Antje Hildebrandt Performance: Mai 2011

Mittwoch, 25. Mai 2011

Trio Collective at Chisenhale Dance Space

Sonntag, 8. Mai 2011

Metrology

Metrology by Katerina Paramana, presented at The Place (London) as part of Resolution! 2011 and at the Centre for Creative Collaboration (London) as part of Making and Unmaking Text in January 2011.

Performers: Stella Dimitrakopoulou and Antje Hildebrandt

Photography: Dan Swallow

Donnerstag, 5. Mai 2011

Count Two

Count Two by Nicola Conibere, presented as part of DancEUnion, Southbank Centre (London) in March 2011, at Laban (London) and at Lakeside Arts Centre (Nottingham) in September 2010, and at The Place (London) as part of Resolution! 2010 in February 2010.

Count Two is supported by Arts Council England.

Performers: Gerard Bell, Antje Hildebrandt, Tim Jeeves, Helka Kaski, Elena Koukoli and Steffi Sachsenmaier

Photography: Guy Bell

I invite you to a performance

I Invite You To A Performance by visual artist Dori Deng, presented at Central St Martins Degree Show (London) in June 2009.

Performance: Lauren Bridle and Antje Hildebrandt

Photography: Dori Deng

Detouring with Ania

In September 2010 I took part in DIY 7: Detour – in search of alternatives for de/touring live art work, a professional development opportunity facilitated by Ania Bas at the Live Art Development Agency.I proposed a kind of mash-up project by 'recycling' the movement material from Count Two (a project I had been involved with by Nicola Conibere) and the costume design and concept of my site-specifc performance You Make Me Want To Loose You.

Photography and video: Ania Bas

Performing Sayings

Dear Elena, Michelle, Stella, World

TASK #3: Collect, perform and record three sayings.

Definition of saying: a well-known and wise statement which often has a meaning that is different from the simple meanings of the words it contains. (definition from Cambridge Dictionary Online)

Notes: You can choose to take sayings from your native language and directly translate them into English (they don’t have to make sense). The actual saying should appear written or verbally sometime/somewhere before, during or after the performance. You can choose whatever medium you feel fit to perform and record your sayings and you should post them online.

I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Antje Hildebrandt (Director)

Not in BADco.mpany

Review of BADco.’s Memories Are Made of This…
Chelsea Theatre – 8 November 2008

8.08pm: The show has started without me noticing. Busy reading the programme notes for Memories Are Made of This… for the third time, I missed the five members of Croatian performance collective BADco. ‘invading the space’ – our space that is. The bar area in Chelsea Theatre. It becomes clear immediately - we are in for a rather unusual performance. No three-minute call, no proscenium arch, no reminder to turn off the phone, no artificial darkness, no anonymity.

In the short ‘introduction’ that follows we are invited to join the performers in the two gallery spaces as they explain that they wanted to expand the walls to make a bigger space and put fake grass on the floor so that we ‘could all sit down and have a picnic’. Then we are lead into the auditorium.

The space has been transformed: five long tables, at each a performer, five audience members, a radio and a photocopy of F Scott Fitzgerald’s story The Crack-Up (on which the performance is loosely based). Are they memories?

The room is quickly and quietly filled with whispers. There is a feeling of secrecy and intimacy in the room.

There are fragments of dance too. I cannot stop looking at the pregnant dancer’s belly. She is so close to me that I imagine I can hear her baby’s heartbeat.

And there is more text. More words. More movement. Dancing in front of a ‘snowing’ screen. Incidental music playing from the radio. It comes and it goes. Words appear as quickly as they disappear. It is the images that stay in my mind. One dancer moving and speaking in Croatian in front of the screen. One of the other performers who is watching her laughs out loud at what she is saying. The atmosphere is intensive but relaxed.

It’s the end. There’s applause. Bows. The usual.

As I think about what just happened on my way home, it occures to me - Memories are made of this.

A.H.

falling still

Falling and stillness are the themes that I’m exploring in this work. I experiment with ideas around the physical and psychological act of falling and the impact it has on the body, and on the audience. I use task-based exercises that focus mainly on the physicality of the body and therefore my work becomes very visual. Here, I'm interested in relating the body and the mind, practice and theory, research and performance.

Choreography and Performance: Antje Hildebrandt

Composer: Julien-Robert Legault Salvail

Video: Ibrahim Kayoueche

falling still was presented as part of Summer Dancing at Coventry University in June 2008.

