Blog
, Säfsten produktion
WITHIN PRACTICE – 18.06.2022
trompoppies:blackmilk: tiran willemse
“Black male melancholia”
– tiran willemse
It is dark. Four spotlights beat the ground and form a pulse, a rhythm, a beat. Spotlights searching. In the dark.
A shadow appears. At the corner of the room. It moves softly. Hides, is constantly on the go, and still very still.
This is how I read the opening of Tiran Willemse’s trompoppies:blackmilk.
A smaller stage is placed in the back of the larger stage room where the performance takes place. In front of it there are a lot of microphones. A line of spotlights creates a hallway from the audience to the smaller scene. Smoke, darkness and lightshows creates an intense and enchanting atmosphere in the room.
Willemse moves in relation to the light, the room and the atmosphere. With, and without rap music. Sometimes he disappears (due to smoke, darkness or placing). In one part of the performance, he repeats “Now you see me. Now you don’t”.
He gives the movements connected to black masculinity a new context, and places them in relation to femininity, performativity, wanting to be see, running, hiding, and a want for being invisible.
There is a part of the show where he just keeps running, holding up the tempo, the strength, the image. I do not know for how long he ran, I do not know if he was running from or towards something, or if he just ran and ran without getting anywhere.
Willemse’s trompoppies:blackmilk captures black masculinity in a number of ways, out of levels of interpretation, of forms. He creates a space for the melancholy, the pride, the strength and the will to keep running. The show keeps reinventing itself, keeps creating perspectives and depth. It never gets too long, or too slow. It keeps giving.
Vår Maria Granados-Langeland
Photos by Carla Schleiffer
, Säfsten produktion
WITHIN PRACTICE – 17.06.2022
Practice presentations: Andros Zins-Browne & Alma Söderberg
Andros Zins-Browne presented the results from his four days of workshops at the festival. Five bodies, who had all been at Andros’ workshops, showed their investigation in and interpretation of memes and gifs. The choreography was improvised and embodied how the memes and gifs operate, spreading quickly in a huge crowd, but resonates differently from reader to reader, or from context to context. They are repetitive, but still their meaning evolves. What happens with the meaning of a movement if it never stops evolving, and if the interpretation of it is different from body to body?
Alma Söderberg sat on a chair.
Through talking/singing/noising while dancing
(still sitting on a chair)
she presented her current practice in a raw and honest way
after giving birth the pelvis floor might be somewhat uncontrollable
which is the reason of a dancer’s attachment to a chair
The practice presentation showed how a dancer can adapt, how the dance evolves due to its circumstances, and how these circumstances can in fact lead to a new artistic expression
Vår Maria Granados-Langeland
Photos by Nemo Stocklassa Hinders
, Säfsten produktion
WITHIN PRACTICE – 16.06.2022
Practice presentations + contemplative concert: BamBam Frost, Liz Kinoshita + Eli Keszler
The evening started off with two practice presentations, 40 minutes each, followed by a 30 minute break before Eli Keszler finished the evening with a drum-concert.
First out was Kinoshita. She never stopped moving, talked and moved at the same time. She accentuated the importance of being safe. For Kinoshita, this means doing a practice in long lasting (professional) relations with her teams, choreographers, dancing partners and companies. She gave us a glimpse of her wide range of material: from the more common musical tap dancing to an avant-garde feeling of an audio-performance and to the more classical expression of dancing too, while following the audio of an instrumental orchestra. Her practice shows not only a wide range of dance expressions, but also how dance suddenly touches other art forms, that the art forms are not separated, but melts into one another. Kinoshita sang in various ways; the names of Islandic volcanos, a mash up of beatboxing and singing. Being all the instruments needed, she sang lyrics in a classical way, and made sound of emotions in a more abstract way. She told us about her practice while still moving, and the telling, the moving, the singing and the dancing melted in to one.
Frost, just as Kinoshita, gives her friends and teams importance, and agency, as a part of her practice. In fact, they were highly present in the room, and in Frost’s line of thoughts during her practice. They exist through fiction, and imaginary skills, which is essential in her practice. Frost explained the practice of rocking – a practice of change, where a movement gradually changes through repetition. The new movements appearing through change was given meaning through associations and fiction. In this way a fictional fantasy world was highly present during the performance presentation. Through American pop cultural references, a show girl kept appearing on stage. Frost kept seeking and embracing pleasure, and let her be, giving the audience the pleasure of entertainment.
The concert with Eli Keszler was a solo-drum-concert, that lasted for approximately 1 hour. There were no words exchanged, and the music played non-stop. The drum set was placed in the middle of the much larger stage room of MDT, and the lightning made a clear shadow of Keszler playing on the walls. Behind him: projections of short videos and photos from everyday life. The music gave life and an atmosphere to reading these pictures: depending on the music the same photos could be melancholic, humoristic or appreciative; almost as a tribute to life. Sitting in silence, surrounded by the ongoing drums, the concert gave space for imagination, relaxation and reflection.
