NagiB, International Contemporary Dance Festival

Nail soup

Once upon a time, on his way back from the war, a soldier came across a hut in a forest. He is hungry and tired so he knocks on the door. An old woman who was living there receives him but when he asks for some food she starts telling him that the house is empty. The war was going on for a long time and the old woman was weary of soldiers coming and stealing what little was left to eat. So she lies. The solder makes a proposition to the old women. If she can give him a nail, some water and a big pot, he will, for both of them, make a ‘nail soup’. Out of curiosity the woman provides him with these three things. The soldier puts the pot on fire, places the nail on the bottom, and pours water over it. They stay silent for a while but when the water starts boiling, he casually mentions that the nail soup would be even better if she would have a bit of flour to put in it. Out of curiosity the old woman brings him some flour. Then he asks for an egg. And some onion. And a carrot. And some dry meat. Without thinking twice the old woman brings it all to him. Soon enough a rich soup is cooked. In front of a confused host the soldier takes a spoon, pulls the nail out of the broth, and after throwing it through the window offers her some soup. They ate the whole tasty pot of it together.

There are many interesting layers of meaning in this story. So I decided to use it as a general starting point for the second week of the residency. As such it is following / responding to the metaphor of ‘creativity on the plate’, from which Robert Steijn would like to work during the first week. It inverts the image of abundance and invites us to look at creativity from the opposite perspective of poverty - poverty of relations, opportunities, and resources. In this sense what is unfolding in the Nail Soup story is a production of something out of “nothing” to a degree to which REAL nothing is always more than the imagined nothing of absolute emptiness. We just need to sharpen and shift our perception to start noticing an “insignificant possibility” and welcome it as an opportunity. Furthermore, as is framed in the story, the problem of creativity is in itself essentially related to survival, an urgency to respond to difficult, even extreme circumstances by an ingenuity of a solution.

I am interested in this dramaturgy of an artistic process that is always grounding itself inside the limitations, obstacles, out of which potentiality proliferates. I would like to look at the work of the participants in the workshop from that perspective: what is it that limits them in their imagination or execution of work? What are their complaints, about the parameters of this residency, about the content of their own practice, about their role as artists inside the given social context, about production conditions, etc. … My proposition would be to start from these complaints. We should ask ourselves in what way can the failures, frustrations and impossibilities be admitted into the work rather than be blamed for its obstruction, and what is it, ultimately, a dramaturgy of no-blame and no-complaint.

Igor Dobričić studied dramaturgy at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, where he also worked as a dramaturge for the Belgrade International Theatre Festival (BITEF). In 1995 he embarked on an experimental performance work with a group of teenagers, creating with them in a period of four years a small body of work. This work came to be of particular importance to him. European Cultural Foundation offered him a position as a coordinator of the Arts Programme, so he moved to Holland. At the same time he was admitted to the postgraduate course at the De Amsterdamse School/Advanced Research in Theatre and Dance Studies (DasArts). Between 2005 and 2008 he curated and coordinated the project platform for the ECF – ALMOSTREAL (www.almostreal.org). Simultaneously he kept collaborating as a dramaturge with a number of choreographers/makers (Nicole Beutler, Keren Levi, Nora Heillman, Diego Gil, Katrina Brown, Martin Nachbar). From 2005 onwards he also started teaching dramaturgy and concept development to students of choreography at the School for New Dance Development (SNDO). Between January 2009 and September 2010 he was holding a research position at the Amsterdam School of the Arts, as part of the Art Practice and Research group. Starting from May 2011 he is working as a dramaturge of the Hetveem Theatre in Amsterdam.

Intuition on a plate

Is an H&M t-shirt more precious, when we know who made the design, and when this person tells us what was his or her inspiration to make such a design? And is it equally important to learn who actually made it and under what kind of conditions? I think all this knowledge will make the t-shirt more valuable to us. I think it is necessary to become more aware of the production-process in a time when the products themselves seduce us to buy them only by how they look, by their prize, or, when they are expensive, by their potential to upgrade our status. In the same way the knowledge of the production process can enhance the appreciation of what we see at the end: the performance. How much do we actually know about how a performance is made, and how informative is it when we learn with what kind of intentions and from what kind of desires or ideas a performance has been made.

