WE BEGAN WALKING THERE WE HAVE BEEN
by Özlem Alkis and Maayan Danoch

Concept and choreography: Özlem Alkis, Maayan Danoch
Performance: Maayan Danoch, Ivan Mijacevic
Music: Ivan Mijacevic
Space: Miha(sonda3)

Production: Özlem Alkış, Maayan Danoch
Co-production: tanz.tausch Festival
Supported by: Kunststiftung NRW, ZAIK and tanz.tausch Festival

The performance takes place in the frame of X-YUGO TOUR funded by Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe and Maribor Municipality. (https://www.facebook.com/We-began-walking-THERE-we-have-been-X-Yugo-Tour-186378325343851/?rc=p)

The performance WE BEGAN Walking THERE WE HAVE BEEN is part of the program ::Art::Politics::Institution:: Body, organised by LOKOMOTIVA-Centre for New Initiatives in Arts and Culture

For more information: https://artpoliticsinstitutionsbody.blogspot.mk/

PERFORMANCE DESCRIPTION

Darkness fills the space. Very slowly, the contours of more and more things begin to appear. All of the elements on stage – the bodies of two dancers, sound, light – are considered to be equal protag-onists. Each detail influences the progression of the choreography and opens up new realms of pos-sibility. Again and again, the two performers craft new layers and thus enable various perspectives on the events at hand. They take on new standpoints, create fanciful transition-al landscapes, pile up and then rearrange what they find in front of them. With its repetitive nature, this work develops an enduring narrative, an everlasting moment in time – a performance without beginning or end.

OR

we began walking THERE we have been is a performance for two performers and flashlights, which are operated by the two. It includes no other light source and from this perspective is literally a dark performance and includes moments of complete darkness.

The choreography is made of simple actions, focused on the interaction of light with body im-age/movement. As the performers simultaneously are operators and actors, so is the light. At times, its movement becomes the main player, so it’s perceived as an entity, a body. Other times, it illumi-nates another body or location.

we began walking THERE we have been is composed through a mirroring logic, meaning each ac-tion aims to reflect something of the previous one. The result is a detailed performance, in which each step, location and action are precisely measured and contributing to the overall visual, musical and sometimes magical experience.

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Bio

ÖZLEM ALKIS (*1977) creates transdisciplinary formats and present her works in various mediums; stage, installation and video. She was born in Istanbul and now lives in Cologne. In 2003 she studied in the “ex.e.r.ce” programme at the Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier before participating in the “essais” choreographic research programme at the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine-Angers. She is one of the co-founders of the Amber Art and Technology Festival in Istanbul, which she also co-directed until 2012. In 2012, she directed Istanbul edition of Special Issue European Project that encourages developing discoursive practices in Performing Arts. She then enrolled in the M.A. programme dance dissemination in contemporary contexts at the Cologne University of Music and Dance in 2012. In 2015, she received Berlin Scholarship awarded by the Akademie der Künste in Berlin and she is invited to Sprungbrett – An emerging artists platform organized by tanz nrw’15 Festival. In September 2015, Özlem co-founded ehrenfeldstudios e.V. and dance studios in Ehrenfeld, Cologne.

MAAYAN DANOCH (*1984, Tel Aviv) works as a choreographer, dancer and teacher. Devising mental/physical procedures or working with light and other materials, her choreographic interest lies in the multiple ways of accessing an image/movement, highlighting the discrepancy between what is actually occurring and what we perceive of it. She graduated from the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance in 2008 and received her MA in Dance Dissemination from the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln in 2015. She was the danceWEB Scholarship recipient 2014 and artist in residence at Kelim Choreography Centre in 2015, and wrote for publications, such as the 5. Biennale Tanzausbildung and Tanzkongress 2013. Maayan teaches dance, writing seminars and a workshop on the relation between verbal and physical articulations in creative process in dance universities and centres. She is a fellow in Akademie Schloss Solitude 2017-2019. www.maayandanoch.com

IVAN MIJAČEVIĆ, inter-cultural co-worker and pre-school educator, active in the fields of performing, performance and visual arts, currently residing between Cologne, Ljubljana and ‘everywhere’, whose rudimentary interest is the paving of conditions for soldiary communities, holds an MA (2015) in Dance Dissemination from the Academy of Music and Dance Cologne, and a diploma (2008) in choreography and dance performance from the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance. He studied music pedagogy (1998-2004) at the University of Maribor and classical piano performance (1998-2000) at the Maribor Conservatory of Music and Ballet. Beginning 2004, his practice, inspired by studies with Susan Rethorst and collaborations with Katie Duck, Jan Fabre, Julyen Hamilton, Lisa Nelson and Snjezana Premuš, includes lecturing on the relations of music and dance (Terpsichorean Sonics) at the dance, theatre and music arts academies, schools and studios around the globe, and co-creations with art-collectives inability crew, sz3, danceCO, con/temporary choreo-graphics, Two Kings and a French Town, MDMI and Task 15.

Miha Horvat is legal representative of the Foundation Sonda, initiator of gallery project EX-garage and a founding member of a Transnational Guerrilla Art School which is currently situated in interdis-ciplinary laboratory GT22 (http://gt22.si/). He is a program director of MFRU – International festival of computer arts in Maribor, Slovenia since 2016. His training of theory, practice of humanistic, arts and social films is implemented through artistic formations, collectives and alliances Klon.Art, son:DA, sonda3, sonda4, danceCO and others, working in fields of fine, new media, theatre, dance and vid-eo-film art. More on http://sonda.kibla.org/