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SoDA WORKS 2013

Authored by the year group 2013 of the masters programme Solo Dance Authorship, the "SODA WORKS 2013" takes on the form of a book. It frames the live performance experience by porposing additional visual and/or literary coordinates to facilitate its reception. It also allows and insight into the experiments, reflexions and researches that the students made over the four semesters studies, and that are now taking form in their final SODA projects.

Authored by the year group 2013 of the masters programme Solo Dance Authorship, the "SODA WORKS 2013" takes on the form of a book. It frames the live performance experience by porposing additional visual and/or literary coordinates to facilitate its reception. It also allows and insight into the experiments, reflexions and researches that the students made over the four semesters studies, and that are now taking form in their final SODA projects.

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oda<br />

orks<br />

013


oreword


01<br />

Since the official beginning of the MA SODA (Master of Arts in Solo/Dance/Authorship) in 2011, this is now the third<br />

version of a required collaborative document, authored by each year group and developed within the HZT Berlin for<br />

their final performance work. Last year we published a calendar. This year we have a book. Next year is still open.<br />

Its first aim is performative, not to explain, but to frame the live performance experience. It does this, by proposing<br />

additional visual and/or literary coordinates, to facilitate its reception.<br />

Its second aim is metapractical. Together with a written thesis, and sustained documentation in the form of an<br />

artist workbook developed over four semesters, it also seeks to allow insight into the research, through which the<br />

work was conceived, developed and now takes form.<br />

Additionally an exhibition of excerpts of this research material will be open to the public, parallel to all the SODA<br />

performances.


4<br />

0<br />

6<br />

6<br />

2<br />

Niels Bovri<br />

The Théâtrophone<br />

Allison Peacock<br />

Zebra<br />

Maria Baroncea<br />

A certain togetherness - tryouts to be synchronized.<br />

Katrin Memmer<br />

almost a no body<br />

Céline Cartillier<br />

Pathfinder’s Rhapsody


Kiran Kumar<br />

Project Entitled ‘Archi tectures of Dance’<br />

Sergiu Matis<br />

Keep It Real<br />

Flavio Ribeiro<br />

STUFF<br />

Lisa Densem<br />

Silently the Birds Fly Through Us<br />

Performance Schedule<br />

Imprint<br />

40<br />

48<br />

54<br />

60<br />

66<br />

68


iels Bovri<br />

he Théârophone<br />

p. 09: Foto © N. Bovri


05


The Théâtrophone was a telephonic distribution system, first presented by Clément Ader in Paris in 1881, that<br />

made it possible to broadcast a live opera or theatre performance over telephone lines. People could basically<br />

listen to the performance and stay at home. This system proposed the sound layer as the most important aspect<br />

of theatre.<br />

Searching for the windshield wiper motor<br />

A car vehicle windscreen wiper motor is very useful for installation art. It usually has 3 firm attachment points<br />

(6mm). It turns slowly but powerfully and is not easy to hold but most importantly, it runs on a 12 volt power supply,<br />

so safety measures are not required when testing.<br />

My search started in Prenzlauerberg on an industrial site between the Volkspark and the Velodrom. Standing in<br />

front of the gate, a neighbour informed me that the car parts recycling company had had to declare bankruptcy.<br />

Next stop was Ziegrastraße in Neukölln. The Autoverwertung Berk GmbH takes old cars apart and sells the parts. I<br />

was asked first for the car model. I told them it was for an art installation. There were too many options, so the man<br />

advised me to choose a car model that would fit my project. He also informed me that most modern wiper motors<br />

do not have a simple ‚plus‘ and ‚minus‘ electric connection. He referred to Robert Kearns‘ intermittent windscreen<br />

wipers and the rain sensitive intermittent wiper. “I would have to sell you extra electronics and dashboard parts to<br />

make it work”. He advised me to visit the Autopresse in Gottlieb-Dunkel-Straße in Tempelhof. Autopresse Juschkat<br />

und Schmidtke turn cars into small cubes but salvage popular parts to sell. Their business deals more with older<br />

cars, so the chances of finding a motor with a classic ‚plus‘ and ‚minus‘ connection are greater. Of all the items<br />

that turned out to be suitable, I chose a front windshield wiper motor from a Volkswagen Jetta, produced in 1980.<br />

