COMPOSING INDIVUAL- AND GROUP-IMPROVISATIONS
21.01.- 25.01.19 week 2
by Thomas Hauert
Week 2, Composing Individual- and Group-Improvisations is meant to be a development of the experiences of week 1. Intended for people who have followed week 1 or participated at one of Thomas’ workshops before. Concentrating on composing while improvising, shaping the dance as it’s being invented.
A special focus in this part of workshop will be on the analogy between movement and music. The connection between music and dance is ancient and seems obvious. It’s as if the two are different embodyments of our desire to give an order to our experience of time and space and there lies an infinite creative potential in the analogies as well as in the specificities and interactions of the two forms. We can learn a lot about movement from musicians – composers and performers – for our use of rhythm, timing, tension and release, counterpoint etc.
While working solo, we will complexify and coordinate the movement of our own individual body to create a sense of polyphony within it. As a group, like the musicians of an orchestra playing together one piece of music, the dancers in a space can create a unity by connecting rather than juxtaposing their movement. Shapes or positions in space can be related and given the visual equivalents of harmony or dissonance (vertical connections on the timeline) and the dancers can also create connections referring to past or future events, like melodies, rhythms and dynamics do in music (horizontal connections on timeline). It can be helpful to think about those connections in musical terms to help us find equivalents in movement, yet also here our instrument, the body, and another often underestimated agent: the group, prove to provide abilities to achieve interconnected, interactive movement structures that our (individual) conscious minds could never have conceived of. The connecting group structures allow the dancers to create a shared sense of musicality emerging from the fragmented contribution of everyone involved, both in silence and in relation to an audible or imagined music.
Thomas Hauert
Having built a dancer career with a.o. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, David Zambrano and Pierre Droulers, Swiss Thomas Hauert founded his company ZOO in Brussels. In 1998, he initiated Cows in Space, a piece for five dancers which was consequently awarded at the Rencontres de Seine-Saint-Denis. Since then, he has created more than 20 performances with ZOO a.o. Jetzt (2000), Verosimile (2002), modify (2004, Swiss Dance Prize 2005), Walking Oscar (2006), Accords (2008), You’ve Changed (2010), From B to B (with Àngels Margarit, 2011), Like me more like me (with Scott Heron, 2011) the piece for young audience Danse étoffée sur musique déguisée (2012), Mono (2013), the solo (sweet) (bitter) in 2015, inaudible (2016) and his last group creation How to proceed (2018). In 2010, director Thierry De Mey also took Accords as a base to create the film La Valse, co-produced by European television channel Arte. In addition to his work for ZOO, Thomas was also commissioned to create Hà Mais (2002) with Mozambican dancers, as well as several pieces for the school P.A.R.T.S in Brussels. In 2010, he created a new work for the Zurich Ballet, Il Giornale della necropoli, in 2013 Pond Skaters for the Toronto Dance Theatre, in 2014 the piece Notturnino for the British company of disabled and non-disabled dancers Candoco Dance Company and a new piece for 25 dancers will be premiered in November 2018 for CCN Ballet de Lorraine in Nancy.
Presented all over the world, the work of Thomas first develops from research on movement, with a particular interest in improvisation-based processes exploring the tension between freedom and constraint, individuals and the group, order and disorder, form and formlessness. Regularly invited to participate in improvisation events, he also has a deep interest in the relationship between dance and music. Thomas teaches regularly at P.A.R.T.S. and was Valeska-Gert-guest professor at the Freie Universität Berlin during the winter 2012-13. He was also invited to collaborate in The Forsythe Company’s “Motion Bank” project (ongoing). Since 2013, Thomas Hauert is the artistic director of the bachelor degree in contemporary dance opened within the theatre academy La Manufacture in Lausanne. Thomas Hauert is “artiste en compagnonnage” at Théâtre de Liège (2018-2022) and in residency at Théâtre Les Tanneurs.
Times:
11.00-17.00 workshop
(with a lunch break of 1hour)
Price:
500 for 2 weeks
250 for 1 week (either the first or the second. The second week is intended for people who have followed week 1 or participated at one of Thomas’ workshops before.)
Registration fee of 80 euro is required (as part of the 250)
More information incl. videos about ZOO – Thomas Hauert’s work:
https://zoo-thomashauert.be
Performance: 24.1.2019
Solo Improvisation by Thomas Hauert
Time: 18.30
Duration: 20 to 60 minutes
photo credit: ©Thibault Gregoire
