Category Archives: Productions

Kiss The One We Are

Daniel Linehan / Hiatus & Dance On Ensemble

Concept & Choreography Daniel Linehan
Creation & Performance Javier Arozena, Ziv Frenkel, Gorka Gurrutxaga Arruti, Anneleen Keppens, Noa Liev, Omagbitse Omagbemi, Jean-Baptiste Portier, Jone San Martin, Louise Tanoto
Creative partner Noa Liev
Costumes Frédérick Denis
Scenography Marie Szersnovicz
Scenography Assistant Janneke Hertoghs
Light Design Elke Verachtert
Sound Design Christophe Rault
Production Hiatus (Brussels, BE)
In collaboration with Dance On Ensemble (Berlin, DE)

Coproduction STUK House for Dance, Image & Sound (Leuven, BE), Théâtre National de Chaillot (Paris, FR), Perpodium (Antwerpen, BE)
Residencies CC De Factorij (Zaventem, BE), Kaaitheater (Brusselles, BE), DE SINGEL (Antwerpen, BE), STUK House for Dance, Image & Sound (Leuven, BE), vierNulvier (Gent, BE)
International representation Damien Valette (Paris, FR)

Daniel Linehan/Hiatus Daniel Linehan, Hiatus is supported by the Flemish authorities. In partnership with BOS+, Hiatus contributes to the reforestation of our planet.

In this piece, Daniel Linehan invites nine dancers to reflect on their histories and what role dance has played in their lives. What are the reasons one chooses to spend so much of one’s life dancing? How does one continue? When did the dance start and when does the dance end?

In 2019 Linehan created a solo called Body of Work in which he reflected on his own history of dancing, and in Kiss The One We Are, he takes this mode of internal questioning and makes it external, revisiting some of the same intimate questions that he asked himself in this personal solo, and posing these questions to a group of dancers with their own diverse histories. In asking these questions, together we reflect on the meaning of dance itself. Dance has the potential to make connections between individual histories and bring these stories together into a common field of play, through the physical connection of bodies as well as the attention we give each other when we share embodied experiences. Our dancing together can also connect to the many diverse dances that are always happening all around us: the play of animals, the slow choreography of plants growing, the rhythms of the ocean, the dance of atomic particles continually vibrating and interacting. Each dancer is given the space to reflect on what it is to experience life and the surrounding world through the lens of dance.

The creation is part of DANCE ON, PASS ON, DREAM ON (DOPODO), a four-year Creative Europe-funded cooperation project. BUREAU RITTER is lead partner of DOPODO and is supported by the following international partners: 

Codarts University of the Arts (Rotterdam, NL), Compagnie Jus de la Vie | Age on Stage (Stockholm, SE), Holland Dance Festival (The Hague, NL), Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia (Ljubljana, SI), Sadler’s Wells (London, UK), STUK House for Dance, Image & Sound (Leuven, BE), Mercat de les Flors (Barcelona, ES), Station Service for Contemporary Dance (Belgrade, RS), KUMQUAT Productions  (Paris, FR), Onassis Stegi (Athens, GR). 

https://dopodo.eu/

MELLOWING

Choreography: Christos Papadopoulos
Artistic Director Dance On Ensemble: Ty Boomershine
Dancers: Ty Boomershine, Javier Arozena, Alba Barral Fernández, Anna Herrmann, Emma Lewis, Gesine Moog, Miki Orihara, Tim Persent, Jone San Martin, Marco Volta, Lia Witjes Poole
Choreographic Assistant: Georgios Kotsifakis
Music: Coti K
Lights: Eliza Alexandropoulou
Costume: Werkstattkollektiv
Technical Director: Martin Beeretz

A body that is outwardly still and inwardly vibrating – what processes does the energy undergo before it breaks through? How does it change when the body matures?

In his new production „MELLOWING“ Greek choreographer Christos Papadopoulos embarks on his inaugural collaboration with the dancers of the Dance On Ensemble. Incorporating their knowledge and experience into the creation, together they explore moments of perception and intensities of the moment that create a lively restlessness, a permanent vibration in which the spectator is inevitably involved.

