Residency Laura Kirshenbaum at ICI-CCN de Montpellier – In the garden

The Creative Crossroad artist Laura Kirshenbaum, selected by ICI-CCN de Montpellier, was selected to work on her latest projects "H.A.N.D.S." and her solo "No hard feelings".

Laura Kirshenbaum is a french-israeli choreographer, she was EXERCE MA and graduated in 2017. She is based in Montpellier and sharing her time between the developpement of her work in France, Israël, Sweeden and Belgium, and activelly participating to the Montpellier artistic scene. 

In the frame of Creative Crossroads, she is supported by ICI-CCN de Montpellier, STUK House for Dance, Image and Sound (Leuven, Belgium), 4Culture (Bucarest, Romania) and Tala Dance Center/Kik Melone (Zagreb).

During this first cycle of Creative Crossroad, Laura Kirshenbaum has developped the second part of the H.A.N.D.S. project’s "No Hard Feelings" (creation november 2020). 

She had a creation residency in STUK (Leuven, Belgium) from July the 30th to August the 10th, 2019, then a creation residency in studio Yano at ICI-CCN de Montpellier (France) from September the 23rd to October the 6th, 2019. 

She presented her solo Words, first part of the H.A.N.D.S project’s, was presented with the support of ICI-CCN of Montpellier within the Creative Crossroad, in the frame of the Magdalena festival, in Montpellier on October the 12d, 2019. 

ICI-CCN is also providing her an administrative support for the all cycle in order to help the company structure itself. 

In the garden

During the September 2022 residency at ICI-CCN de Montpellier, Laura Kirshenbaum is working on her latest work In the garden. The research will partly take place at the Montpellier Botanical Garden.

23.09.2022: work-in-progress - public opening

About the project

Gardens are dynamic arenas where major physical events and microcosmic events happen simultaneously. These “events” are diverse in nature, due to the different living forms that inhabit the garden : from humans to small animals to vegetative forms of any kind. These elements are woven in reciprocal interrelationship, however this correspondence is delicate and not always made visible. In the garden is an in situ project, an eco-system whereby matters of entanglements and the possibilities and configurations of kinship amongst non human forms and humans are studied, practiced and shared between the performers and spectators.

In the garden is a durational performance on possible forms of entanglements (enchevêtrements) among interspecies, a research on the multilayered possibilities of interconnectedness.

NO HARD FEELINGS 

is the second part of H.A.N.D project where anything can happen and nothing is taken for granted.

Going back to Genesis, Laura Kirshenbaum alters archetypal representations of women, calling upon Eve’s avatars and their portrayal over time. With a sense of irony and humour, she celebrates and dances her constantly becoming selves and herstories: at times a witch, a whore, both snake and bird, ghost, fluid, irruptive.
Her approach to corporeality is playful: displacing images, fictionalising facts, revealing instabilities.
Gaps proliferate.
With imagination at hand and trouble in action, eating the apple isn’t that big of a deal.

Choreography and performance Laura Kirshenbaum
Music Paola Stella Minni and Konstantinos Rizos in collaboration with Laura Kirshenbaum
Scenography, Light and Costumes Anat Bosak
External eye Myrto Ktstiki, Nitsan Margaliot 
Production Golden Hands
Co production ICI CCN Montpellier - Occitanie / Pyrénées Méditerranée / Direction Christian Rizzo, STUK house for image and sound, WASP working art space and production Bucarest 

NO HARD FEELINGS is enjoying the support of Creative Crossroads program (2018-2020), commissioned by Life Long Burning-  Towards a sustainable Eco-System for Contemporary Dance in Europe.

Residencies ICI-CCN Montpellier - Occitanie / Pyrénées Méditerranée / Direction Christian Rizzo, STUK , Kelim Center for Choreography (Israel), Studio La nef (Montpellier ), Honolulu (Nantes), ENSAD École Nationale Supérieure d'Art Dramatique de Montpellier.

Dance Hub residency at Antisezona

Laura Kirshenbaum is a french-israeli choreographer, who came to Zagreb presented solo piece "No hard feelings" and started to work on new site specific project "In the garden / faune". From image to image, from one performative state to another, in this unplugged version of "No Hard Feelings" Laura Kirshenbaum retakes the materials of her original stage work and installs them otherwise in the white space of the museum. This new context proposes new ways of engaging with the feminine archive; starting from screened images of feminine representations, she revisits Eve and her avatars over the span of history.  Her body becomes an intersection of temporalities and myths, physicalities and attitudes, through which she questions how processes of learning and unlearning form new stories and images. She becomes part of a great female lineage, adding herperspective as a creature of the 21st century, a contemporary pop figure. Here, voice, music, language, image, objects, body and face are the components with which Laura tackles the given history that has been passed on for years: from mouth to ear, from one body to the other. During the residency artist started to work on upcoming in situ project In the garden/ Faune , in which the botanical garden is perceived as a multifaceted arena where notions such as time - space entanglements , the sensorial and living archive are explored by the performers' bodies

View her experience report in the upper right column and in the gallery below.