Hand out of the seminar day

19.9.2023 0 Like 0 kommenttia

Worldmaking and Contemporeinity – 40 years of higher education in dance and choreography
October 13th 2023

Program

15:00 – 15:20 Performance here for a moment by Raphaël Beau, 

MA Dance Performance alumnus, Tori

15:30 – 16:45 Keynote by Professor Gabriele Klein, 

Hamburg and Amsterdam University, Auditorium 1

Title: We are (not) Contemporary! Dance and Choreography 

in a dis:connected global world

Epidemics, earthquakes, forest fires, industrial accidents, floods and droughts are apocalyptic catalysts, threatening planet Earth as a living world. Migration, deficits in education systems, new poverty, a dismantled welfare state, care emergencies are dividing societies, a new Eurocentrism and nationalism, conspiracy theories and right-wing nationalist movements are shaking the political foundations of democracy, while digita-

lisation and AI are creating their own worlds and unfolding new orders of power that intervene deeply in the everyday world. What can art achieve 

in the face of these epochal moments of crisis – and here in particular dance and choreography, i.e. an art form that only exists in the moment, that is a body art? An art form that for this very reason has always been marginalised on the one hand and idealised on the other? With a focus on the field of contemporary dance in Europe, the lecture attempts to approach these questions. In doing so, it directs the view above all to the concept of contemporaneity.

17:00 – 17:30 Panel discussion by MA choreography cohort 2023/2025, moderator Jana Unmüßig, lecturer of the MA in Choreography

Title: Making within the heterogeneity of cultural nods

Panelists: Giorgia Lolli, Chen Nadler, Kadence Neill, 

Estrellx Supernova, Avgoustina Triarou

17:40 – 18:00 Video screening, hatching out of something by 

Monia Kimara, student, BA in Dance, Auditorium 1

Closing words and toast, Auditorium 1

19:00 Evening party at Bruket Café (Kaikukatu 4B, Leipätehdas)

Program

12:00 – 12:30 Sharing of archival material of the three dance 

education programs at Tori, Anne Makkonen, lecturer, Degree prog-ramme in Dance and Iris Blauberg, MA Dance Performance alumna

12.30 – 13:00 Welcome words, Auditorium 1

• Kirsi Monni, professor in choreography, head of the MA in 

Choreography: Ten Years Since Last Celebration – Where Are We Now? 

• Simo Kellokumpu, lecturer in MA Dance Performance: 

Welcoming Everybody

• Sanna Myllylahti, lecturer in contemporary dance, head of the BA in Dance: Welcoming words and backgrounding questions 

of the panel Parallel Contemporaneities and the future of Higher Dance Education

13:00 – 14.30 Panel discussion, moderator: Sanna Myllylahti

Title: Parallel Contemporaneities and the future of Higher 

Dance Education

Panelists: 

• Zeynep Gündüz, lecturer and researcher, Fontys University, Tilburg

• Nicolina Pristas, choreographer and lecturer, University of Zagreb, Academy of Dramatic Art

• Bojana Bauer, dance- and performance dramaturge and theorist, 

head of Expanded Contemporary Dance education, Amsterdam

• Maria Ines Villasmil-Prieto, lecturer and researcher, staff member 

in Expanded Contemporary Dance AHK Amsterdam

• Andrius Katinas, Head of Dance and Movement Department, 

Faculty of Theatre and Film, Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre

14:30 – 15:00 Coffee break at Tori

15:00 – 15:20 Performance here for a moment by Raphaël Beau, 

MA Dance Performance alumnus, Tori

15:30 – 16:45 Keynote by Professor Gabriele Klein, 

Hamburg and Amsterdam University, Auditorium 1

Title: We are (not) Contemporary! Dance and Choreography 

in a dis:connected global world

Epidemics, earthquakes, forest fires, industrial accidents, floods and droughts are apocalyptic catalysts, threatening planet Earth as a living world. Migration, deficits in education systems, new poverty, a dismantled welfare state, care emergencies are dividing societies, a new Eurocentrism and nationalism, conspiracy theories and right-wing nationalist movements are shaking the political foundations of democracy, while digita-

lisation and AI are creating their own worlds and unfolding new orders of power that intervene deeply in the everyday world. What can art achieve 

in the face of these epochal moments of crisis – and here in particular dance and choreography, i.e. an art form that only exists in the moment, that is a body art? An art form that for this very reason has always been marginalised on the one hand and idealised on the other? With a focus on the field of contemporary dance in Europe, the lecture attempts to approach these questions. In doing so, it directs the view above all to the concept of contemporaneity.