Christos Papadopoulos’ works are fed by an intensely observant approach to movement and often unfold a lively and meditative power. His attention is focused on the minimal shifts of perception, the perpetual, often unnoticed and yet powerful movements that are ever-present in nature, in everyday life, within physical phenomena and political contexts. His debut “Elvedon” (2016) was inspired by Virginia Woolf’s novel “The Waves” and captures the continuous undulation of the sea. This was followed by “Opus” and his third choreography “ION”, an artistic exploration of the phenomenon of ionization and its underlying forces of attraction and repulsion. In his latest work, “Larsen C”, he turns his attention to the micro-phenomena of movement, this time inspired by the popularised iceberg of the same name, which lost a large part of its surface in 2017.

Production: DANCE ON / Bureau Ritter
Coproduction: ONASSIS STEGI, Athens and Centre chorégraphique national de Rillieux-la-Pape / Direction Yuval PICK, as part of the accueil-studio programme.
Supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.

any attempt will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones

Jan Martens & Dance On Ensemble

Choreography: Jan Martens

Cast: Ty Boomershine, Truus Bronkhorst, Jim Buskens, Baptiste Cazaux, Zoë Chungong, Piet Defrancq, Naomi Gibson, Kimmy Ligtvoet, Cherish Menzo, Steven Michel, Gesine Moog, Dan Mussett, Wolf Overmeire, Tim Persent, Courtney May Robertson, Laura Vanborm, Loeka Willems
Understudies: Pierre Bastin, Georgia Boddez, Wannes Labath, Zora Westbroek

Artistic Assistance: Anne-Lise Brevers
Lighting Design: Jan Fedinger
Costume Design: Cédric Charlier
Assistance Costume Design: Alexandra Sebbag and Thibault Kuhn

Production: GRIP
In collaboration with the Dance On Ensemble

International Distribution: A Propic / Line Rousseau and Marion Gauvent
Co-Production: deSingel international arts campus (Antwerp, BE), Theater Freiburg (DE), Sadler’s Wells (London, UK), Julidans (Amsterdam, NL), Festival d’Avignon (FR), Le Gymnase CDCN Roubaix Hauts-de-France (FR), Norrlandsoperan (Umeå, SE), La Bâtie – Festival de Genève & l’ADC – Association pour la Danse Contemporaine Genève (CH), tanzhaus nrw (Düsseldorf, DE), Le Parvis Scène Nationale Tarbes-Pyrénéés (Tarbes, FR), La Danse en grande forme (CNDC – Angers, Malandain Ballet Biarritz, La Manufacture – CDCN Nouvelle-Aquitaine Bordeaux – La Rochelle, CCN de Caen en Normandie, L’échangeur – CDCN Hauts-de-France, CCN de Nantes, CCN d’Orléans, Atelier de Paris / CDCN, Collectif Fair-e / CCN de Rennes et de Bretagne, Le Gymnase | CDCN Roubaix | Hauts-de-France, POLE-SUD CDCN / Strasbourg and La Place de La Danse – CDCN Toulouse Occitanie) and Perpodium
With support of: De Grote Post (Ostend, BE), Charleroi Danse (BE), CCNO – Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans icw Théâtre d’Orléans (FR) and December Dance (Concertgebouw and CC Brugge)
With financial support of: the Flemish Government, the city of Antwerp, Tax Shelter of the Belgian Federal Government and Cronos Invest

Premiere: 18 July 2021, Festival d`Avignon

‘Snowflakes, leaves, humans, plants, raindrops, stars and molecules all come in communities. The singular cannot really exist.’ – Paula Gunn Allen in Grandmothers of the Light: A Medicine Woman’s Sourcebook

With any attempt will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones, Jan Martens is for the first time fully turning his attention to the main stage. A production about the power that lies in being out of step, performed by a seventeen-strong, atypical corps de ballet made up of unique personalities.