Price: 19€


Closer to the Schrottplatz (junkyard)<br />

On the 25th October <strong>2013</strong> the metal junkyard at the Mauerpark ceased to exist after many years. The disappearance<br />

of the junkyard from the inner city of Berlin is for me an example of a growing distance from the aging<br />

processes of the machines and technology that surround us. The recycling sector is industrialising and extracts raw<br />

material out of trash but the disassembling of objects also teaches us about how things truly operate and about<br />

how specialists were challenged during the construction process. Studying the shapes of components creates a<br />

memory of problem solving. What matters is that studying the assembly and disassembly of these objects reveals<br />

the possibility of reorganising and repurposing rather than the production of new objects from scratch.<br />

“We would perhaps find the answer in the tactile palpation where the questioner and the questioned are closer”<br />

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the visible and the invisible<br />

The lateral opera<br />

The opera house uses a hierarchical architecture in which the conductor takes the first and leading position facing<br />

towards the set and the action on stage and where the construction or preparation of the next act can be hidden<br />

to the spectators. This schema organises the very different disciplines involved in the<br />

service of the production. In order to perform but still preserve the different aspects of construction, preparation,<br />

singing and staging, I propose a lateral view.


llison<br />

eacock<br />

ebra


11


A Walking Guide from Performance Site to the Local Captive Zebra:<br />

From the Uferstudios courtyard walk towards the smokestack. Cross the road at the café and continue along the<br />

river. When you reach the small street bridge, cross the river and join the walking path alongside the river, beside<br />

the white building and the sign with the snow flake. Continue on this river path. Cross a busy street and continue<br />

underneath an arched bridge towards and past the picture of a large bunny. Cross the river and continue on the<br />

gravel pathway beside the river. Walk by a children’s park, past a building with a metal wire picture of a sail boat.<br />

Take either path along the river, there is a small waterfall. Cross the road, continue on the dirt path beside two<br />

second hand clothing donation boxes. Continue beside the turn of the river. Go under the apartment and cross<br />

the street. Continue with the direction of traffic along the busy street, passing rose bushes and a series of low<br />

billboards. Follow the tree lined path along the thin green wire fence. Along this path you pass a pair of boulders.<br />

Follow a curve in the street. Pass a building with a metal façade to a T intersection and take the dirt path. Pass an<br />

old watchtower and arrive at a wide, open staircase on the river. Continue under the apartment building along the<br />

river. Go through a gate, along the site of the former Berlin Wall, the path continues through a graveyard. Pass an<br />

angel, bell tower, and boulder. Continue along the river, pass by an enclosed garden with several sculpted busts.


Take the bridge with construction across the river. At the first set of lights, cross the construction filled street, and<br />

walk towards the central train station. Go either through the station or follow a temporary fenced path into the<br />

U-bahn entrance. If you enter through the U-bahn entrance take the first escalator you see up a level. Exit into<br />

the large platz. Head over the green foot bridge and continue along the river towards the red bridge flanked with<br />

carved Griffins. Go down the ramp with a group of gardens, pass 2002 and under a bridge. Continue along the<br />

river, pass two willow trees, a theatre, two more willows, until the path reaches a street with traffic. Cross the street<br />

and enter the path beside a snowflake sign. Turn right and cross the river, continue on a tree lined path until you<br />

reach a street with traffic. Cross the six lanes of traffic, enter the closest path with the snowflake sign. Cross a<br />

paved path, stay on the dirt path. Go around or through the rose garden, depending on the season. Take either<br />

footbridge over the water. Continue away from the angel, and pass the columns of the rose garden. Come to a<br />

sign written in German script, walk away from the angel, over the water, then along the water. Traffic emerges on<br />

one side. Pass, but don’t cross, a bridge with two dragon heads on the other side. Arrive across the street from a<br />

building made of lace and walk along the gravel path towards the traffic lights. Continue in this direction across<br />

the street and go into the path with the snowflake sign. Continue along the water, past a children’s playground,<br />

and continue on the edge of the park. Continue to a corner with a parking lot, fence, path and café. Pass the café<br />

and take the path beside the fence. Walk along the fence enclosing ostriches, cross the bridge and go towards a<br />

tall gate. Turn to the building just before the tall gate. There are two fences enclosing a brick building that houses<br />

a Zebra.


