SoDA WORKS 2015

ODA
WORKS 2015

SoDA master works 2015
About this publication:
The SoDA (Solo/Dance/Authorship) class of 2016 have
compiled this publication to contain selected content
from their individual thesis projects. These projects
each consisted of a live performance - presented in
December 2015, at the Uferstudios in Berlin - an artist
work book, as a document of the creative process and
a written essay, each explicating areas of independent
research. It is the aim of this publication to present a
selection of this material for public dissemination.
Video documentation of the performances:
http://www.hzt-berlin.de/?z=7&sz=2&lan=de
About SoDA:
The MA in Solo/Dance/Authorship (MA SODA) is a two
year, full-time, performance-oriented Master of Arts
degree. It provides a practice-led postgraduate education
for practitioners and recent graduates who wish
to challenge, extend and transform their practice and
their understanding of arts practice through practical,
theoretical and critical enquiry.
The MA SODA is situated within the HZT – Inter-University
Centre for Dance Berlin, which provide a practice
led and research driven education in contemporary
dance, choreography and performance.
http://www.hzt-berlin.de

ANDREW KERTON

The Work / _fieldnotes
THE OBJECT
The artist has appropriated part of a structure commonly
found in public playgrounds, specifically, the
entrance to fenced ball courts. Normally from these rectangular
enclosures a perpendicular L shaped extension
emerges. This extension forms an enclosed threshold
that dictates performing a series of turns, in order to
gain physical entry to the court. This sculpture, however,
recreates only a corner of one of these structures,
a corner from which emerges an enclosed threshold or
‘entrance’, as described.
Created from industrially produced units of zinc-coated
steel fencing – a ubiquitous material for defining public
and private spaces – one is free to move around the
structure in its entirety, whilst also able, significantly, to
move through it.
Imposing in scale and material, elegant in form and
linearity, the artist has placed this structure within an
empty dance studio, apparently co-opted as an exhibition
space. Yet the specificity of the context appears
significant, as the accompanying literature suggests:
we can consider this untitled sculpture a ‘somatic structure’,
but in what sense?
If we were to simply read the sculpture as a body, why
should we be able to pass right through it? Does the
somatic emphasis rather enable us to read it as an
experience of body, specifically an experience of body
as movement? The dance context would suggest so.
what it is to do somatics. The process of experiencing
one’s body from within necessitating conscious attention
to the organic diversity of one’s body: observing
activity.
As a barrier that may be penetrated, the sculpture also
performs division and integration. The steel grid that
constitutes the fencing is itself semi-permeable, it
permits some things to pass through, sight for example,
and other things not. This is all analogous to understanding
the structure as a membrane.
The somatic philosopher Thomas Hanna describes
a cell’s membrane as ‘not so much a separative wall
as it is a series of windows and doors through which
elements of the environment are made to go in and elements
of the soma are made to go out’ (Hanna 1987).
The selective osmosis of the cellular membrane is echoed
in the nature of the organism, echoed in the nature
of society, made up, as it is, of human organisms. What
is true at the level of the cell resonates in all instances
of life. This is what makes somatics significant beyond
the experiencing subject. In this time of bodies breaching
borders, refugees, national politics facilitating or
refusing passage, we might be tempted to read this
sculpture as a statement on existing mass migration,
but this is too narrow. Membranes – barriers, borders
– in/tangible – im/permeable, exist everywhere. The
polarities of division and integration constituting life
as we know it, as even a cursory consideration of one’s
relationship to others – or oneself – would confirm.
rounding space and this sculpture does the same. By
intersecting space it creates a multitude of spaces, each
with their own feeling quality, but each equally part of a
unified spatial experience. That you may move from one
space to another, through the transitional space of the
threshold, emphasizes the plastic potential of space as
experienced – be it intrasomatic or extrasomatic.
If somatics is a journey towards integration, the
threshold represents the physical navigation necessary
within that process. It is also a space between spaces,
balanced between open and closed, it is the moment of
embodied movement.
Perhaps a somatic practise, on account of its subjectivity,
its paradoxically intangible experientiality, has
necessitated the creation of a concrete object, as an
objective testament to a lived process. A process the
artist offers other bodies to experience as passage,
movement from one quality of space to another, the
consistent properties of our experiencing body echoed
in the consistent properties of space in general.
This sculpture is a somatic structure, then, because it
articulates the experience of a body through staging a
process of transition.
Acknowledging this structure’s provenance, we recognize
it possesses properties of activity and observation,
in keeping with a ball game, yet also in keeping with
So this sculpture may be experienced as an intrinsic
kind of structure. Membranes define a space whilst
simultaneously order that space’s relation to sur-

