DV8 / Michael Turinsky / Hafiz Dhaou / Franck Edmond Yao alias Gadoukou La Star
Hall of Videodances Part 3: Site By Site I
Past dates
2/26/21
6:00 PM
2/27/21
12:00 AM
2/28/21
12:00 AM
3/1/21
12:00 AM
3/2/21
12:00 AM
3/3/21
12:00 AM
3/4/21
12:00 AM
3/5/21
12:00 AM
3/6/21
12:00 AM
3/7/21
12:00 AM
The term video dance became established in Western contemporary dance in the 1980s to describe works that were not made for the stage, but were produced explicitly for the camera using the new video technology of the time. Numerous choreographers had already dared to experiment with the camera, such as Maya Deren, for example. Later, the American choreographer Merce Cunningham became one of the defining choreographers of this newly emerging genre. Common techniques of film and dance, such as montage, rhythm and tempo, form the basis for forms of video dance that open up other perspectives on dance and also redefine where it takes place and how it is mediated. Against the backdrop of general democratization through digital and social media, and ultimately in Corona times when choreographer:s are looking for new hybrid formats for dance, video dance has evolved aesthetically as well as politically through CGI technology or means of augmented reality that are not available on stage. From the first experimental films to the present day, the synthesis of dance and film has found expression in a variety of different formats, not the least of which has helped contemporary dance gain popularity. Dance existing as video also raises questions about reproduction, authorship, ownership of choreography, cultural appropriation, and the politicization of dance. FOKUS TANZ #7 juxtaposes existing video dances with new ones produced for the festival and makes them resonate with each other.
Site By Site I
When dance and video enter into a fusion, they not only create new aesthetic spaces, but also transport and shape social contexts differently than dance on stage. In video dance, a new understanding of dance itself, and of what constitutes it, can emerge. Dance is not created in neutral space, but in complex contexts and spaces. These, once removed from the stage situation, allow a deeper understanding of the body and movement to become visible: What initiates the movement? How is it executed? How do energies flow through the body? Video dance also means opening up new spaces: be it a kitchen, a forest clearing or a swimming pool. Body-Site-Specific, so to speak: the space makes the movement of the body.
Franck Edmond Yao alias Gadoukou la Star : LE-MANGER-DANSER Festival premiere(2021)
Dancing is a pleasure and eating is a pleasure. Two things that give pleasure, but are often separated from each other. We eat, and then we dance. Yet dancing is life and actually goes with any other action, can be mixed with anything, is everyone's friend. To remove the separation of actions, to think and act from dance, in search of the intelligence of movement, of physical experience. On the energetic basis of Coupé Décalé, which is also musically based on an intermingling of different influences, Franck Edmond Yao aka Gadoukou la star throws overboard questions of how and why and seeks the intuitive rupture of rehearsed systems, as well as the physical charge of two of the most beautiful means of pleasure. Bonne dégustation!
Franck E. Yao is a pioneer of large-scale Afro dance battles in Abidjan. At the same time, Yao has a performative practice in European contemporary contexts, working as a performer with Gintersdorfer/Klaßen since 2005, as a co-director with LA FLEUR since 2016, and in artistic direction of his own projects at the intersection of discourse, performance, and dance since 2019. In February 2020, Yao was invited with his dance school to the Dance Education Biennale at Kampnagel, while also serving as a jury member for the first Fusion Dance Battle. Yao is thus an expert and key figure in the opening of European «contemporary» dance to Black Dance Culture. Gadoukou la star is also a Coupé Décalé singer and works heavily choreographically in music videos, such as his latest song «Joie de vivre» (2019). LE-MANGER-DANSER is a new video dance production for Fokus Tanz.
Dv8 – Enter Achilles (1996)
Since its founding in 1986, the DV8 Physical Theatre from London has been thrilling the world with its fast-paced and risky dance theater. Under the direction of Lloyd Newson, they created choreographies such as »Enter Achilles,« which went down in dance history with their radical yet accessible approaches. In the late 1990s, they also became known for their films. The film ENTER ACHILLES was made in 1996, eight years before the production of their most famous film, The Cost of Living. A funny, cruel exploration of the male psyche, Enter Achilles is set in a typical British pub, a shabby, nicotine-stained boozer. Pop songs tumble out of the jukebox, there is football on the TV, and the eight men lark around, pint glasses in hand. But their blokish fun is balanced on a knife-edge of tension, for beneath the mateyness lurks a disturbing undercurrent of paranoia and insecurity, where weakness is brutally exploited and violence covers up vulnerability.
Michael Turinsky: Narcissus Beneath The Surface (2011)
Choreographer and philosopher Michael Turinsky regularly sets new standards in «crip choreography» with his works. This is a term coined by Turinsky himself and designates a critical artistic practice that begins with the particularity of lived experience, with its space and time, its affects and libido, and reflects on disability, politics and aesthetics. Emerging from these ideas Narcissus Beneath the Surface is a powerful visual film that takes on the ancient hero Narcissus. Narcissus was cursed with having to love his own reflection on the surface of a lake so much that he eventually died of it. In his film, Michael Turinsky looks beneath the reflecting surface of the water that was Narcissus' undoing and says: «Based on this ancient figure, I thematize processes of immersion, mirroring and projecting. The title Narcissus beneath the surface plays with the term »projecting,« which is a terminus technicus in dance: to project means to send energy, to radiate, to open up; like a beamer, I open up. Narcissus, like a beamer, has thrown an image, an image outward into the water, and then he's immersed in the thrown image.» Turinsky's film goes far beyond the myth of Narcissus, addressing the exclusion of otherness and the violence exercised in the making of a clearly delineated identity, whether individual or collective.
AÏcha M’barek & Hafiz Dhaou: (fÜg Echajra) « Sur Un Arbre PerchÉ » (2005)
7 Min.
The choreographer duo Aïcha M'Barek and Hafiz Dhaou are known for their poetic movement vocabulary, shaped by their life between two cultures. The film FÜG ECHAJRA was made during their first trip to Cameroon in Central Africa. Full of openness and without orientation, they explored the red earth that led them to a tree to listen to it. This physical and tender encounter ends with the mythical title song of the great diva Salha, sung after the independence of Tunisia in 1956.