aria<br />

aroncea<br />

certain<br />

ogetheress<br />

-<br />

ryouts to<br />

e synchro-


17


NOTICING IS THE BEGINNING


PLACE FEET ON COMMON GROUND<br />

GROUND CAN TAKE THE WEIGHT


NOW<br />

PRESENT IN ALL THINGS


A CERTAIN TOGETHERNESS<br />

– tryouts to be synchronized<br />

performative experiments with texts functioning as a medium that brings people together to share perception<br />

of the now, to interact and create a common experience of minds and bodies


SUSPENDED TOGETHER


WAIT AND SEE<br />

FORWARD TIME TELLS


4<br />

LIGHT SHINES<br />

THE LIGHT’S POINT OF VIEW


atrin<br />

emmer<br />

lmost<br />

no body


27


notes from 31 October <strong>2013</strong><br />

Departing from a interest in the gaze I want to continue with reflections and ideas around the self. Previously, I‘ve<br />

tried to make one‘s own looking apparent, through means of self-built wooden structures, which the audience was<br />

invited to experience. I had been trying to accentuate planes of looking; the positioning of the body in relation to<br />

how it sees/feels. Franz Erhard Walther, an artist I very much like, once described how one could experience his<br />

textual sculptures, a description which still seems simple and yet intriguing to me. He said that one could be: in<br />

front, close by and inside it (davor, daran, darin).<br />

Weaving further from there, I would like to focus on ideas of immersion (of the self). Not only is one‘s own relationship<br />

to what one sees in question, a relationship in opposition, but rather one‘s own notion of being enclosed.<br />

Wooden rooms play no role, but rather spaces of cloth, Peter Sloterdijk‘s book “Weltfremdheit“, water, darkness<br />

and a line out of a poem by Meret Oppenheim, which says: “For you - against you / throw all the stones behind<br />

you / and let go of the walls“.<br />

Of course, immersion can be read and understood in many different ways. I personally like Sloterdijk‘s re-telling of<br />

a parable by the poet-monk Symeon who tells of a person entering the sea. It describes that if you stand half in the<br />

sea you can still look around yourself and see the water in which you are standing. However in the moment you<br />

enter the sea with your whole body, all you know is that you are completely surrounded (and in this parable: have<br />

dived into the vision of god). He continues in positing that it is scary and threatening for most people to imagine<br />

the state described above, while others might find a dark attraction for the same idea. He states that obsession and<br />

flight are both responses to immersion.


immersion. absorption. mimicry. obsession. destruction. submission. self-forgotten. unclasped. surrendering.<br />

merging. dissolving. blurring. melting. disappearing. enclosed. encircled. surrounded. compressed. expanded.<br />

immersed.<br />

But let me return once more to seeing. Thinking about seeing, the vision of a blind person comes to my mind, and<br />

the question of vision through touch emerges. Here I would like to quote Alexandra Tacke, who once wrote that,<br />

“...seeing is inferior to the sense of touch in accurately locating, orienting and positioning the self in the world,<br />

because the sense of touch grips and verifies what the view can only perceive as an image. Touch confirms the<br />

perception, gives the vision, which cannot provide comparable assurance, solidarity.”<br />

Thinking about seeing, Maaike Bleeker‘s book “Visuality in the Theatre“ also comes to mind and with it the term<br />