I will ask the five invited artists in their first week of the residency to reveal their first steps in making a performance. Do they have a clear idea, or do they start from a vague notion, and how will they start to translate their desires and ideas in concrete actions. Do they think of the audience already in the first week or do they primarily think about their own needs to express something. It is like looking in the kitchen, examining the unwritten recipe and looking what kind of creativity is offered on the plate. We will get the opportunity to see how the differences in starting a project and different ways of producing and selecting material can lead to different performances.

My role in the process will be one of a mediator between the five artists, but also between the artists and the public. I like to observe the role of intuition, without any preconceived ideas or concepts. It is the actual meeting that is important, with all the questions that arise in the kitchen of the production process, when the people don't know each other.

At the breakfast discussion on Wednesday, August 3, I will discuss the role of a choreographer within the mechanics of the market. Starting point is a documentary that we will watch a day earlier, called “Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis”, made by Mary Jordan. It is the story of a legendary performance artist and film director from New York, who refused to be part of the art market.

Robert Steijn is a performance artist and choreographer. Together with Frans Poelstra he founded the performance-unit united sorry, which is based in Vienna and Amsterdam. They make work for theatres, galleries, and public space. Their work is a mix of theatre, dance, music, and performance art. Robert also collaborates with other choreographers, such as Latifa Labiissi, Anne Teresa de Keersemaeker, Milli Bitterli, George Blaschke and Maria Hassabi. He is a deer-dancer and his works often balance between being a mistake or being mystical. His next project with Frans Poelstra will be a year long range of theatrical events about the trees in Vienna, called Green Conversations. Their last piece Lost in Space will be shown in Maribor.

I believe it is possible to create a space where, rather than to rehearse material, I would share my obsessive interests and fascinations.

During the time I will spend in Maribor I want to reflect on the way a creative process can be considered as an art work itself. I will open the studio to anyone who wants to visit and eventually be part of the work.

Visitors might get the chance to learn how to play the piano without keyboard or learn texts and songs in reverse after a good youtube clip based 80's style aerobics warm-up.

Within this frame I will deal with the produced material and reflect on its nature and its future development. I am very fascinated by the fact that in our culture process is seen as secondary, though paradoxically happening in the first place.

Michele Rizzo recently graduated from choreography in Amsterdam at the SNDO - School for New Dance Development. During the last three years he has made several works which were presented in various European venues. His last solo work 7th Solo has recently won the ITs parade price at the ITs Festival of Amsterdam and has been shown in the last edition of the Dance Biennale in Venice. He has also been working as dancer and performer in works by Joao Evangelista, Pere Faura, Deborah Hay, Ann Liv Young, and others.

My aim is to research the questions and mechanisms of representation on stage. My interest in this subject is not only relating to the context of live performance, but is also anthroposophical in nature, leading to an involvement with staged performance in its very essence, beyond the discursive trends of dance and live performance.

The performative space shall be used as a platform to negotiate these themes and approach the concepts of representation and presence that confront the gutted ways.

How are representational strategies applied to our emotional world? Away from authenticity I would like to come closer to a concept of artificiality, not investigating emotional or mental conditions, but exploring ways how to illustrate them. How to transform them into ideas and depictions that might create associations to “real” situations of strong emotions or conflicts?

Fanni Futterknecht currently lives in Vienna. She creates performances for a stage context and works with video.
Born in Vienna she has been studying visual art at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna, followed by a Masters study at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. Her artistic work started with video installations and evolved from performative interventions in public space to performances that are constructed for a theatre context. In 2006 she joined the programme Essai at C.N.D.C Angers; in 2007 she was part of the Danceweb Europe programme in Vienna. In spring 2008 she received a residency grant for a three months residency in Rome, where she pursued her choreographic work as well as her visual work. After her stay in Rome she has been artist in residence at La Cite International des Arts in Paris for half a year. Her performance work, for example Excerpts of Confusion, Where Life Has No Value, Paradise Sometimes Has Its Price, and I Almost Love You, has been shown at different performance festivals inside Europe. She is interested in exploring the borders between the context of live art and the context of fine art.

People are social beings, with a need to socialize or to be loved and accepted. I am interested in the conditions for a constitution of a space where the intimate of the performer would address the intimate of the viewer.
To offer to an individual the subtle experience of connectedness and to touch the elusive reciprocal recognition of the intimate, whereby my interest will primarily be in approaching a real event, with which the borderline between reality and performance of the “real” may be blurred.

Here, I will ask the question whether such a situation is at all possible within the performing arts frame, and further what would be the ideal frame for its constitution. At this point the question of the viewer also arises. Participant in an intimate situation cannot be a mere observer, but – because of the interest involved – adopts an active position and accepts a common responsibility. The viewer thus renounces his role and enters into a new dialogue which creates new possibilities of understanding performance and oneself.

Within the intimate I wish to investigate the phenomena of fragility, distance, perspective, pleasure, inside-outside, boundaries, equality, manipulation, reciprocity …

Vlasta Veselko is a dancer and choreographer. She studied Slovene Language and Philosophy and attended numerous dance programmes at home and abroad. As a dancer she has collaborated with Maja Delak, Geog Hobmeier, Maja Milenovič Workman, Katja Kosi, etc. Her recent work researches the theme of intimacy (in the projects 20 Minutes, Kisses, Intimate Project). She is the co-founder of NagiB Festival and its artistic leader since 2005. Her latest passion is Argentinean tango.

Narcisses-2 is the third and final step of my research on the theme of Narcissism. Each step is thought and created as an independent show, though linked up to each other by this very same theme.

In a hyper social context of individualism and consumerism, this triptych is a reflection on the narcissistic origin of our behavior in a philosophic and psychoanalystic point of view.
It is about questioning the deep essence of the human being struggling against his ideologies, being dependent on representations he makes out of them, looking for magic solutions to cope with fears, in particular to cope with his relationship with time passing by irreversibly, with the ageing that leads to death, and with the difference and discrepancy of the genre interacting one with the other.
What about the fundamental and inner conflict of the human being facing himself?

Coraline Lamaison, a stage director and choreographer, trained at the Academy of Dramatic Art of Toulouse and after this at the National Theater Daniel Sorano of Toulouse, supervised by Jacques Rosner.
From 1996 to 2003 she performed in different works directed by Claude Bardouil (assistant and choreographer of Kristoff Warlikowski) like "Bal des Anges","Jusqu'au dernier baiser", "Les Innocents", "Les Vaniteux"…
In 2004-2005 she was performing for Jan Fabre in "The Crying Body" at Théâtre de la Ville in Paris and European tour and "L’Historie des Larmes" at Festival d'Avignon 2005. She is still assisting and training for the Jan Fabre Method Group.
She also collaborated with Guy Cassiers Toneelhuis as coaching of the actor Dirk Roofthooft for the French version of « Rouge Décanté » at Festival d'Avignon 2006 following by European tour until 2010.

One day in Bolivia at around 5,000 metres above sea level, a huge bird sat on my right arm. Chained by its leg, the bird was there for the tourists’ cameras. Looking into its eyes, you saw a bird of prey, looking at its legs, you saw a chained animal. I use my right hand by and large for writing, taking notes, creating with a pen in the hand. I sit in rehearsals, lectures, behind books. Writing is a lonesome task, yet it is the only way to stay in touch with the wider community, with other makers: dancers, choreographers, directors, actors. I went to schools to write, however what the study years had given me was only a permission to do so. Everything else grew as I went along: with observing, reading, and writing. And it is still growing.

Coming soon!