Vår Maria Granados-Langeland
Photos by Nemo Stocklassa Hinders
, Säfsten produktion
WITHIN PRACTICE – 13.06.2022
THE WATER – Sharing session and Panel by Samlingen
A huge, dark blue and glittery fabric is hanging from the ceiling and down under our feet. It simulates water, a waterfall. In the pool of water made by this fabric, there is another, real, inflatable baby-pool, filled with drinks for everyone in the room.
We do a brief 1-minute meditation on the theme “Water and Practice”. Then we share the memories in and to the circle, to Samlingen. The shared memories are written down on a timeline. Quickly “time” became another theme of the event. The atmosphere is pretty relaxed, (personal note/read in: we have gin in our system) we are happy to share and listen, to reflect on water, in both concrete and abstract ways.
The practices shared reflected on moving like water, moving with a feeling of floating, and letting the water in us have agency. Referring to a practice being something you do more than once, the repetition. And reflecting on water as something that gives the feeling of safety, that water is in us, that all water is connected, it connects us, and it connects the world, holding the world together. We come from water, we are in water, and we do always relate to water, water is the one thing that all humans need no matter what. As a matter of fact, water is almost never just water, it is always kind of infected, or in relation to something else. This gives room for a peaceful and ecological point of view when surrounding oneself with the thought of water.
Vår Maria Granados-Langeland
Photos by Nemo Stocklassa Hinders
, Magnus Nordberg
Note by Michikazu Matsune
Sometime during the autumn of 2019, I was contacted by Björn Säfsten who asked if I would be interested in coming to Stockholm to share my practice within the framework of “Within Practice”. My immediate response was: “Of course!”. Little did we know what was about to happen in the spring of 2020 …
Travel restrictions due to COVID-19, and the thought of not being able to travel to Stockholm, made me pivot. I was trying to figure out a way to do distance-based work with the workshop participants, and to be able to provide them with tasks that they could do on their own. So, I developed a concept based on a series of task-cards.
I call this project For Instance – since the tasks can be executed instantly. They enable immediate interpretation, and a variety of possible outcomes. The aim is not to master or finish the work. It stays flexible, adjustable, and open-ended.
I was finally able to travel to Stockholm in the autumn of 2020 and had the opportunity of working directly with the students and participants in the workshop, which made me very happy! The concept will however remain as a shared tool and do-it-yourself-work.
Michikazu Matsune
June 2021
For Instance – Scores is a working method, created like a game that is paired with both performative and choreographic tasks. The workcan be carried out individually or by a group. For Instance consists of approximately 50 cards and the users of this work can perform each idea as is, as well as create and explore their own spontaneous combinations and variations. The process plays with the dynamics that emerge in the gap between ideas and interpretation, expectation and realization. Poetical, absurd, simple, fun, realistic, impossible!
Preparation:
Print the cards.
(Suggested size is A5)
Option 1:
Shuffle the cards and pick one randomly.
Perform the task.
Option 2:
Read the tasks.
Place cards together and create a composition.
Perform the composition.
Variations:
Make variations.
You are also able to add your own tasks.
Download Cards: www.michikazumatsune.info/images/forinstancecards.pdf
Web link: www.michikazumatsune.info/works/forinstancecards.htm
Michikazu Matsune utilizes diverse approaches in his artistic work, ranging between stage-performances, interventions in public spaces, and fabricating artefacts for Performative Action. Matsune’s work, often containing elements of poetic absurdity and a subtle sense of humour, reflects on current themes in our globalized society – in a playful yet critical way. His recent stage-work, including All Together (2018), consists of a trio, joined on stage by Elizabeth Ward and Frans Poelstra. The performance is based on stories of the people who are unable to attend and see the actual performance. In reaction to the COVID-19 crisis, Michikazu Matsune has initiated a project called Performance Homework (2020), which features works by over 25 artists and ideas that can be carried out independently at home. Matsune’s solo-works have toured extensively, to international festivals and institutions. For example Goodbye (2016) which is based on farewell-letters written by various people, and for various reasons. Dance, if you want to enter my country! (2015) is focused on a bizarre, yet true, story of an African-American dancer who was forced to dance at an airport passport control in order to prove that he was a professional dancer. This was to eliminate suspicions directed at him, caused by his Muslim first name.
Matsune has been teaching performance practice since 2012, and has been a guest tutor at Iceland University of the Arts (Master in Performing Arts), University of Agdar in Norway, Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz (HZT) / Universität der Künste Berlin, as well as Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance. Michikazu Matsune is originally from the seaside town of Kobe and has been based in Vienna since the 1990’s.
www.michikazumatsune.info