The heterogeneous group of dancers spans several generations, the youngest being 16 and the eldest 69, with significant differences between them in terms of track record and technical background. In any attempt will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones, they seek their own voice within the dance and beyond, looking for an idiom that fits them like a glove. One by one they claim their place on stage, without cutting off the others for all that. A horizontal exercise in giving each other the necessary space, while being careful not to steal the limelight.

any attempt will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones is a rich performance that does not hesitate to seek out the ecstatic. In times of extreme polarization, this group sets social dogmas aside to recognize and embrace a range of distinct identities. Being uninhibitedly themselves – in both life and art – with the stage as their ideological testing ground. They are supported by a soundtrack that consists of atypical protest songs from different ages – from Henryk Gorecki via Max Roach & Abbey Lincoln to Kae Tempest.

F Ä D E N

Concept, Text & Choreography: Ivana Müller

In collaboration with the performers: Javier Arozena, André Benndorff, Walter Hess, Jelena Kuljić, Anna Gesa-Raija Lappe, Emma Lewis, Jone San Martin, Omagbitse Omagbemi

Set and Costume Design Collaborator: Alix Boillot
Lighting Design: Martin Kaffarnik
Artistic Collaborator & Dramaturge: Jonas Rutgeerts
Dramaturge: Olivia Ebert
Artistic Director Dance On Ensemble: Ty Boomershine

Assistant Directors: Malina Sascha Hoffmann and Agnes Pfeiffer
Set and Costume Assistant: Marlene Pieroth
Stage Manager: Hanno Nehring

In this suspended, fragile and continually postponed now, this moment in which we remember the ‘before’ and have no clear idea of what might happen ‘after’, Fäden (Threads) emerges as a choreographic, poetic and visual meditation on time and the way it formulates our lives.

While ravelling and unravelling ideas and sensations of past, present and future, performers knit a sentient reflection in which remembering, forgetting, losing, waiting, aging and transforming become main protagonists. Together they develop a performance that unfolds as an ever-changing landscape and a long lively conversation on the inevitable passage of time.

English with German surtitles.

Production: Dance On/DIEHL+RITTER
Coproduction: Münchner Kammerspiele / STUK. House for Dance, Image and Sound

Funded by the Doppelpass Fund of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation)

 

 

 

Making Dances

In “Making Dances”, the Dance On Ensemble invites contemporary artists – Tim Etchells, and Mathilde Monnier– to respond in their own artistic languages to iconic works of modern and postmodern dance by Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham.  In these performance works the artists reflect on classical but radical works that challenged the rules of their time.

Starting with Martha Graham’s “Deep Song” (1937) performed by long term Graham soloist and Dance On Ensemble member Miki Orihara. Danced within a neon text installation created by artist and performance maker Tim Etchells in response to Graham’s seminal work.  Merce Cunningham’s radically experimental “Story” (1963) re-imagined by the Dance On Ensemble.  Followed by the choreography of Mathilde Monnier, “never ending (Story)” who reacts to Cunningham’s “Story”, using the poetry by David Antin, a contemporary of Cunningham/Cage, as a starting point.

In presenting these works a connection is opened between dance heritage and contemporary dance creation as well as between artists of different generations and backgrounds.

Dancing Replies

In “Dancing Replies”, the Dance On Ensemble invites contemporary artists –  Ginevra Panzetti and Enrico Ticconi – to respond in their own artistic language to iconic works of postmodern dance by Lucinda Childs. In these performance works, the artists reflect on classical but radical works that challenged the rules of their time.

Starting with three early pivotal works by Lucinda Childs from the 1970’s the choreography duo Panzetti / Ticconi led by the minimalist movement language of Childs, present their response “MARMO” to these extreme examples of formalism.