“seer“. A seer, as she describes, is someone who sees, someone who observes what is there to be seen. But the<br />

word “seer“ could also refer to someone who might see things which are not there: things which might lie in the<br />

future; absent things.<br />

I am also reminded of the film “Holy Motors“ by Leos Carax, in which one character acts out different personas and<br />

scenes. He seems to do this as a job and his only place of return to “who he is“ is in a large limousine (which is,<br />

to point out the obvious, a moving and transitional space) and which functions both as place of rest and dressing<br />

room. In one of the scenes the character is walking around the corner of a desolate building. He passes the corner<br />

right in front of the camera (and us as viewers following him) but when the camera arrives around the corner, the<br />

man has disappeared and only a voice over remains, saying, “They say, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.<br />

What if there is no beholder anymore?“


éline<br />

artillier<br />

athinder’s<br />

hapsody<br />

p. 34 + 36: Foto © Mathieu Bouvier


33


ack to the beginning<br />

I entered the <strong>SoDA</strong> program with the intention of making a project that I called for an ideal theatre, a theatre which<br />

is predicated on the idea; a theatre which gives precedence to the mind and the imagination. During the course of<br />

those two years, I dedicated my work to a search for relations between ideal and representation in the frame of a<br />

performance practice. Notions such as virtuality, speculation, potentiality and performativity imposed themselves<br />

as crucial guides in the relationship between ideal and representation. I worked on strategies to place those notions<br />

at the heart of my performance practice. I feel an attachment to the word theatre. It comes from the greek<br />

verb théaô which means to see. Theatre is the place where one can see what is said. I’ve been investigating conditions<br />

of representation which favour the power and the potentiality of epiphany.<br />

in the beginning, the landscape<br />

Sing the world, it will be there. Sing the land, it will exist faster.<br />

Lately I read Bruce Chatwin’s Songlines (1986). He wrote this book to recall a journey he made to Australia, notably<br />

to study Aboriginal song and its connection to nomadism and cosmogony. Songs are maps, songs make the<br />

world. Song and the creation of the world were inextricable. In Greek, poieo means to make, to create. It gives us<br />

poiesis, it gives us poetry. Chrysippus of Soli was a Stoic philosopher. It is said that he died in a fit of laughter while<br />

he was watching a donkey eat some figs. One of his statements can be considered as a striking definition of the<br />

performativity of the language: When you say something, it goes through your mouth. Now you say “chariot”, so a<br />

chariot goes through your mouth.<br />

Walk the world, it will be there. Walk the land, it will be well and true.


There is an action, there is a situation, there is a fiction. I walk and I walk and I walk. I walk away from the public. I<br />

sink into the depths of the space. All the way along, I walk slowly, very slowly. All the way along, I turn my back to<br />

the public, I conceal my face. When my back is to the audience, the audience and I are oriented towards the same<br />

perspective. A unique and minimalistic action contains a potential of fiction. There are latent adventures on the<br />

path, there are latent adventures on my back.<br />

I started a practice consisting of searching for translations of imaginary materials, materialized in drawings, recordings<br />

and writings, of the body and the practice of walking. I drew the topographic map of the whole length of my<br />

walk. Then I started a precise description, an analysis, an interpretation of the map that I translated into a piece<br />

of writing. The translation between imagination, sensation and reality of the movements leads to composition.


It starts with a path, it is not exactly a road as it is rocky, it is lumpy, it is not built like a road, but it is drawn, is there<br />

earth? there is earth, are there also herbs? herbs there are too, and there are a few cracks as there are sometimes rocks<br />

coming out of the earth, you know it is a track, how do we call this? rural, you see, is it the kind of road where there<br />

are traces of wheels, where there is a hollow on both sides and you can choose to walk in the middle, where there is a<br />

little grass, yes, and with tire tracks of cars left by the rain or mud, does it stick a bit? it’s rather dry, it is rather dry and<br />

there, the sort of little bounce is a transition to another quality of path or soil, which for me is harder, stronger, there is<br />

a false level part that goes up, if it lasts for a while you get sore calves without realising it, so at this moment, you don’t<br />

realise that it goes up when you look at your feet, you don’t realise that it goes up at all but when you look into the<br />

distance, you see a slight elevation, where the path quality is more defined, less grassy, less rustic than before, and there<br />

are pine cones in the road, you kick them when you walk, there are pine cones and there are the shells of chestnuts<br />