THE RIFF
On encountering integration, what else but to perform
the potential of my body?
I remove everything from the stage that is superfluous
to my body until it is all that remains.
Until this point my practise has explored the notion that
perception is a choreographic activity and, by extension,
cognition is a cross-modal process of abstraction.
These things are true, but positing what essentially constitutes
my own consciousness for objective consideration/research
is essentially neurosis in action.
Now it seems proper, and possible, to embody my
perceptive faculties and have them constitute performance.
On encountering integration, self with self,
locating my mind in my muscle, seeing how muscle is
expression of mind, I move, I begin to move
in another dimension
A horizontal plain of application, my body is an activity.
Apply. Come home.
Home is a necessary component of somatic activity: it
provides a stabilizing parameter for action. Home is, by
functional definition, the place from which one goes and to
which one returns (Hanna 1986).
Somatics is a spatial discipline. Reclaiming internal
ground created room for myself and improved my capabilities.
Frontiering my new parameters, I continue this
spatial exploration in performance, testing my limits,
both internal and external.
Come home – test limit – come home – test limit –
I identify a loop.
I choose an 8 count bass line, a riff, repeated, emphasizing
constancy.
The riff, a loop, iterates and negates time, a cyclical
reordering that both emphasizes and expands the moment.
Subsequently the riff possesses an emergent spatial
materiality, provides a non-set for my performance.
I place myself, through fragments of movement and
words, within the ground of the riff. I avoid hierarchy
and arrange the fragments like equivalent objects that
appear and instantly dissolve to nothing, but resonance
in space.
The fragments are terse choreographies, devised in the
studio. They are embodied actions that play with the
potential of my physical capabilities: movement and
voice and transition.
Their arrangement in space is a three-dimensional edit.
Edit is action independent of consistency. The specific
qualities of each fragment dictates what fragment
follows, as do the qualifiers space and rhythm, they
become my compositional tools. A continual process of
re-editing composes my fragmentary material into abstract
cohesion, subjectively experienced as embodied
sense. I do what feels right. A composition (dramaturgy)
of language and action emerges not formulated upon
conventional notions of meaning or representation.
Instead, through the expanded moment of the loop, a
moment of total self awareness, I manouevre in and out
of physical states, embodying the edit. There is no place
to get to, no culmination, no performative climax, only
continual transition within a horizontal plain of activity.
Fragmentation then is not unified through increased self
integration, but rather, positively assimilated as creative
strategy, is co-opted as cohesion.
Like I do here.
I explore ways to connect space. There’s a sculpture in
the other room, remember. Perhaps you think of it as
you watch me perform. I am performing the outcome
of internal spatial integration. I am integrating internal
space with external space:
Through proprioception
I close my eyes and allow a sense of my internal volume
manouevre me in the external volume of the stage. I
acknowledge my improvisational tendencies with movement
in the moment and consciously alter them, finding
myself in new spatial configurations.
Through voice
I locate the space a vowel sound physically resonates
within my body and use it to amplify that sound into
external space. I play with modifying my voice and loop
language, acknowledging they are both, anyway, means
by which I acoustically explore inter-personal spaces.
All this upon the ground of the riff
in harmony or discord, a constant
rhythm, the riff is rhythm, the riff is you dear reader,
viewer
moving in time
the nuance and play of awareness
conscious, constant activity
of rhythmic repetition and differentiation
synaptic syncopation of cognition
looping, relooping
your thinking body, your body thoughts
are the pulse of being.
Cells vibrate, resonate
presence
we are
space in transit, we are
a fabric of fascia, between all things
our bodies, our modulated constants
transitioning
about the place
we breathe, space, gravity
on stage, nothing but life
the riff (the riff - the riff) is this thing of being alive.
Hanna, Thomas (1986) Selection from… Somatology:
Somatic Philosophy and Psychology, Somatic Systems Institute.
Hanna, Thomas (1987) What is Somatics? Part IV, Somatic Systems Institute.
For further information please contact andrewkerton@gmail.com
I identify an implicit dramaturgy for performance within
myself: explore modulations with/of my performing
body, always returning home to an embodied place of
neutrality, ready to embark out again.
I fragment language to a level of ambiguity that it might
offer an audience the possibility to elicit subjective
responses. I speak with a multiplicity of voices and
physically manoeuvre into divergent perspectives.