17:00 – 17:30 Panel discussion by MA choreography cohort 2023/2025, moderator Jana Unmüßig, lecturer of the MA in Choreography

Title: Making within the heterogeneity of cultural nods

Panelists: Giorgia Lolli, Chen Nadler, Kadence Neill, 

Estrellx Supernova, Avgoustina Triarou

17:40 – 18:00 Video screening, hatching out of something by 

Monia Kimara, student, BA in Dance, Auditorium 1

Closing words and toast, Auditorium 1

19:00 Evening party at Bruket Café (Kaikukatu 4B, Leipätehdas)

Biographies

Bojana Bauer is the artistic director of a Expanded Contemporary Dance, Bachelor in dance at Amsterdam University of the Arts Amsterdam, Netherlands. Bauer is a dance scholar and dramaturg, former dancer at the Ballet of the National Theatre in Belgrade, Serbia. She has been assistant professor at the dance department of Lille 3 University and guest lecturer at dance department at Paris 8 University, École Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Nantes, and at Exerce – master in choreography, research and creation, at Centre Chorégraphique National, Montpellier, France. As a dramaturge she has been collaborating with choreographers Renata Piotrowska, Latifa Laâbissi,Vera Mantero, amongs others and a visual artist Pedro Gomez-Egaña. Her writings are published in national and international journals, such as Repères, The Walking Theory, Maska, Performance Research. She has contributed to several books: Gestualités/Textualités en danse contemporaine, Stefano Genetti (dir.), Chantal Lapeyre (dir.), Frédéric Pouillaude (dir.), Hermann, Collection(s) : Colloque de Cerisy, 2018 Dance Dramaturgy, Modes of Agency, Awareness and Engagement, Pil Hansen, Darcey Callison (eds.), London, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, Dance – A Catalogue, Noémie Solomon (ed.), Paris, New York, Les Presses du Réel, 2015 and Grimaces du Réel, Latifa Laâbissi, Alexandra Baudelot (dir.), Paris, Les Presses du Réel, 2015.

Iris Blauberg (b. 1999 Helsinki) is a performance artist and multitasker. They just graduated with a master’s degree in Dancer’s Art and is thinking about her next steps. They get very excited about sailing, social work and the feeling of connection. Bending the world to your imagination is also a very interesting topic. In general, their works are based on the experience of their own human body (with its “inhuman” forms), emotional worlds and their kinetic effects, and the longing and experience of connection.

Raphaël Beau is a performer-maker originally from France. His artistic practice ‘play and act from what is here’ is the ground from which he makes performances and facilitates workshops. He explores performing in diverse contexts with a will for the performance to open multiple ways to be present to a place. His master’s in Dance Performance at the Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki offered a context for his practice to grow and accumulate layers by being implemented again and again in various locations. The performance ‘here for a moment’ is his practice at work,integrated into a score, implemented in the presence of an audience. It attempts to capture both the fleetingness and density of being here together in this place at this very moment.

Zeynep Gündüz is teacher and researcher in media, dance, and performance. Following her dance degree, Zeynep has completed a BA and MA in Media Studies (University of Amsterdam) and has gained her Ph.D degree on dance and new media in 2012 at the University of Amsterdam. She currently teaches at the BA education Fontys Dance Academy (Tilburg) and at the Expanded Contemporary Dance in Amsterdam (AHK).

