OF MINDAs an aesthetics – a sensitive knowing – the discipline ofchoreography has been adapted and introduced into thefabric of social reality as a kind of perceptual framing device,a self-actuating template for an ecologically reconfiguredexperiment in contemporary subjectivity. The cognitivescientist Francisco Varela has said, “The blind spot ofcontemporary science is experience.” Social Choreographyhas opened an arena of cultural interplay between artistsand audience, a lived and interconnected world of relationships,subtle observational capacities, patterns and dynamics,in which a deeper level of interdependence, an implicateorder of mind and nature, has emerged as a model for a newand regenerative social reality.STEVE VALK – DRAMATURGE1. J. Hillman and M. Ventura: We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World is Getting Worse2. Peter Senge: Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organizations and Society3. Alain Badiou: The Handbook of InaestheticsDAGHDHA DANCE COMPANY | INFORMATION BOOKLET 2007 | POSITIONS ON CHOREOGRAPHY AND DANCEDAGHDHA DANCE COMPANY | INFORMATION BOOKLET 2007 | POSITIONS ON CHOREOGRAPHY AND DANCE

2021DAGHDHA’S HISTORYDaghdha Dance Company was formed by Teresa Leahy and Mary Nunan at the University of Limerick in 1988, and was led byMary Nunan until 2000. Daghdha Dance Company quickly established itself as a dance company with a unique artisticidentity and attracted funding from the Arts Council/an Chomhairle Ealaíon. During Mary Nunan’s directorship, the companytoured extensively throughout Ireland and was invited to perform at international dance festivals in London, Paris, Berlin,Munich, Barcelona and Mexico City. In 2000 Yoshiko Chuma took over as artistic director. For the next three years, YoshikoChuma further developed Daghdha’s international profile by touring theatrical dance concerts, street performances and largescaleproductions throughout Europe, America and Japan. Michael Klien was appointed artistic director in July 2003. Underthe stewardship of Klien, Daghdha Dance Company has moved to its inspiring new premises in Limerick’s city centre, where ithas continued to develop and strengthen its position as a pioneer of contemporary dance in Ireland and beyond.WILLIAM FORSYTHE – ARTISTIC PATRONDaghdha Dance Company is delighted to have WilliamForsythe as artistic patron. Forsythe is recognised worldwideas the foremost choreographer of contemporary ballet. Fortwenty years as director of Ballett Frankfurt, Forsythe, hischoreography and his company’s performances haveconsistently won overwhelming audience acclaim and themost prestigious awards the field has to offer. His work hassignificantly re-orientated the practice of ballet from itshistorical encapsulation in classical repertoire, to a newviability as a dynamic art form of the 21st century. DaghdhaDance Company, whose artistic director Michael Klien haspreviously worked as a guest choreographer to Forsythe, islooking forward to an ongoing, inspiring exchange betweenthe two companies.DAGHDHA DANCE COMPANY | INFORMATION BOOKLET 2007DAGHDHA DANCE COMPANY | INFORMATION BOOKLET 2007