left there as well, you know, there are puddles, yes stagnant water, but not deep, no, only in small holes, and there it<br />

goes again, more sharply, then you can really feel it in your walk, it goes up for quite a distance and at this level there<br />

has been recent work, someone put gravel there recently, it is aggregated gravel, that‘s it, if you slip over it it could be<br />

dangerous, it grips slightly when you walk on it, it‘s very dark, very dark and aggregated, it‘s hard too, it is hard gravel,<br />

and precisely here I arrive on a proper road, this is the beginning of a proper road with grey tarmac, much less black<br />

than the road I‘ve just seen, it is used, it is quite soft, it is so soft, there is a mark on the ground, white stripes on both<br />

sides of the road, but not in the middle of the road, you walk in the middle, so I walk in the middle, or rather middle<br />

right, in the middle but to the right of the middle, are you quite near the border of the road and sometimes the grass<br />

brushes you, are there herbs? are there bushes, what is there on the sides? there are herbs, they are more neglected<br />

than bushes, they are scrubs...<br />

Topographic map reading (excerpt), September <strong>2013</strong>


there‘s still time before the end of the world to speak about the end of the world<br />

I am very interested in narrative processes and their morphologies. I have been researching and experimenting<br />

with poetic strategies which could be applied to the relations between ideal and representation. I’ve been looking<br />

for a poetic form which would stimulate the apparition of images. It‘s funny... apocalypse means “what is revealed”.<br />

When I framed my work a few months ago, I claimed that an ideal theatre is based on a dramaturgy of intervals,<br />

borrowing and transforming Aby Warburg’s original formula “an iconology of the intervals”. Pathfinder’s Rhapsody<br />

deploys an epic poem built on episodes the length of a line, on a path. Rhapsody comes from the greek verb rhaptein<br />

which means “to sew together”. In Ancient Greece, the rhapsody is a method of reciting epic poems. The art of<br />

the rhapsody consisted in putting together, in composing, in sewing episodes of poems.


this is a story<br />

a story has a beginning<br />

of course a story has a beginning<br />

this is a story<br />

a story has an end<br />

of course a story has an end<br />

this is a story<br />

and a story has of course a beginning<br />

and of course an end<br />

this is an end<br />

an end has a story<br />

of course an end has a story<br />

this is an end and an end has of course a story<br />

this is a beginning<br />

a beginning has a story<br />

of course a beginning has a story<br />

this is a beginning and a beginning has of course a story<br />

this is a story of the end<br />

this is the beginning of the story<br />

this is a story of the beginning<br />

this is the end of the story<br />

this is the end of the world<br />

this is the beginning of the story<br />

this is the end of the world<br />

this is the beginning of the end<br />

this is the beginning of the world<br />

this is the end of the story<br />

this is the beginning of the world<br />

this is the end of the beginning<br />

this is the beginning of the end of the world<br />

this is the end of the end of the world<br />

this is the beginning of the beginning of the world<br />

this is the end of the beginning of the world.


iran<br />

umar<br />

roject<br />

ntitled<br />

Archiectures<br />

f Dance’


41


„Anyone who practices an occupation over a period of years will have the sense that it involves a number of constants.<br />

Some of these ‚components‘ of a practice are common to all, others vary between individuals and over time. (..) The<br />

identification of such constant or recurrent elements implies both a retrospective and panoramic view.“


Victor Burgin says this (Components of a Practice, 2008) as he prepares to look into his 40-odd years‘ work as artist.<br />

Indeed such a looking into is in itself a work of research with an emphasis on ‚re‘. The milieu of artists like Burgin<br />

which heralded conceptual art has, in many ways, come to bear on the notion and even development of postgraduate<br />

education in the arts. Burgin himself has been instrumental in the discourse on art academy versus university.<br />

The MA program in Solo/Dance/Authorship at the HZT is arguably a product of this larger discourse.<br />

As an MA candidate in this program, I have endeavoured to look into my work as artist in the name and frame of<br />

research. With less than a decade of practice behind me I have nonetheless been researching, even searching for,<br />

the components of my practice. This search has implied a panorama that spans across the past, present and potential<br />

future of my practice as artist; a panorama with both a retrospective and a speculative view.<br />

Kiran Kumar


Since 2010, following a visit to the Sun Temple in Konark, I have grown progressively less convinced by presenting<br />

images of dance to an audience as evidence of the knowledge produced by dance practice. This has led me to a<br />

point in my practice where there is no dance, so to speak.


