Wild Cards participation in ex.e.r.ce master degree Alexandra Balasoiu

Participation in ex.e.r.ce master degree in choreography, research and performance

The 4Culture Association, in partnership with Centre Chorégraphique National Montpellier Languedoc Roussillon offers the third Wild Card, as part of the cooperation Life Long Burning (2013-2018) project.

The program runs from September 15 to October 3, 2014, at the Centre National de Montpellier Languedoc Roussillon Chorégraphique, France and is addressed to a young Romanian artist, who is selected upon the application process below.

He/She attends an intensive 3 week workshop held by Deborah Hay and DD Dorvillier, organized as part of a broader "Exhibiting the Research” theme. In this context, the artist or the student will be integrated into a group of students of the ex.e.r.ce Master and will have the particularity to integrate, in one way or another, writings in their artistic work, following all their mentors’ teachings.

Two American choreographers from two different generations, Deborah Hay and DD Dorvillier, will share the way they put the writings and artistic processes in relation. Deborah Hay will share the use of scores in her work and DD Dorvillier will propose a Touch Move Talk and Write practice.

About the mentors

Deborah Hay was born in Brooklyn. She moved to Manhattan in the 1960s. Hay danced with the Cunningham Dance Company. She also shared with her Judson colleagues the artificial distinction between trained and untrained performers.

In 1970 she left New York to live in a community in northern Vermont. Soon, she distanced herself from the performing arena, producing “Ten Circle Dances”, performed on 10 consecutive nights within a single community and no audience whatsoever.

In 1976 Hay left Vermont and moved to Austin, Texas. Her attention focused on a set of practices (“playing awake”) that engaged the performer on several levels of consciousness at once. While developing her concepts she instituted a yearly four-month group workshop that culminated in large group public performances and from these group pieces she distilled her solo dances.

In the late 1990’s Deborah Hay focused almost exclusively on rarefied and enigmatic solo dances based on her new experimental choreographic method, such as “The Man Who Grew Common in Wisdom”, “Voilà”, “The Other Side of O”, “Fire”, “Boom Boom Boom”, “Music”, “Beauty”, “The Ridge”, “Room”, performing them around the world and passing them on to noted performers in the US, Europe and Australia.mostly untrained dancers to choreographing dances for experienced dancer/ choreographers. In 2004 she received a NYC Bessie award for her quartet “The Match”.

In 2006 she choreographed “O, O” for five New York City choreographer/dancers and then for seven French dancers of comparable experience. The Festival d’Automne, in Paris, presented “The Match” in 2005, “O, O” in 2006, and “If I Sing To You”, in 2008, which was commissioned by The Forsythe Company and which toured extensively in Europe and Australia. In 2009 The Toronto Dance Theatre premiered her work, “Up Until Now”, and in 2010 “Lightning” premiered at the Helsinki Festival, a dance for six Finnish dancers/ choreographers.

In 2007 Hay received a BAXten Award. In October 2009 Deborah received an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Dance from the Theater Academy in Helsinki, Finland and in 2010 she was awarded an US Artist Friends Fellowship and a 2011 artist’s grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, based in New York. In April 2012, Deborah Hay became one of the 21 American performing artists to receive the inaugural and groundbreaking 2012 Doris Duke Artist Award.

After a two year research collaboration with Motion Bank, a project of the Forsythe Company, an online interactive website dedicated to Hay's choreographic aesthetics launched in June 2013.

DD Dorvillier is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher. Creating performances exclusively in and for New York City since 1989, she began developing her works in other countries in 2009.

Her projects have been presented in New York at Danspace Project, The Kitchen, NY Live Arts, and PS 122, and abroad at ImPulsTanz, Kaaitheater, and Rencontres Internationales Chorégraphiques de Seine-St Denis, among others. Her most recent work, “Danza Permanente” — a Beethoven string quartet transposed into movement for four dancers, in silence — premiered at STUK in 2012.

In 2000, she founded human future dance corps to support her individual work and collaborations. Over the years, she has collaborated with Jennifer Monson, Jennifer Lacey, Zeena Parkins, Yvonne Meier, and Sarah Michelson, among others. Honors include a Creative Capital grant (2013), multiple MAP Fund grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship (2011), and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant (2007). For 2014, Danspace Project has commissioned “Diary of an Image”, a four-week platform dedicated to her work and practice. In 2015, “Extra Shapes”, a new work commissioned by EMPAC, will explore spectatorship and the perceptual and functional differences between movement, sound, and light.

The program offers:

Participation to the ex.e.r.ce Master program for one young Romanian artist.
Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier Languedoc Roussillon offers:

+ educational costs for 3 weeks: max 2500 Euros!

+ costs of the flight / accommodation and per diem / tickets for mandatory shows or visits: max. 2.500 Euros

Applicant profile:

The applicant must be based in Romania, and have a nationality of a country of the European Union. The application is open to professional dancers/choreographers, as well as students or nonprofessional dancers (as long as they already have a basic training).

4Culture chose the Romanian artist Alexandra Balasoiu for this slot!

Program duration: Monday, September 15, 2014 — Friday, October 3, 2014 (3 weeks).