HWAYEON NAM

Orbital Studies
Something out there is moving.
Halley’s Comet was seen on the Earth in 1986 and will be
seen again in 2061. At this moment it is moving at the
outside of the orbit of Neptune.
is an attempt to imagine the unimaginable
body – Halley’s comet – and its movement in
space and time through choreographic understanding.
How has a non-human body such as Halley’s comet
affected human perception of time? To what extent can
choreography, human artistic technique be sufficient
and insufficient to conceive this movement?

The sun is located at one of two foci.
Kepler’s first law of planetary motion.
Every orbit is an ellipse.
The closest point from the sun in the orbit is point A.
The farthest point from the sun in the orbit is point B.
Point B is located at 70 times the distance between the Sun and point A.
Point B is nearby the orbit of Pluto.
From point A to point B, the orbit passes.
It is a very outstretched ellipse.
The first movement is orbiting.
The first movement takes about 76 years.
Currently it is located at point C.
Point C is here, point C is outside of the orbit of Neptune.
It will gradually move from point C to point B, and make a turn.
To reach point B, it will take 8 more years.
The orbit is clockwise.

An orbit commonly refers to the path of a repetitive
movement. From the perspective of physics, on
the other hand, an orbit can only be established and
properly function when the presence of two bodies
is a prerequisite. In other words, orbiting is not the
independent action of a singular body that proceeds on
its own, it is the consequential action of two bodies in
the effect of gravitation. One of the two bodies acts as a
focus of the other, which revolves around the former in
a circular, elliptical or parabolic path. Behind the body
that moves, there exists the other body, which enables
it to move, and the force that mediates the two bodies.
Based on the aforementioned facts, we might also think
of a moving body and its time.
A body orbits in an ellipse.
It takes ( ) for a body to complete one orbit.
Suppose that another body that served as a focus in
creating this orbit disappears at a certain point.
A body will not move in the same way anymore.
The time of a body will not be repeated every ( ) any
longer.
Thus ( ) is the time invented by two bodies under the
force of gravitation.
Therefore an orbit should be understood as one form
of time.
Orbital Studies is a study to reflect time as an orbit.
Time which has its origin in the gravitational force of the
other. A performance as a site for an orbiting body of
Halley’s comet.
foto © Marion Borriss