Bibliography (Work in Progress)

Aaron, M. (2006). The Birth of the Spectator. In Spectatorship: The Power of Looking On (pp. 5-23). London: Wallflower.

Banes, S. & Lepecki, A. (Eds.). (2006). The Senses in Performance. London: Routledge.

Bennett, S. (1997). Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception. New York: Routledge.

Bishop, C. (Ed.). (2006). Participation. London: Whitechapel; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Blau, H. (1990). Repression, Pain, and the Participation Mystique. In The Audience (pp.144-209). Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Blau, H. (1987). Odd, Anonymous Needs: The Audience in a Dramatized Society. In Performing Arts Journal 10 (1). (pp. 34-42).

Bourriaud, N. (2002). Postproduction: Culture as screenplay: How art reprograms the world. New York: Lukas & Sternberg.

Bourriaud, N. (1998). Relational Aesthetics. Les presses du rèel.

Conroy, C. (2010). Theatre & The Body. Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Pelgrave Mcmillan.

Etchells, T. (2004). A six-thousand-and-forty-seven-word manifesto on liveness in three parts with three interludes. In A. Heathfield and H. Glendinning (Eds.), Live: Art and Performance (pp.210-217). London: Tate Publishing.

Fischer-Lichte, E. (1997). The Show and the Gaze of Theatre. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.

Fish, S. (1980). Is There a Text in This Class?. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Freshwater, H. (2009). Theatre & Audience. Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Pelgrave Mcmillan.

Goldberg, R. (1993). Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present. London: Thames & Hudson.

Handke, P. (1969). Offending the audience. In Kaspar and other plays. New York: Hill and Wang.

Heathfield, A. (2009). Intangibles of performance. In ENPARTS (European Network of Performing Arts) Babylon Europe: Boundless languages (pp. 40-47). International Conference Proceedings November 29th 2008. Venice: Marsilio Editori.

Heathfield, A. (2004). Alive. In A. Heathfield and H. Glendinning (Eds.), Live: Art and Performance (pp.6-15). London: Tate Publishing.

Jauss, H.R. (1982). Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Kunst, B. (2009). The Economy of Proximity: Dramaturgical Work in Contemporary Dance. In Performance Research 14 (3), (pp. 80-87). London: Routledge.

Lepecki, A. (2005). Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement. London; New York: Routledge.

Lepecki, A . (Ed.). (2004). Of the Presence of the Body: Essays on dance and performance theory. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press.

Lepecki, A. (2004). Concept and Presence: The Contemporary European Dance Scene. In A. Carter (Ed.), Rethinking Dance History: A Reader (pp.170-181). London; New York: Routledge.

Malzacher, F. (2004). There is a Word for People Like You: Audience – The Spectator as Bad Witness and Bad Voyeur. In J. Helmer & F. Malzacher (Eds.), Not Even a Game Anymore: The Theatre of Forced Entertainment (pp.120-135). Berlin: Alexander Verlag Berlin.

McAulay, G. (2000). The Spectator in the Space. In Space in Performance: Making Meaning in the Theatre (pp. 235-277). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962, 1999). The Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge.

Mulvey, L. (1989). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. In Visual and Other Pleasures. London: Macmillan.

Phelan, P. (1993). The Ontology of Performance: Representation without Reproduction. In Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (pp.146-166). London: Routledge.

Puchner, M. (2002). Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-theatricality, and Drama. Baltimore; London: John Hopkins University Press.

Rancière, J. (2009). The Emancipated Spectator. London: Verso.

Read, A. (2009). Theatre, Intimacy & Engagement: The Last Human Venue. Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Ridout, N. (2006). Embarrassment: The Predicament of the Audience.In Stage Fright, Animals and Other Theatrical Problems (pp.70-95). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sörenson, A. (2008). Art Object. Ballettanz Dance in Art: Ballettanz das Jahrbuch 2008 (pp. 74-81). Berlin: Friedrich Berlin Verlag.

Open Offer - Performance & Creation

Performance

Open Offer for Elbow Room is a twenty-five minute solo performance for an audience of approximately twenty, depending on the size of the space. It was performed three times as part of the Graduate School Showcase on Wednesday the 23^rd September, at 7pm, 8pm and 9pm, in Studio 6 at Laban. As the spectator enters the space, which is completely empty except for a line of hazard tape dividing the space into two halves, she is given an envelope by an usher which reads the following: Here & Now (Sit & Open). The spectator usually sits down on the floor in front of the tape, opens the envelope, attempts to read all the letters in the letter, waits, and then the performance begins. Or has it already?