Andrius Katinas is dance artist based in Finland. He studied theatre arts at Lithuanian Academy of Music and dance arts at Theatre Academy of Finland. Since 1999 he has been part of over 40 works as performer, choreographer, or collaborator. His focuses on dance art and its poetics of communication fluctuating along the different modes of collaboration and continuous search of new approaches and perspectives in dance making, to changes of personal life and “quiet rhetoric” of artist place in society. 2018 he started to work as head of Dance and Movement department at Lithuanian Music and Theatre Academy.

Gabriele Klein, Dr. rer. soc. Since 2002 she is Professor of Sociology with focus on Human Movement Science, Dance and Performance Studies at Hamburg University. Since 2022 she is also Professor of Ballet and Dance (Hans van Manen Chair) at the University of Amsterdam. From October 2022, she has been invited to the LMU Munich for one year as a fellow in the “global dis:connect” centre. She has been director of the research group “Translation and framing. Practices of Medial Transformations”, deputy speaker of the graduate school “Collectivity in Urban and Digital Spaces” and PI of the graduate school “Virtuality of the Aesthetic”, Director of Performance Studies Hamburg and President of the Society for Dance Research. She is PI of the Cluster of Excellence “Understanding Written Artefacts” at Hamburg University. She was a Guest Professor i.a. at the University in Bern, Switzerland, the ‘Mozarteum’ Salzburg/ Austria, the Smith College (USA), the University of Stellenbosch/ South Africa and Osaka City University/Japan. Her English book publications include books like “Dance (and) Theory” (2013, with G. Brandstetter), “Emerging Bodies” (2011, with S. Noeth) and issues like “On Labour and Performance“ (Performance Research 2012, with B. Kunst) as well as numerous articles like „Urban Choreographies”, in: The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Politics (2017). Her last English monography was titled “Pina Bausch’s Dance Theater. Company, Artistic Practices, and Reception” (2020). Her next book “Materialities in Dance and Performance. Writing, Documenting, Archiving” (with F.A. Cramer) will be published in January 2024.

Simo Kellokumpu is a choreographer, performer, researcher and lecturer in the MA in Dance performance program at the University of the Arts, Helsinki. From 2013 to 2019, Simo has conducted the artistic research project ’Choreography as Reading Practice’ at the Centre for Performing Arts Research at the University of the Arts, Tutke. From 2020 to 2022, Simo worked at Tutke as a visiting researcher and carried out the post-doctoral artistic research project xeno/exo/astro -choreadings. Simo’s multidisciplinary work explores the choreographic relations between corporeality and materiality in the intertwining of space culture, speculative fiction and site-specificity.

Monia Kimara is a dance student, performer and facilitator, currently fascinated by clubbing / self organized raves as collective (dance) liberation & care taking places & practices. They want to create multilayered and multidisciplinary worlds and find connection and meaning in coming together, thinking through performance and admitting being lost in the complexities. They are drawn to (self) embarrasment, transparency, autofiction and playing with the questions of realness and fakeness. They use filming and coming back to the filmed video material as a tool to think and reflect.

Giorgia Lolli is an Italian dance artist whose practice intertwines dramaturgical-choreographic research and community processes. Upon graduating at Zürich University of the Arts – BA Contemporary Dance, she moved to Israel to continue her training with Batsheva and Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company. Since 2019 she has been working as a freelance dancer for European companies and projects, including Skopje Dance Theater, Monster Chetwynd (Art Basel), Yotam Peled. In 2023, she performed in Kiasma for How the Land Lies by Bianca Hisse & Laura Cemin, selected for Aerowaves. Giorgia performed in the Swiss tour Disability on Stage 2017, an integrated project choreographed by Emanuel Gat. Since then, she has continued with experiences in the field of movement and accessibility. She is a Dance Well – movement research for Parkinson´s teacher, in the frame of the European project 2022-24 coordinated by Operaestate. She is currently researching the ties between feminisms and choreographic composition, moved by the politics of gaze and the sexualized experiences of female bodies. Her work has been presented across Italy, and in Switzerland, Portugal and Germany.

Anne Makkonen (MA, Phd University of Surrey) dance multitasker: part-time dance lecturer Teatterikorkeakoulu, performer, thinker, writer, mentor, expert, researcher and ready for anything.

