Rashaad Newsome / Merce Cunningham / Nasheeka Nedsreal
Hall of Videodances Part 1: Future Starts Slow
Past dates
2/24/21
6:00 PM
2/25/21
12:00 AM
2/26/21
12:00 AM
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.
Future Starts Slow
Video dance carries within itself the potential to shape the future of dance: Film as a medium to capture movement, to enrich it, to transport it without boundaries. Video dance has the power to unfold experimentally outside of institutions, to spread. It has political explosive power and can create empowering spaces: because visual effects and new technologies enable the creation of parallel worlds, suspended physical laws, and futuristic aesthetics - the genre already sowed this seed decades ago - and it's ready to bloom!
Rashaad Newsome: Black Magic (2021)
30 Min.
Pt. 1 Future Starts Slow: Rashaad Newsome – Black Magic from Kampnagel on Vimeo.
«My work (...) is a haunting love letter to the Black queer community,» says Rashaad Newsome. His video work BLACK MAGIC (2021) rehashes footage from a 2019 live performance in which Newsome multiplied layers of visual perceptions, through the use of motion tracking software as well as memorable visual effects. The work not only allows us to situate elements of visual art within videodance, and naturally anchor the discipline of voguing within the canon of contemporary dance, but also harnesses new technologies to update and expand the genre of videodance. In three acts, BLACK MAGIC first focuses on the contribution of trans women to the vogue fem movement vocabulary, then in the second part shows the five elements (hands, catwalk, floor performance, spin dips, duck walking) of vogue fem, to make visible in the last part the systematic oppression of the Black queer community, as well as its resistance: in the creation of creative spaces, community and friends. Newsome calls this resistance Black Magic. Rashaad Newsome was last seen at Kampnagel in 2018 with his live performance FIVE HAMBURG.
PRESENTED BY LESLIE-LOHMAN MUSEUM OF ART IN PARTNERSHIP WITH EYEBEAM
Merce Cunningham: Variations V (1966)
50 Min.
Pt. 1 Future Starts Slow: Merce Cunningham – Variations V from Kampnagel on Vimeo.
VARIATIONS V is a testament to the intermedia experimental performance work of the 1960s - an amalgamation of different artistic disciplines that profoundly influenced the entire practice of the genre-premier choreographer and visionary Merce Cunningham. Projections by Stan VanDerBeek inserted themselves as material into the physical performance, the video footage of which was in turn overlaid with distorted television images by Nam June Paik. The choreography in VARIATIONS V exists in a co-dependency with John Cage's sound work: the dancers' movements triggered the sound directly, via twelve sound-sensitive electronic antennas mounted in the space. Musicians immediately processed the generated sound material. Everyday actions in interaction with objects were also used for sound production, and thus embedded in Cunningham's practice of «non-dance» activities as readymades in the sense of Duchamp in the choreography. VARIATIONS V opens our gaze into a forward-looking, artistic practice.
Nasheeka Nedsreal: Memories of Reincarnated Imaginings (2021) Festival Premiere
14 Min.
Pt. 1 Future Starts Slow: Nasheeka Nedsreal – Memories of Reincarnated Imaginings from Kampnagel on Vimeo.
What's in a name, a face, a color, a place, a body, a history, a movement? With every curve, every turn, every swing, our myths reveal themselves as truth. Cartographies of the body etched like memories, generating a becoming as we set flame to fabricated fictions. Tethered to and wrapped in the layers of our being, our textured territories shifting, cracking codes, »unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun.« Nasheeka Nedsreal, born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is a dancer and choreographer working across movement, music and visual art. Her work explores identity, ritual, futurism and improvisation. She is the founder of Soul Sisters Berlin and Black and Brown Bodies in Motion Berlin. Since 2018 she is working with choreographer Trajal Harrel and is a guest dancer at Schauspielhaus Zurich. Further, she has worked as a fashion model, stylist, actress and educator. Recently, she examines the politics of Black hair in a multimedia, solo performance entitled New Growth, which premiered at Ballhaus Naunynstraße. Nedsreal is interested in art as a place of interrogation and activism, freedom and exploration. Her work is often inspired by socio-political and biographical subjects and fuses a combination of dance styles.