IVO SERRA

P DANCE
I am a Man!
Perhaps almost…
Or perhaps I should say that I am a man, somehow,
disassociated from what maleness is within certain
social beliefs.
With P Dance, it´s my attempt to create a setup for a
contemporary ritual, where a potential hybrid “Ethno-
Choreography” takes place. A contemporary space
where the naked body is constantly transitioning between
a “found“ archive of social dance patterns, while
addressing reflections on globalised notions of gender,
and positioning them with older folk traditions.
P Dance takes as its starting point the folk dance and
costume of “Careto”, which is considered as a symbolic
rite of passage from boyhood to manhood in Podence,
Portugal.
From its roots in European and medieval agrarian cultures,
the “essence“ of Careto has morphed into different
textures and aesthetics, depending on its sociocultural
values and usages. Appropriating the costume associated
with the ritual and repositioning it as a queer object, I
investigate and “draw” together influences from Judith
Butler, popular dance and Drag culture, to question,
explore and deliberately to fail in the attempt of magnifying/performing
melancholic assumptions of masculinity.
Through P Dance the naked movements create a visceral
and relentless physical language, with my body as
a central point of focus, as a screen for communal projections.
This questions and navigates through potential
archetypal and stereotypical ideals of maleness, and
the (mis)interpretations and perpetuations of certain
claimed values of masculinity.
Thanks to: Constanze Schellow, Maria F. Scaroni, Jessy
Layne Tuddenham, Peter Pleyer, Nico Lippolis, Benjamin
Schälike, Ponderosa Community, Justin Francis Kennedy,
Kennis Hawkins, Julian Weber, Yoav Admoni, Lulu
Obermayer, Marc Lohr, Will Rawls, Teresa Dillon, Carlo
Roffare, Fabian Anst, Tino Sehgal and the “This Variation”
crew, to UDK, to HZT and SODA office administration,
to all professors and dear colleagues of the SODA
program 2014-2016. A special thanks to my mother
Alexandrina Serra.
With the support of: Studienstiftung des deutschen
Volkes, Ponderosa community organization, Caretos
de Podence non-profit organisation, Centre d’ Art Contemporain
Genève, Switzerland and the 2nd edition of
Nomadic School (Homo Novus Festival in Riga, Latvia).
http://cargocollective.com/masodaivoserra