In presenting these works a connection is opened between dance heritage and contemporary dance creation as well as between artists of different generations and backgrounds

never ending (Story)

Choreography: Mathilde Monnier

With: Ty Boomershine, Emma Lewis, Jone San Martin, Gesine Moog, Marco Volta

Light Design: Martin Beeretz
Sound Design: Mattef Kuhlmey
Artistic Collaboration: Stéphane Bouquet
Costume: Mathilde Monnier
Costume Assistance: Nora Stocker
Technical Direction: Martin Beeretz

“When I received this invitation to come talk about Merce Cunningham’s work, I felt it was time for me to come and do it.” (David Antin)

This is almost the way a poem by David Antin starts. This poem, improvised by Antin during a festival in honour of John Cage in May of 1989, is also how Never Ending Story starts… and, for that matter, started. Ty Boomershine and the Dance On Ensemble invited me to reply, in my own way, to Story, a work that Merce Cunningham premiered in 1963.

“So I felt it was time for me to come and do it.”

Someone comes onto the stage and tells you some stories. Stories about structure and rhythm. Stories about feelings and repetitions. The story of the feeling of the dance that’s about to appear.  The story of the gestures taking place whilst this stream of words produces it. By telling stories, dancers prepare themselves to listen to their own voices and to feel their own bodies move.  While talking, they experience the thought as it happens to a mind and, above all, to a body.   By “it happens”, one must mean everything but an abstract process: Thought is far from being a disembodied concept, indeed, thought is literally body-produced and it acts upon the body in return.

To talk and to dance, talking as you dance, dancing as you talk. To dance as an effort to get closer to what thought is, but also to the singular tone of your own voice formulating a thought.

This work is performed in the evening Making Dances” as a choreographic response to Merce
Cunningham’s “Story”, but can be presented singularly.

Production: Dance On/DIEHL+RITTER
In cooperation with: Kammerspiele München
With the support of: Montpellier Danse à l’Agora, cité internationale de la danse/ Avec le soutien de Montpellier Danse à l’Agora, cité internationale de la danse

Deep Song Everything/ Nothing

Choreography and Costume: Martha Graham

Restaging: Miki Orihara

With: Miki Orihara

Neon Installation: Tim Etchells

Music: Henry Cowell
Light design reconstruction: David Finley
Light: Martin Beeretz
Sound: Mattef Kuhlmey

“Deep Song” premiered at the Guild Theater in New York in 1937. Set to music by Henry Cowell, the dance was composed in response to the Spanish Civil War. Deep Song was a cry of anguish, an embodiment of Martha Graham’s fears for a world torn apart by man’s inhumanity to man. “The fierce, fighting anguish of Deep Song is as direct and as objective as a shout,” wrote one critic.
According to program notes, “the forms of the dance – its swirls, crawls on the floor, contractions and falls – are kinetic experiences of the human experiences in war. . . It is the anatomy of anguish from tragic events.” The tragedy of Spain is universalized through the choreography. “It is not Spain that we see in her clean impassioned movement; it is the realization that Spain’s tragedy is ours, is the whole world’s tragedy.” The dance disappeared from the repertory in the 1940s, and it was not until 1989 that it was reconstructed by Graham with Terese Capucilli.

Long-time Graham dancer and Dance On Ensemble member Miki Orihara will dance a restaging of “Deep Song” as part of the program “Making Dances”. 

“Everything/Nothing” is neon text installation created by artist and performance maker Tim Etchells, in response to Martha Graham’s seminal work Deep Song. Designed to be hung above the stage as the choreography is danced by Miki Orihara , the full text of Etchells’ work is a quotation from Federico García Lorca’s 1931 poem ‘Ay!’ reading simply: Everything in the world is broken. Nothing but silence remains.  

Arranged as a constellation of neon words in dispersed arrangement above the stage Etchells’ work enters a porous dialogue with Graham’s choreography, the words illuminated one at a time to make a brief time-based intervention in the work, in which Lorca’s text haunts the air above and around the piece. In the gesture of bringing this particular text into dialogue with Deep Song, Etchells closes a circle of connection between the legacy of flamenco’s deep song, Graham’s powerful choreographic response to the Spanish Civil War, and Lorca himself who lost his life during the conflict. Placing fragmentary language, as individual words, in dialogue with Graham’s ambiguous choreography of a suffering female figure, Etchells’ neon directly addresses the concerns and context of the dance as well as acknowledging the limits of language when it comes to speaking of traumatic experience.

