Wild Card residency for Maria-Elisabeta Trefas

Nominated by the network 4Culture Bucharest, Ultima Vez hosted the artist Maria Elisabeta Trefas for a residency in the Ultima Vez studios in Brussels from July 23 till August 5, 2017.

Maria Elisabeta Trefas is a young Romanian artist who is active as a dancer as well as a choreographer. She receives support to develop her work from 4Culture in Bucharest and has amongst others participated at the international cooperation program Ergonomica  in WASP Working Art Space and Production. 

Ergonomica – dance and architecture in the urban space, proposes an interdisciplinary approach, based on creativity, in order to bring together the dance and the architecture in a process of reconstruction / reproduction and urban regeneration through body and movement.

Feedback Maria Elisabeta Trefas :

After the wild card residency offered by LLB in Brussels, Belgium, I created a structure, a plan around which I further explored in Bucharest, Romania, and finally created the solo performance "What kind of mixt are you ?” performed within the eXplore festival #12.

I was interested in how people influence each other and how they have to change and adapt to certain situations.

I started the process by collecting some texts linked to influence, transformation, changing, adaption, and play with it by cutting words, adding, switching, reversing the order or the meaning. I have also used a method, which I have met in one of Ivo Dimchev’s workshops, a method of self brainstorming.

Every evening I ended up surrounded by pieces of paper, notebooks, even just words, in an empty studio, with a very loaded brain but no practical work. The subject wasn’t just one but severals now.

Eventually, I found myself in an intense situation as I had to work on human influences but by being alone. The influence wasn’t coming from the people anymore, but from all the things surrounding me. They were creating this thinking body which was I.

This was the point where I realised I should stop procrastinating and start the actual movement research. I worked with sensations, with different intensities, with different qualities.

I’ve also been inspired by a sequence from Romeo Castellucci’s “Tragedia Endogonidia”. I have found it the most relatable representation of the sensation I was looking for. In the end, this has materialized into the last part of “What kind of mixt are you?”.

I am indeed very grateful to Rob Hayden and Inaki Azpillaga which took a look at my work and offered me a refreshing perspective.

As a first residency experience, I felt quite difficult into managing it by myself at the beginning. I always had a hard time finding the inner patience. Right after the two weeks, I couldn’t tell if it helped me or not. It was a pretty crowded thinking process. But time passed and I realised that I have been able to break some boundaries regarding the creative process and I gained a new perspective on it. I have also learned that I have to deal more with the mindstate I am in, to be

aware of it and to work with the way it is at the moment.

As shown above, the residency was a very good opportunity for me to strengthen the process of getting through encountered difficulties, became more patient, and helped me look at the working process from new perspectives.