JOSHUA RUTTER

The Practicalities of a Poetic Engine.
Do something and then talk about it. When someone else
talks about what they did, translate that into instructions
and follow them. Do something and then wait for someone
else to do something. Don’t talk about your opinion, talk
about how it feels. Wait till you feel the effect of what you
just did before you do something else. Think of how the
fog might behave, describe it, try it out, and then report
back. Talk about what you just did by simply naming it.
Make sure the big inflatable is moved regularly. Don’t make
violent movements in the first 15 minutes. Let things go
wrong. Don’t let me off the hook so easily. Work to always
be physically involved with someone, but let yourself be
affected by forces transmitted through the structure. Make
clear proposals. Stay with it. Don’t do it for too long. You
don’t need to be interesting. Speak clearly, our accents are
a bit hard to understand. Only talk about what’s happening
in the room. Don’t mention theories or political issues. Don’t
knock the lights over, but if you do, pretend that it’s ok. Let
things soak in. Just, figure it out. Mess up the space. Don’t
use the fog machine too much, because some audience
members might not like it. Don’t breathe so loudly.
Patterned Interference, my fourth semester presentation
for the SoDA program was conceived as a milieu of
nested situations, where action and discourse mediate
changes of spatial arrangement and atmosphere. It
grew out of an interest in training practices and improvised
ascetics. We engaged in a long period of searching
our bodies and environments for activities that were
“interesting”, in that they held a fascination and a
desire to investigate further. It could be something
as simple as rolling your head around while focusing
on the sensations in your feet, or repeatedly trying to
touch the same point on a wall with your eyes closed.
We called these activities “choreographic situations”,
and set about describing them in words to each other,
or diagramming them. Then we noticed that the act of
describing what you just did has a certain effect and
could be worth investigating further. What started as a
way of keeping track of activity became a kind of instant
research output, a way of mediating our relationships in
the abstract space of performance, and an unexpected
method of training a certain kind of self-awareness.
We then wanted to apply a similar process to the search
for choreographic situations in the arrangement of the
space we occupied, to observably relate our outside to
our inside. The large inflatables were thought of as a
way to quickly change the spatial characteristics of the
room, as well as providing more insides and outsides.
Their bodies were pliable and unpredictable. They could
be entered, they enveloped and prodded . They were
both compliant and stubborn. They were, in fact, more
than we bargained for and exerted substantial force on
the process. Lights and fog, indispensable atmospheric
effects for the stage, were called upon to soften and
smooth our transitions, to usher us across thresholds
and seduce us into action.
In a sense it was an exercise in building and being built.
There was an excess of framing and a commitment
to organising everything around questions. This was
partly a response to working within the artistic research
environment that contextualises the SoDA program, and
the attendant demands to demonstrate one’s activities
as such. As research. I made a real-time research environment
on stage consisting of 3 human performers, 3
large black plastic inflatables, 4 LED panels on stands, a
fog machine, and the search for things worth doing.
SoDA. Solo. Dance. Authorship. So how can I justify
working with 2 other people? Well, what I can do is
contextualise or signpost it as a necessary risk, a
side-effect of the conditions I desired to work in and
with. The conditions I speak of are those of a system, of
something that behaves of its own accord, with a repertoire
of states and a tendency to react to conditions
and inputs. If you give a coherent system information, it
will return a result in some form. In our case, the moods,
thoughts, expressions and actions that traversed us
were all part of the interest of the work, and contributed
to the navigation of the creative process and the
performative outcomes that emerged. And why 3 of us?
In keeping with the theme of systems, I gesture towards
Edward Lorenz’s discovery that a chaotic system
requires a minimum of 3 interdependent elements
(Gleick, J. 1987). And chaos? Chaos, from Chaos Theory,
which is also called Dynamic Systems Theory, in which
simple rules lead to unpredictable and never repeating
behaviours. Simple rules are something we worked with
a lot. The working method in the studio was a repetitive
sequence of propose, enact, evaluate and refine.
The performance piece itself was a network of simple
interconnected rules.
For me, the stage is a space for simulation, like the
ones they do on computers nowadays. A space for the
colliding of materials into one another, for interrogating
structural tendencies, for subjecting fragments of culture
to one another; for testing. A space for experimentation.
Performance science. Research, results, findings. What
happens if I… What happens to me? What happens to
the things around me? How are we together? Cause and
effect. Terms and interactions. Endless recombination.
Moments of coherence. Spatters and smears of meaning.
Why put something other than a living organism on
stage? The coilings and thrashings of a mutating system
make for a good spectacle. Live memetic engineering.
We made the inflatables ourselves, from black rubbish
bags and tape. DIY. This aesthetic permeates much of my
work. I suspect part of its value for me is the ever-present
possibility of changing the arrangement of physical materials,
of revising the design, of trying something out. The
barrier to action is low and enables one to simply think
through doing, to find one’s way in a cognitive-material
narrative. The revising of material bodies plays out in
contrast to the seeming impossibility of revising my own
body in any immediate physical sense, short of cutting off
an arm, which I am not prepared to voluntarily undertake.
Revising or redesigning my own body takes place in the
form of searching for trainable activities, for choreographic
situations that evoke new experiences, that change
perception and the organisation of the mind/body.
These training practices are a way to create new modes
of feeling and perceiving. Rejigging the psychosomatic
connections. Hacking. The development of new organs
of sensing, alternative ways of thinking and doing. If my
mind emerges from my body, then in rearranging the
way my mind is involved with my body, the habitual connections
and conventions of interpretation, I may add
dimensions to my world. Practices can alter the body in
order to influence the mind in order to enter new ways
of experiencing, which in turn alter the nature of one’s
presence or behaviour on stage.
The body is key. Messy, full of openings and prone to
mis-haps. An unreliable replicator, unable to consistently
discipline potentials, to restrain latencies. Infectious and
infected, subject to movement, rhythm, word, image and
mood. Polyrhythmic and out of sync. Oscillating wildly
through recursive situations. How do we find purchase?
Get a grip? Increase the squeeze and feel the burn? What
is the threshold between experience and technique?