PROJECT ENTITLED ‘ARCHITECTURES OF DANCE’<br />

This project proposes the architectural metaphor for presenting dance as an alternative to the frame of performance.<br />

Here my practice is presented through installation works and archives that together constitute what I have<br />

come to call ‘architectures of dance’.<br />

These architectures are the design of images in space such that the viewers of the images are implicated as inhabitants<br />

of the space. The experience of inhabiting these architectures then qualifies as the only dance.


ergiu<br />

atis<br />

eep It<br />

eal


49


THE BITCH MANIFESTO<br />

Hey, bitches!<br />

Just to make it QUEER from the beginning: we’re all bitches here. This is not to upset you, nor to insult you, and<br />

also not to be funny, ’cause it’s not.<br />

It’s just to lower the level a bit here so we can get at the street level, bitches, ’cause that’s where the shit is happening.<br />

And I mean the real shit. So let’s KEEP IT REAL, bitches!<br />

What we’re trying to do is to SISTERIZE – to make a temporary bitch community. Togetherness, bitchez! Try that!<br />

Bitch is the new sister and glitter is the new pink, trends are constantly changing and the new shit is old even before<br />

fully unloaded, so get into it bitches, right now!<br />

Bitches are beyond gender, nationality or religious beliefs, or whatever category you wanna put yourself into.<br />

Basically, whatever you think you are, you’re still a bitch! It’s the position that allows you to bitch about heteronormativity,<br />

academia, neoliberalist capitalism and whatever the fuck you want.<br />

Bitches can be offensive, and bitches get offended, ’cause BITCHES ARE VULNERABLE. Vulnerability, bitches. Try that!<br />

Step out of the role you’re playing, and tune into the bitch, if you haven’t done it already, and don’t pretend you<br />

don’t really know what I’m talking about.<br />

Bitches are constructions, CYBORGS loaded with information that flows through them and unifies them into resistance.<br />

BITCHES DON’T GIVE UP!<br />

Some bitches are shameless and embarrassing, but BITCHES DON’T CARE. BITCHES TAKE CARE!<br />

And it’s you that I’m talking about, bitches. Tune into it ’cause it gets you ready for the shit to come!


So, still uncomfortable with bitches?<br />

Would baatchez or biatchez work better for you? The slight abstraction with more<br />

vowels makes it more windy. Maybe it is easier to digest?<br />

What about “fags”?<br />

Hey, you fags! Are you alright?<br />

I could use the word “people”. Dear people! But people feels too weak, somehow.<br />

People got used to people. People got zombified.<br />

I won’t use “humans”.<br />

Hello, humans! Bitches, I ain’t a fuckin’ alien, now, am I?<br />

Let’s all agree that we’re bitches for a while and if you feel excluded ’cause this shit is<br />

too gay for you, well then, let me tell you something about exclusion!<br />

GLITTER heals you! GLITTER queers you!<br />

When glitter appears things start to get messy.<br />

Glitter is messy. CONTAMINATION, right?<br />

Glitter is money. What a waste! Give me more! What a waste! Try that! But there are<br />

always some lucky bitches that know how to position themselves into the flow of<br />

capital in such a way that some of it lands right on them.<br />

Glitter is visceral, flowing, and flowing through bodies, out of bodies, sticky and shiny.<br />

Glitter is little viruses that cause unicornification.<br />

Glitter is the stars of the universe, bitches.<br />

Glitter is magic! Fairy dust.<br />

Bitch magic keeps it real, ’cause it’s see-through.


lavio<br />

ibeiro<br />

TUFF<br />

p. 56: Mecco Leone,1837-39 p. 57: Tizian, Sisyphus,1548-49 / p. 58: Caravaggio, Death of the Virgin,1606 / p. 59: Getty Images


55


Can I throw this out?<br />

It belonged to my father.<br />

But this is rotting.<br />

It reminds me of when he used to be a race driver.