Kirsi Monni (Doctor of Arts in Dance) is Professor of Choreography at the University of the Arts Theatre Academy. She has worked extensively in the field of dance as a choreographer, dancer, researcher, lecturer, curator and in various positions of trust since the 1980s. Her own research deals with ontological and theoretical questions in dance art and choreography. Monni is one of the founders of Zodiak – Centre for New Dance and was involved in its development for two decades before accepting a professorship at the Theatre Academy in 2009.

Sanna Myllylahti is an internationally engaged Finnish dancer, choreographer and teacher. She completed her studies at Stockholm’s Danshögskolan and at the Amsterdam University of the Arts, where she graduated as a dancer ( BA) in 1996. Myllylahti has created her own choreographies since 1994. Her choreographic work has been mainly produced during her time in the Netherlands, where she lived for nearly 20 years before returning back to Finland in 2011. Her works, both as a dancer and choreographer, have been touring extensively in many countries. Parallel to her career as an artist, Myllylahti has been working as an educator in several universities, dance academies, festivals and professional studios around the world. Currently Myllylahti holds the position as Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Dance / Head of the BA in Dance program at the University of the Arts Helsinki.

Chen Nadler (1992) is a Helsinki-based choreographer, dancer and performer with Moroccan, Romanian and Israeli roots. She creates multidisciplinary works, collaborating across various art forms, creating pieces for galleries, stages, site-specific venues, community. As a professional dancer, Chen has collaborated with compagnies in Spain, Israel, Italy and participated in research residencies across Europe. Her educational journey includes completing a professional dance program in Tel-Aviv (Maslool Dance Porgram) in Israel, studies for B.Ed. in Social and Steiner Education in Haifa (Oranim) Israel and studying Steiner Educationas an exchange student in (Snellmann College), Helsinki Finland. Chen is studying for a master´s degree in choreography at the Theater Academy (Uniarts) Helsinki, Finland.

Kadence Neill is an interdisciplinary artist traversing the realms of dance, theater, education, and somatic healing practices. For the past 7 years she has worked primarily with the New York based dance theater company Nature Theater of Oklahoma with which she has toured internationally (e.g. Steirischer Herbst, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Espoo City Theater, Spielart festival). Kadence is a native New Yorker and was worked with many New York based choreographers including Walder Dundervill, Rebekka Brooks. Additionally, she is the long-term teaching and research assistant to Dr. Megan Poe, founder of the NYU Love Class. Kadence is a certified breathwork instructor and holds breathwork as an integral part of her creative practice. She also trains in Muay Thai. Kadence holds her undergraduate degree in Drama and Anthropology from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and is currently pursuing her MA in Choreography.

Nikolina Pristaš is a dancer, choreographer, co-founder of performance collective BADco. (2000 – 2021) and assistant professor at the Dance Department of the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb. She studied at the University of Zagreb – Faculty of Humanities and obtained their diploma at the departments of English Language and Literature and Comparative Literature. She has completed the eight-year School for Contemporary Dance “Ana Maletić”.

For the last twenty years her artistic work is almost exclusively tied to BADco. Besides shared aesthetic interests, ethos, understanding of political urgencies, shared desire to learn and experiment with the form of performance, there was a feeling of camaraderie and a joy of co-belonging that kept her inspired and motivated for more than twenty years.

As of recently she started working within a new artistic formation CO2… a couple of artists together with Goran Sergej Pristaš. CO2… a couple of artists could be explained as a formation that entangles the two of us in a series of encounters with artists, experts and students which may or may not happen, whose swerves may or may not generate series of new encounters and relations between art, bodies and climate.

Maria Saivosalmi graduated from the Theatre Academy in 2004 with a Master of Arts in Dance degree. From 2004 to 2012 she joined Helsinki Dance Company, where she performed in works by Nigel Charnock, among others. For last twenty years Saivosalmi has worked extensively in the field of dance as a performer, choreographer and teacher. Her choreographic works have been performed internationally and co- produced for example by Zodiak – Centre for New Dance and Lithuanian Dance Information Center. Saivosalmi’s interest has been also in socially engaged art and since 2002 she has done long-term artistic work in different units of substance abuse treatment. Recently she has been collaborating with Lithuanian documentary director Vytautas Puidokas making large scale video installations. Their works were presented at CAC – Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius and as part of the Moving in November festival 2021.

