PSR Choreographic practices and environment

ICI – CCN de Montpellier implemented its first Performance Situation Room in cooperation with the Kelim Center – Batyam (IL) with the focus: "Choreographic practices and environment".

Kelim and ICI-CCN are both structures working in the field of creation, production, training and research. 

In a way we feel that the connection with Montpellier Choreography Center (CCN) has already naturally been made through cross direction movement of students and artists that are active in both centers.

After our first exchanges, we could identify that we both share a proximity of our missions and a common kind of philosophy and goals :

- an attention to our context

- a reflexive and contextualized approach of choreographic creation and the ways to accompany it

From that similarities, we would like to explore how each project is designed by the specificities of each environment and experiences.

In that perspective, we would like to propose a cooperation’s project builds on the interpenetration between context and activities.

The first questions we could ask are : 

- how do we situate our self in a context ? 

- what the context of work could change / offer ? 

How artists in dance field interact with the environment today ? : site specific project, ecological approach, the question of nature / landscape in dance pieces, could we speak of documentary dance as we speak of documentary theatre ?

- How could we use the knowledge we develop in our practice and context to propose models ? what kind of influence it could have on the cultural, social and political field ? 

But also : 

- how artists are working together ? how does work the co-creation ? 

- how could we make the knowledge to circulate and to be shared ? 

All this questions allow us to explore all aspects of both our projects (programmation, production, creation and training). 

Both of us are postulating that it’s only in exchanging and learning more about each other that we will be able to build a strong and long-term project but also to extend both practices. 

November 13 to 15, 2018 at ICI-CCN de Montpellier  

November the 13rd, 2018: Interaction between choreographic practices and environment

9.30-10:30  – Introduction meeting of the teams and the two venues, Moshe Shecter, Sharon Zuckerman Weiser and Tamar Feldman Ben Hanan for Kelim Center and Anne Bautz, Anne Kerzerho for ICI-CCN de Montpellier. 

10:30-13:30– Site specific practices proposed by the students of exerce : Uri Shafir, Alicja Czyczel

These practices will come from a workshop dedicated to the interactions between the choreographic tools and urban environment, attended by the students in October, led by the choreographer Jenifer Monson and Francesco Careri, an Italian architect and co-founder of the Stalker.

14:30-17:30 : 

lecture of Joanne Clavel, researcher on environmental humanities and dance + discussion

Joanne Clavel biography : 

Joanne Clavel is a contract researcher at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, associated with the University of Paris 8. 

At the beginning of her research career in scientific ecology, she studied the impact of global changes (climate, land use) on biodiversity. 

Today, she works in environmental humanities - art, aesthetics, politics - after having trained in dance at the University of Paris 8, in aesthetic mediation at ULg in Belgium and in environmental humanities at UCBerkeley. 

Trained in dance and music, she co-founded the artist collective Natural Movement in 2008 to weave art and ecology in various places.

The current ecocide demands a radical change in our lifestyles and challenges the artist's place in society. It investigates the development of an ecological culture, an ecological "art of living", in the world of art and somatic practices but also among farmers and nature lovers.

20:00– Joint dinner.

 

November 14, 2018 : Meeting with local artists 

> the two teams andHamdi Dridi (choreographer), Paola Stella Mini and Kostas Constantinos (choreographers), Germana Civera (choreographer).

10:00-13:00– A joint workshop of three hours led communally by the participators. Sharing practices and ideas 

14:00-17:30  – meeting in the studio ("studio/office dating"). Sharing between French and Israeli artists – each will have time to talk and to present video of his work (past and current).

 

November 15, 2018: seminar on Practice based Research with 2 artists who have initiated a research program that gathered a group of artists and researchers :  Joris Lacoste (Encyclopédie de la parole) and Mathieu Bouvier ( Pour un atlas des figures) .

In the evening  – intimate studio performance / presentation / talk which will be open to the public – work in progress Emilie Labedan (Studio Bagouet)

 

 

February 18 – 25, 2018 - KELIM CENTER ISRAEL :

Invitation to the MA Exerce to attend to André Lepecki seminars in the context of the exchange program « knowing each other » organize by ICI-CCN de Montpellier and Kelim Center 

Kelim Choreography Center in Bat Yam is pleased to host researcher and curator, Professor André Lepecki, Chair of the Department of Performance Studies at New York University (NYU). Supported by ARTIS (www.artis.art), the Center for Contemporary Art (CCA) Tel Aviv, and Outset Bialik Residency Israel.

Kelim Choreography Center is happy to host Lepecki, who will lead, for the first time in Israel, two seminars for choreographers, researchers, and curators, as well as a lecture for the general public. This is a rare opportunity to have an in-depth meeting with one of the leading world voices in performance, and specifically dance.

During his visit to Israel (February 18-25, 2019), Lepecki is discussing contemporary choreography strategies in a lecture for the general public, will lead a seminar in curating, which will focus on curating as an act of shared imagination with invisible forces that design the field, drawing on several exhibitions Lepecki curated at art institutions around the world. He will lead a five-day-seminar for choreographers and researchers, which will deal with the current relationship between choreography and politics. Through collective reading of texts by leading theoreticians, the seminar will offer an expansion on these two concepts through a special focus on contemporary works that incorporate this line of thought.

Professor André Lepecki is the editor of several dance and performance theory anthologies, the author of the book “Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement” (translated to Hebrew in 2013) and of “Singularities: Dance in the Age of Performance” (2016). He is a curator of dance and performance events, among them the revived exhibition and performance “18 Happenings in 6 Parts” by Alan Kaprow, for which he received a special prize from the International Association of Critics United States.

In 2006, Lepecki’s first book, “Exhausting Dance,” was published. In it Lepecki examines the works of contemporary choreographers in Europe and the United States from the beginning of the 1990s onward. In his encompassing and extraordinary research, Lepecki depicts the way in which a new generation of choreographers challenges the understanding of dance by exhausting the concept of movement. Further, Lepecki clearly noted the intrinsic dialogue within the fields of performance arts, visual art, and critical theory over the past thirty years that  caused nothing short of a revolution in the way in which contemporary dance is perceived. His work as scholar and curator in the decade since has had a significant role in the presence of contemporary dance in leading museums and galleries around the world, and influenced the curatorial approach of festival directors as well as contemporary discourse about dance research and creation.

 

Those 2 moments were the first steps to imagine further and stronger collaborations between the two structures.  ICI-CCN and Kelim Center are actually working on possible further collaboration. 
Participants of the ICI – CCN in Kelim Center were Anne Kerzerho (pedagogical director of the exerce Master program) and the two students Uri Shafir and Nina Berclaz.