Sometimes objects replace memory, they seem to be memory solidified. If you accumulate<br />

too many things, they occupy your mental space like vampires. I come from a family<br />

of accumulators, hoarders. We have great difficulty in parting with objects and tend to<br />

keep them forever, even after they disintegrate.


When my grandmother died I was shopping for shoes. I bought this pair of black platform<br />

shoes with rubber soles, they were so comfortable. I came back home and she was dead<br />

on the couch. The air was thick. I think it was her soul leaving the body.


I asked the dancer to do Yvonne Rainer‘s Trio A and he said, „Why would we want to do<br />

Trio A in <strong>2013</strong>? Osama Bin Laden destroyed the World Trade Center 12 years ago. If you<br />

believe it was him. I saw this documentary on TV in which a Danish scientist explains why<br />

those two planes could never have brought down the twin towers like that. He says there<br />

is a kind of explosive which was used in the attack, and that tons of the stuff would be<br />

needed to make the buildings implode so perfectly.“<br />

„So are you saying we should work on a reconstruction of the attack on the World Trade<br />

Center instead of Trio A?“


isa<br />

ensem<br />

ilently<br />

he Birds<br />

ly<br />

hrough<br />

s


61


Through all beings spreads the one space:<br />

the world‘s inner space.<br />

Silently the birds fly<br />

through us still.<br />

O I who want to grow,<br />

I look outside, and it is in me that the tree grows!<br />

Rainer Maria Rilke (Notebooks August 1914)<br />

Since the beginning of my work at SODA I have been concerned with questions surrounding a particular consciousness<br />

or presence experienced or witnessed during movement practice or in performance.<br />

This presence, felt or seen as a sudden shift, transforms the way we inhabit our body, and our moving self. It appears<br />

to project us out of our habitual selves and into a concrete relation with our surroundings, transforming our<br />

bodily appearance and the way movement and the space around us are perceived. When we move in this presence<br />

an inner dialectic seems to become activated, enabling the movement we do to contain opposites; to appear both<br />

clear and ambivalent, passive and active, full of wonder and yet matter of fact, and both participant of and witness<br />

to itself. Inside this presence both a body consciousness and a mind consciousness, separate but connected,<br />

appear to arise or become noticeable. Inside this presence hierarchical divisions between human and non-human,<br />

between the performer and the space of the performance appear blurred.


When we inhabit this presence, seemingly imperceptible changes in the body – changes in the tone of a muscle,<br />

the look in the eye, or the angle of the head – can have quite marked effects on the way we, or the space around<br />

us, are perceived by an audience and affect an audience. Gestures, movements, actions and the space of the stage<br />

can appear to become brighter, become ‘see-able’. That is they can create an experience of seeing anew, or of opening<br />

up imagination beyond the concreteness of what is done; a simple gesture awakening a flood of associations.<br />

Throughout my time at SODA, I have sought to define or describe the qualities or properties of this presence and to<br />

look for ways to bring it into being. How can we embody ourselves in ways that can allow opposing or ambiguous<br />

readings to exist simultaneously? How can we be both the materiality of our body and the images that its gestures<br />

can project? How can we open a space for ‘seeing’. How can we inhabit a body consciousness and a mind consciousness<br />

both as separate entities and as one? What inner processes, inner thoughts, states of mind, attentions<br />

or images can create in a viewer both the concreteness of the here and now, and a fall through this into the space<br />

of imagination and reflection?<br />

To create ‘Silently the Birds Fly through us’ I worked with two very different performers looking for ways to unfold<br />

or enter into this presence or consciousness. Working with different questions, tasks, directives, images, attentions<br />

or thought nets we searched for ways to shift out of habitual patterns and into other ways of doing and perceiving.<br />

When something changed, when this other way of being or seeing seemed to emerge, we worked to keep and<br />

set the movements and the compositions in space that were created; and as the work continued I tried to build<br />

a structure that could contain the possibility for this presence to live again, the choreographed movement calling<br />

back presence in its doing.<br />

My work is based on the representation of the body. In the medium of photography, this representation depends on<br />

the construction of expressive gestures which can function as emblems. ‘Essence must appear’ says Hegel, and in the<br />

represented body, it appears as a gesture which knows itself to be appearance.’<br />

Jeff Wall


Can movement have a consciousness of its own?


