REUNION
by Mark Tompkins,
with Vera Mantero, Frans Poelstra, Meg Stuart, Mark Tompkins, David Zambrano,
and Peter Jacquemyn, Gašper Piano
May 23 -28
Mark Tompkins will be back this spring with REUNION
In collaboration with Tictac he has invited five improvisers : Vera Mantero, Frans Poelstra, Meg Stuart, Mark Tompkins and David Zambrano, whose paths have crossed over the past 30 years, to share a week of performances, masterclasses and conferences in where they teach, practice, perform and question improvisation and real time composition. The 2 music improvisers Gašper Piano and Peter Jacquemyn will join the team.
PERFORMING IMPROVISATION:
What are the tools and strategies you use when improvising on stage?
What has changed in improvisational performance in the past and today?
How do years of improvising inform and influence your set and improvised work?
Biographies
Mark Tompkins is an American dancer, singer, choreographer and teacher. He founded the Company I.D.A. in 1983 and is now situated in France. His unique way of fabricating unidentified performance objects that mix dance, music, voice, text and video, has become his signature. Renowned for his teaching, his passion for Real time composition leads him to collaborate with many dancers and musicians around the world.
Peter Jacquemyn, (Belgium), moves easily between the visual arts and music. As a sculptor he assaults tree trunks with axe and chainsaw. His concerts are just as spectacular: with unbridled energy he lovingly wrestles his double bass. It is a battle in which all means are fair: bows (1, 2 or 3), dented soda cans, plastic bags, crumpled paper, mutes, horns, retuned strings,… All of this ranges Peter Jacquemyn among Belgium’s most interesting improvisers with a very justified international reputation.
Vera Mantero studied classical dance with Anna Mascolo and danced in the Gulbenkian Ballet between 1984 and 1989. She started choreographing in 1987 and, since 1991, has become a benchmark of the New Portuguese Dance, and has been presenting her solo and group work all over Europe and also in other continents. She frequently improvises with Mark Tompkins, Meg Stuart and Steve Paxton
Gašper Piano is a slovenian composer, musician and sound artist. He is active as an independent artist for performative arts (theatre, dance, performance), visual arts (multimedia projects, installations, film, documentary film, video, TV projects) and acoustic-experimental-electronic groups. His works have been presented at national and international festivals, exhibitions, multimedia projects, contemporary dance performances and theater plays. In 2006 he was acknowledged as a budding artist by the Slovenian Ministry of Culture. Parallel he is a MPD in social anthropology and culturology.
Frans Poelstra (NL/A) graduated from the SNDO in Amsterdam in 1984. Since the late 1980s he has been working regularly with Mark Tompkins in various capacities. He also shares a long term working relation with performer/writer Robert Steijn. In 2004 he moved to Vienna and collaborates there with local artists such as Oleg Soulimenko, Michikazu Matsune, Elizabeth Ward, Krõõt Juurak, Navaridas&Deutinger, MixedAbilityDance Company and the youth theater group schallundrauch agency. He created several solo performances, often based on autobiographical material in which he mixes dance, (live) music, video and text.
Meg Stuart, born in New Orleans, is a choreographer, director and dancer who lives and works in Berlin and Brussels. With her company Damaged Goods, founded in 1994, she has created over thirty productions, moving freely between the genres of dance, theater and visual arts. Her work is driven by a sense for experiment and artistic cross-pollination, challenging the limits of the body and expanding our perception of reality. She uses fictions and shifting narrative layers to expose the scripts that are written not only on our bodies, but also on the spaces and landscapes that we move in.
David Zambrano has been active in the international dance community for more than 35 years, and his passion for cultural exchange continues to influence his work. Zambrano is an ambassador and liaison across many borders, bringing together artists from all over the planet for his projects. He has taught his own methods and approach to dance in more than 75 countries and has performed at hundreds of venues across the world. His pieces range from set choreography, structured improvisation, and pure improvisation. Born in Venezuela, Zambrano spent 15 years in New York and now lives in between Amsterdam and Brussels and created his artistic home Tictac Art Centre in Brussels in 2018.
The program:
MASTERCLASSES (blind date)
Monday till Saturday:
10:00 – 13:00
Masterclasses will happen by blind date. Each artist will guide a morning, but which day will be decided just before.
LECTURES:
Monday / Wednesday / Friday:
19:00
Talks in between the artists and possible Q&A with audience.
Included in the fee for the workshop participants. General public is also welcome, but is requested a donation.
One of the nights will also be the book launch of ONE SHOT, a book about improvisation written by Mark Tompkins and Meg Stuart
PERFORMANCES:
Tuesday / Thursday / Saturday
19:00
3 evenings of performances by all the artists invited (2 nights with musicians, 1 night without).
Included in the fee for the workshop participants. General public is also welcome, but is requested a donation.
Price
250€
which includes the 6 master classes workshop-fee, 3 performances entrance contributions and 3 lectures entrance contributions.
A registration fee of 80€ is required, as part of the workshop fee.