For the last two years Saivosalmi has been engaged as a lecturer in Dance at Theatre Academy. Her pedagogical interests reflect her artistic experiences and focuses on the poetics of the movement and working through and with affects and emotions.

Estrellx Supvernova/EHQS embodies a they/them energetics and is an Afro-Guatemalan-American choreographer, performer, curator, and writer. Their artistic and solo alias, EHQS, is the root component of their emergent macro-vision called The Universe of Rhizomatic Tenderness (TUoRT), a choreographic ecosystem centering the voices and artistic-spiritual-erotic-material-somatic expression of Queer and Trans Creates of the Global Majority and the Allies who we encounter along the way. Estrellx has choreographed several solo and collaborative works including Animate, Intimate (Cycle 1): Points of Encounter or Before Wonderland Fell (Lisbon 2023), death by disco pt.1 -3 (San Francisco 2021). They are currently in the process of distilling their research into a tarot deck called El Tarot de Quebrantamiento, which they are aiming to officially published by Fall 2025. Estrellx has received numerous grants (most recently the New Jersey Individual Artist Fellowship Award (2023) ) and was a danceweb scholarship recipient in 2019 under the guidance of Annie Dorsen, Anne Juren, and Mette Ingvartsen. Estrellx self-designed a B.A. in Dance & Performance Studies at William College (’10 – ’14) where they were able to include studying abroad in Berlin, Germany at Tanzfabrik (’12 – 13) and an exchange semester at Bennington College (Spring ’14).

Avgoustina Triarou is a dance artist from Cyprus that graduated from the University of Niccosia with a BA in Dance (2017-2021), in which she participated in the Erasmus+ mobility program, doing an Erasmus exchange with the National Academy of Dance in Rome, Italy. During 2020 and 2021 she co-created and performed with the team Kores two choreographic works titled “ProsopArmozo” and “out of data” for festivals in Cyprus. In 2021 she participated in an Erasmus+ ex change in Sweden, Viksofors named “Dance more” representing Cyprus. She also had an internship with “Konin Youth´s Community Centre” in Poland, Konin through Erasmus+ as a dancer and choreographer with “Konin Dance Theatre”. She attended the International Contemporary Dance program through Erasmus+ Internship at Nuova Officina Della Danza in Turin where she also choreographed a piece for Nod students. In 2022 she worked as a performer in “O dark, dark, dark” choreographed by Fotis Nikolau.

Jana Unmüßig is an artistic re-searcher with a background in choreography. Her research interests linger in a field where twilight makes the almost invisible flicker, serendipitous meandering and languages of multitude converse with a range of ever changing topics, that crystallize through conversation with collaborators and differently structured worlds, and that find visible form most often through writing, and teaching. Jana held a post-doc position at the Center for Artistic Research (Cfar) at Uniarts Helsinki, 2019/2020; participated as a fellow in the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Program 2020/2022 and has acted as a visiting researcher at the Performing Arts Research Center/Uniarts Helsinki since 2021. She works as a lecturer in choreography in the MA Choreography at Uniarts Helsinki.

María Inés Villasmil-Prieto was born in Venezuela and has lived in Amsterdam since 1996. After a career as a sociologist and having developed a parallel dance career, she moved to Holland to pursue a BA from the School for New Dance Development (SNDO) at the Amsterdam University of the Arts. In addition, in 2004 Maria received her Master’s degree in Choreography. More recently, María Inés obtained an MBA in Creative Industries and Cultural Management from the University of Salamanca, Spain.Since 2002, she is a staff member of the Amsterdam University of the Arts. She is also a collaborator of the Dance Magazine SusyQ in Madrid, Spain. María Inés is also a member of the research group: Embodied Knowledge in Theatre and Dance (EKTD) embedded in DAS Research and led by performance scholar dr. Marijn de Lange since 2019.