ODA<br />

ORKS<br />

013 perormance<br />

chedule


Masterprogramme Solo/Dance/Authorship<br />

03 – 18 December | Uferstudios Berlin, Germany<br />

67<br />

The MA in Solo/Dance/Authorship (SODA) is a two<br />

year, full-time, performance-oriented Master of<br />

Arts degree at the HZT Berlin. It provides a practiceled<br />

postgraduate education for practitioners and<br />

recent graduates who wish to challenge, extend<br />

and transform their practice and their understanding<br />

of arts practice through practical, theoretical<br />

and critical enquiry.<br />

Tuesday 3.12. + Thursday 5.12.<br />

7 pm, Studio 14<br />

NIELS BOVRI<br />

The theatrophone<br />

9 pm, Studio 14<br />

ALLISON PEACOCK<br />

Zebra<br />

Thursday 12.12. + Friday 13.12.<br />

7 pm, Studio 14<br />

CÉLINE CARTILLIER<br />

Pathfinder‘s Rhapsody<br />

9 pm , Studio 14<br />

SERGIU MATIS<br />

Keep It Real<br />

Sunday, 15.12.<br />

3, 4, 5 and 7, 8, 9 pm, Studio 14<br />

15 persons per show<br />

KATRIN MEMMER<br />

almost a no body<br />

Sunday 8.12. + Monday 9.12.<br />

7 pm, Studio 14<br />

LISA DENSEM<br />

Silently the Birds Fly Through Us<br />

9 pm, Studio 14<br />

MARIA BARONCEA<br />

A certain togetherness - tryouts to be<br />

synchronized.<br />

Tuesday 17.12. + Wednesday 18.12.<br />

4 - 8 pm and Studio 8 und Kesselhaus<br />

KIRAN KUMAR<br />

Project Entitled ‘Architectures of Dance‘<br />

9 pm, Studio 14<br />

FLAVIO RIBEIRO<br />

STUFF


mprint<br />

Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin<br />

www.hzt-berlin.de | tanz@hzt-berlin.de<br />

Artistic Director<br />

Prof. Nik Haffner<br />

Publisher<br />

Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin<br />

Uferstraße 23, 13357 Berlin, Germany<br />

Concept and Authors<br />

Maria Baroncea, Niels Bovri, Céline Cartillier, Lisa<br />

Densem, Kiran Kumar, Sergiu Matis, Katrin Memmer,<br />

Allison Peacock, Flavio Ribeiro<br />

MA SODA Staff<br />

Prof. Rhys Martin, Prof. Boyan Manchev, Sophia New<br />

Graphic Design<br />

milchhof:atelier<br />

Editor<br />

Judith Brückmann<br />

Print<br />

Conrad Druck, Berlin<br />

© HZT Berlin <strong>2013</strong><br />

Head of Administration<br />

Sabine Trautwein<br />

Team SODA <strong>WORKS</strong> <strong>2013</strong><br />

Production Manager<br />

Stephan Kostropetsch<br />

Technical Direction<br />

Maximilian Stelzl and Torsten Meissel<br />

Technicians<br />

Nikola Pieper<br />

Jan Römer<br />

Conner Johnsen<br />

Stephan Müller<br />

Lighting Design / Advice<br />

Lutz Deppe<br />

Communication<br />

Judith Brückmann


www.hzt-berlin.de<br />

The HZT Berlin is administrated by the Berlin University of the Arts and the Hochschule für Schauspielkunst “Ernst Busch“ Berlin in<br />

cooperation with the TanzRaumBerlin Network.

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