Some limits are easy to find. Limits like aerobic fitness,
strength, balance, attention. Others are obscured.
Hiding in corners, folds and depths. Hidden in clouds of
thought and feeling. Taken for granted or assumed to
be fundamental. How might I confront the limits of my
imagination? How real are they? Have my expectations
of the world been formed by inaccurate impressions? Is
there a way to test that? Frames help. If you can frame
a situation so that it orients itself towards a question,
directs the force of its unfolding into an enigma,
a fresh ream of experience might be revealed. This
is what I have learnt. Categories help. Naming helps.
Questioning your constructions help. Precision helps,
effort helps. And when these frames, these activities
are organised around a sufficiently wild problem, the
risk of reduction and flattening is reduced. The risk of
discovery is heightened.
Patterned Interference existed in a field of tension between
three realms: the realm of spatial arrangement,
the realm of subjective experience, and the realm of
language. All three choreographed and modulated one
another in a chaotic, interdependent fashion. Perhaps
what we were really training was the ability to facilitate
this particular interaction, the confluence of three
realms through ourselves. The outcome of this encounter
was, for me, an enigma. Although I knew what we
were doing, and more or less how we got there, each
night we performed the work I encountered a hard limit
in my ability to encompass or understand the situation
as a whole. I didn’t have an adequate frame through
which to organise my impressions. The system simply
exceeded me. The complexity of its quiverings and
thrashings left me dizzy and saturated. But also awake
and curious. It was not cathartic. Mostly I was left with
a sense of work. Endless work. Beautiful work.

foto © Marion Borriss

MăDăLINA DAN

The Agency of Touch
“The Agency of Touch” is a work utilising touch, bodilysensorial
awareness and connectivity as a social vehicle
for corporeal communication.
The final presentation for the SoDA Master Program
(Solo Dance Authorship) consisted of a durational setup
installed in Studio 9 of UferStudios, which aimed to
develop a synesthetic/reflexive context around touch.
The Agency hosted four activities for the participant:
25-30 minutes for each participant;
was invited to map his/her tactile experience;
Set-design/costume: Ana Botezatu
Sound-design: Natalia Bustamante
Light-design: Benjamin Schälike
Many thanks and gratitude to: my mentors (Siegmar
Zacharias, Martina Ruhsam, Ella Ziegler, Isabelle
Schad), my tutors and teachers (Sophia New, Rhys
Martin, Boyan Manchev, Nik Haffner) my SoDA and
HTZ peers, the HTZ staff (Sabine Trautwein, Max Stelzl,
Stephan Kostropetsch, Bettina Kempf), Steve Heather,
Dave Hall, Hosun Lee, Catalin Iie, Barbara Friedrich,
Sophie Camille Brunner, Allison Peacock, Rodrigo
Garcia Alves and all the people I encountered through
this experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFjVeepIwXs
foto © Marion Borriss

the diagramms are intended to be printed in DIN A1

Publisher: HZT Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin, Uferstraße 23, 13357 Berlin, Germany / Concept and Authors: Andrew Kerton, Joshua Rutter, Hwayeon Nam, Ivo Serra, Mădălina Dan / Pictures: all
rigths by the authors of the projects if not mentioned otherwise / MA SODA Staff: Prof. Rhys Martin, Prof. Dr. Boyan Manchev, Prof. Sophia New / Graphic Design: Carsten Stabenow, milchhof.net / © HZT Berlin
2016 Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin www.hzt-berlin.de / office@hzt-berlin.de / Artistic Director: Prof. Nik Haffner / Administration: Sabine Trautwein / Technical Director: Maximilian Stelzl
HZT – Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin is the joint responsibility of the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) and the Hochschule für Schauspielkunst “Ernst Busch“ (HfS) in cooperation with TanzRaumBerlin,
a network of the professional dance scene.