This work can also be presented singularly in the appropriate conditions.

This production of Deep Song is presented by arrangement through Martha Graham Resources, a division of the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, Inc

MARMO

Choreography: Ginevra Panzetti / Enrico Ticconi

With: Anna Herrmann, Emma Lewis, Gesine Moog, Omagbitse Omagbemi, Lia Witjes Poole

Light design: Annegret Schalke
Sound design: Demetrio Castellucci
Costume design: Ginevra Panzetti / Enrico Ticconi, werkstattkollektiv
Technical Direction: Annegret Schalke
Sound: Mattef Kuhlmey
Production Assistant: Pauline Stöhr

Faced with Lucinda Childs’ early works, our attention is captured by the essentiality with which the bodies constitute a three-dimensional and concrete space, which seems to respond to the principles of architecture and solid geometry. Our gaze is enraptured by a brilliant solidity, like the consistency and mineral qualities of marble. A stone that, due to its special composition and brightness, has been considered the sculptural material par excellence, giving shape and colour to that idea of classicism that took shape during the Renaissance.

Lucinda Childs’ spatial and rhythmic design recalls the articulated and symbolic space of a marble quarry, a place where the human imprint infuses rigorous and indelible geometries into the spontaneous morphology of the landscape.

In response to the three early works by the American choreographer, MARMO investigates the mine as the place of a community engaged in a measuring project. It is a journey that follows the transformation of the stone from the initial phase of extraction to the sculptor’s workshop where it is carved. An evolutionary line that sees the transformation of the raw material up to the plastic definition of an ideal form.

In this path, the figures are the actual workers and absolute architects of the space, deciding its proportions, its size and light. While at the same time they assimilate those rules and conditions, becoming themselves malleable matter, sculpture.

This work is performed in the evening “Dancing Replies” with the three early works by Lucinda Childs, but can be presented singularly.

Production: Dance On / DIEHL+RITTER
Co-production: Kampnagel (Hamburg)

With the support of Lavanderia a Vapore, Centro di residenza per la danza
Supported by the NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ Coproduction Fund for Dance, which is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

Works In Silence

Choreography: Lucinda Childs

Staging: Ty Boomershine

Cast: Ty Boomershine, Anna Herrmann, Emma Lewis, Gesine Moog, Omagbitse Omagbemi, Lia Witjes Poole
Light Design: Martin Beeretz
Sound Design: Mattef Kuhlmey
Costume: Alexandra Sebbag

Online-Premiere: 18 – 20 December 2020, STUK – House for Dance, Image and Sound 

The WORKS IN SILENCE offer insights into a decisive development phase of one of the most important choreographers of the 20th century.

This collection of early works from the extensive repertory of Lucinda Childs is exciting both because of its rarity and its importance in the dance field. Most of these works have not been seen since they were first shown in the 1970s. In these dances, Childs has left behind props, objects, the spoken word, symbolic movement – all hallmarks of the era of the Judson Dance Theater – and chosen to focus on the passage of the body through space. To zero in on the essence of initial movement, which, for Childs, is the act of walking. From walking to running, to changing direction, to skipping, to leaping: the WORKS IN SILENCE illustrate the evolution of movement into dance through the choreographic vision of Lucinda Childs.

“I think it’s very musical for dancers to share a pulse,” she says. “They have to listen to each other. That’s what a musical ensemble does. They tune in to each other in a very precise way.” The pieces are a rare entrance into a crucial period of transformation of a choreographer and director whose impact on both the world of the visual arts and influence on a generation of choreographers cannot be overstated. The works express a fragility and a humanity that is a perfect example of the value of experience, and ideally suited to a group of dancers that bring with them their own abundant histories and knowledge. In the act of stripping away all artifice and theatricality, the beauty and truth of wisdom is confronted, shared, and exposed.

Production: Dance On/DIEHL+RITTER
Co-production: STUK. House for Dance, Image and Sound /Münchner Kammerspiele
Funded by the Doppelpass Fund of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation)