An evening of four new dance duets with disabled dancers commissioned by Skånes Dansteater, Onassis STEGI, Oriente Occidente and Holland Dance Festival as part of Europe Beyond Access.
An audio-described version is available below:
The programme
A touring pack for programmers and producers looking to book this show is available here.
Skanes Dansteater | Fine Lines
Choreography: Roser López Espinosa
Performers: Madeleine Månsson & Anna Borràs Picó
Music: Mark Drillich
Lighting: Mattias Jonsson
Costumes: Åsa Gjerstad
Production: Skånes Dansteater
The work of Roser López Espinosa is based on strong physicality, with a great passion for precision, delicacy, acrobatic elements and detail. A lively and playful physical universe of refined poetics and often a touch of humour. Fine Lines, a new duet with dancers Madeleine Månsson and Anna Borràs Picó, is a dialogue between two exceptional women. A meeting shedding light on the fine lines between us, reminding us of our differences, our boundaries, the outlines of our intentions. But what brings us closer together? What do we want to celebrate in each other? On stage, two women. So delicate, so powerful.
Onassis Stegi | Re-call
Choreography: Venetsiana Kalampaliki
Performers: Irini Kourouvani & Vivi Christodoulopoulou
Sound creation: Thalia Ioannidou
Light design: Eliza Alexandropoulou
Project coordination: Myrto Lavda & Dora Vougiouka
Production: Onassis Stegi
What kinds of identity do moving bodies bear? In the work Re-call, choreographer Venetsiana Kalampaliki focuses on the identity of the body and on how it is shaped both by the past and by each moment in the present. In a stripped-back scenic environment, the very bodies of the dancers – pitted against time with every step – play the principal roles. Through repetitive movements, moments of pause and acts of walking, the performers define their routes and manifest fleeting stories that fade away like traces in the sand. With her gaze fixed firmly on each separate individual, and taking precision and simplicity as her guide, the choreographer creates human portraits and explores the meaning of the moment as a dimension, both temporal and spatial.
Oriente Occidente and FND / Aterballetto | FEELING GOOD
Choreography: Diego Tortelli
Dancers: Cristian Cucco & Annemieke Mooij
Lighting design: Carlo Cerri
Video graphic design: Michele Innocente
Co-production: Oriente Occidente Dance Festival & Fondazione Nazionale della Danza/Aterballetto
A circle, a square and, in the centre, an emblematic figure of a man. References to Vitruvian man are evident and visible and this can lead to criticism and controversy, but if we simply do not dwell on the image itself and what the eye can observe, but simply to its poetics and meaning we find the desire for a body that experiences connecting with itself and its surroundings, both on a rational and emotional level.
These are the starting points of FEELING GOOD a duet about the ability to “be” and “feel”, a skill of contemporary dance that does not reign in a canonical form of perfection, but that finds its “being” in the acceptance of oneself, of one’s own strength and fragility which is not dictated by a symmetrical form of thinking, but which looks at the diversity of every human being in an asymmetrical way, since only diversity can destroy an idea of “canonical” beauty, which no one can please because there can be no universal model of “beauty”. More resources on FEELING GOOD are available to explore here.
Holland Dance Festival | Cornered
Choreography: Faizah Grootens
Performers: Annemieke Mooij & Aymeric Aude
Music: Nils Frahm, Ólafur Arnalds, Raime
Lighting design: Faizah Grootens & Sanne Rosbag
Production: Holland Dance Festival
Dance for everyone and an inclusive society: these values are important to us at the Holland Dance Festival. We believe that dance is for everyone: for professionals and amateurs; for disabled and non-disabled people; for children in schools just as much as for the elderly in care and nursing homes, and for every age group in between. This is why the Holland Dance Festival invited choreographer Faizah Grootens to create a captivating duet, bringing both disabled and non-disabled dancers, Annemieke Mooij and Aymeric Aude together.
Cornered is a physical experience of two bodies encountering each other within a space and within themselves. When these two bodies meet there are moments of high intensity and moments of no currency, all the while still achieving synthesis. Cornered is about empathy and the struggles that come with it. About how to stay true to oneself, without losing connection.