Dance Hub participation in a workshop led by Martine Pisani and Theo Kooijman for Olivia Hild

In the frame of the Dance Hub activity, danceWEB selected the Austrian artist Olivia Hild to participate in a workshop led by Martine Pisani and Theo Kooijman in the frame of the exerce master program, hosted and organised by the network partner I.C.I – CCN de Montpellier.

When: 04. – 15.03.2019

Where: I.C.I. – CCN de Montpellier

The workshop evolved around Martin Pisani's performance "undated":
"The starting point is the experience of our last work UNDATED, not in terms of reproducing content but rather using its mode of construction as a basis.
Unlike UNDATED, where all the choreographic patterns come from previous works with ten dancers, who are already familiar with us, this composition workshop has been conceived from elements specific to the participants.

This is all about establishing a catalogue of actions and situations which are already present in the work of each of the participating students. This sort of ready-to-use toolkit will allow us to develop a series of scores, while questioning what should be shown, here and now.

We would like to emphasize the notion of play, in the mechanical, amusing sense, bringing the whole group together to build a live, mobile choreographic object. For this, we plan to give the piece a workshop or daily rehearsal feeling."

The participants of the workshop had a 2 days practical & theoretical workshop about light design with Caty Olive.

Martine Pisani was born in Marseillle and has lived and worked in Paris since 1985. She started dancing at the age of 22 and immediately became a performer in the Marseille-based Dunes group shows. At the same time, she did numerous internships, particularly with Odile Duboc and American choreographers, David Gordon and Yvonne Rainer, giving her the taste for dance free from all formalism.
Her choreographic career has been greatly inspired by the works of Robert Bresson, Guy Debord, Stéphane Mallarme, Lawrence Weiner, Robert Filliou, to mention but the most outstanding.
She created La compagnie du solitaire in 1992, producing around twenty works, including "Fragments tires du sommeil" (1992), "Le grand combat" (1993), "Là ou nous sommes" (1995), "L’air d’aller" (1998), "sans" (2000) ), "Slow down" (2002), "Bande à part" (2004), "Contre Bande" (2005) and "Hors sujet ou le bel ici" (2007).
From 2007, her work centered on multi-piece cycles on the same theme. "Running times" (2007-2010) revolves around the "time of philosophers" and "Relativité générale" (2011-2014), around the "time of scientists", exposing the subject of an uncertain body put into perspective with the laws of modern physics.
Since "Profit and Loss" in 2009, followed by the outdoor experience of "as far as the eye can hear" in 2010, her creation has been based on the notion of indoor or outdoor landscapes, infused and transformed by "little nothings”.
She favors the presence of performers, the notion of play, the absence of illusionism, technical sparseness and a dialogue between equals with the spectator.
Transmission to dancers, students or amateurs is completely integral to her creative work, giving workshops purpose in the form of presentation.

Latest works: "rien n’est établi" (sextet 2014), "the film as far as the eye can hear" (2014) with her eponymous trio and "Grandeur nature" (installation-performance 2015).

"UNDATED" (2017) stems from the unlikely idea of a same-time-same-place performance of all her works, with ten performers having all already danced with her.

UNDATED (extract): https://vimeo.com/252754677
http://www.ciemartinepisani.fr/

Theo Kooijman, born in the Netherlands, has lived and worked in Paris since 1991.
Painter and engraver by training, he graduated from the School of Fine Arts in Kampen (NL).
He lived in Ghent (B) between 1983 and 1990.
He regularly exhibits his paintings and engravings in special places in France, but also in Belgium and the Netherlands.
He has been dancing in Martine Pisani's creations since 1995. He also works with Nathalie Clouet, Manuel Coursin, Alain Michard and Carole Perdereau as a performer, and with Martine Pisani as assistant, performer and stage designer.
In 2008, he directed "kooijman.", a performance based on a series of 4,000 negatives of photographic self-portraits and in 2013, "Instantané", commissioned by Marseille-Provence 2013-European Culture Capital.

https://www.theokooijman.com/

View the experience report of Olivia Hild in the right column.