Open Offer is not created for the theatre with its implication of collective/individual spectatorship and all the other expectations that a theatrical space carries. Out of the comfort zone of the darkened auditorium. There is no room for anonymity here. The piece also does not exist in an exhibition sense; for example, a durational performance installation in a gallery, such as La Ribot’s Panoramix, in which people are free to choose where and how they position themselves in relation to the performer (sitting/ standing/ lying). Through the traditional formal setting and the seated position of the audience the distinction between performer and spectator can be challenged. It was also not my intention to leave it up to the spectator when to enter and exit. Open Offer has a definite beginning and an end. The spectators need to be there with me throughout the performance. This piece is about time and duration and therefore it is important that everyone is there for the whole duration of the event. This fact offers opportunities for meanings to emerge.

[The ...] fact that in theatre – as opposed to other art forms – the production inevitably takes place within the same space and time as the reception puts the audience in a risky position: that of sharing the responsibility of being a part of the whole. (Malzacher, 2004, p.122)

Not placed in a theatrical setting but also not designed as an installation to be wandered through, Open Offer occupies an awkward space. Not only this, it takes place in a studio, more specifically, a dance studio at Laban with all the connotations that this carries. My intention was to make use of these implications in the performance rather than ignoring them. This means to think about the studio both as a space of production and as a time of knowledge. The ground that we, the spectators and I, both stand on is quite literally common; the ground supports us in our co-presence in the space.

Yet, the space is divided into two (through hazard tape) and there are definite boundaries that are established from the beginning. Abrams notes ‘the possibility that in fact the separation between performer and spectator must remain clear for participatory performance to question the relationship between the two’ (2003, p.xiv). As Heathfield points out,

Performance operates by means of a performing subject testing out his or her relation to a site [and] enables artists and spectators – made inseparable from each other – to experience and to think the extent to which a given identity, or indeed subjectivity itself, is moored to a physical place. (2004, p.11)

For Open Offer, I work within the theatrical convention but without the hierarchy of the stage. We are in a studio, yet the mechanics of the theatrical machine can be revealed even more in this environment. We still have a contract, an unspoken agreement.

Creation

When everything has been done before, where does one start? I started the process of creation by revisiting other people’s work. It seems invaluable in today’s (art) world of recycling and deejaying to place oneself in relation to past works. By doing so, new things can emerge.

I became interested in the idea of dramaturgy and how the relationship between text and act(ion), text and stillness, text and body, and text and image can be framed by this. In Open Offer, I am interested in the potential of performance to communicate at a non-verbal level, recognising the importance of silence in this situation. In this way, the gaps between language and enactment become explicit. The rules of how the piece is structured are revealed and made visible and accessible for the spectator from the beginning of the performance. No magic. No make-believe. My props represent the essentials and, at the same time, the realities of performance (and life). Food, water, money. The value of the coins in the cash-box was initially three pounds, less than what I would normally invest in making a performance and less than what I would normally pay to see a performance. Quite literally, with the contribution of the spectator, the value of Open Offer increases with each performance. I decided on a performance style that was matter-of-fact, task-based and non-expressive in order to not distract from the performance itself. I decided that, in terms of timing, things would take as long as they needed to; there is no attempt to speed procedures up. Things are produced right here & now in front of our eyes. No magic. No make-believe.

I am joining the school of patience, in which performance does not equal spectacle and where the people who are working are the spectators as well as the performers. This school is marked by absence, stillness, nothingness, silence, pause, slowness and emptiness. We are trying to make space in order to observe and engage with the act of looking itself. There is a desire to take a more subtle and quiet approach to making performance. Augusto Corrieri (2008) writes about his process of developing his solo Quartet: ‘the “not doing” becomes just as important as the doing; there is an attempt at giving space to the apparently passive elements (stillness and silence), and not just to theatre’s traditionally active ones (movement and sound).’ In 1952, more than fifty years ago, John Cage proposed this strategy for music when he wrote 4’33, his most famous and controversial composition for any instrument, in which the musician does not play a single note for four minutes and thirty-three seconds: silence as music.

My rationale of working with stillness, as opposed to continuous movement, derives from Lepecki’s analyses that ‘the insertion of stillness in dance, the deployment of different ways of slowing down movement and time, are particularly powerful propositions for other modes of rethinking action and mobility’ (2005, p.15). He continues:

Stillness is no longer dance’s other, but it remains outside dance, as a potential, as a ‘system’ which allows the body to ‘incline’ itself towards dancing. Stillness is potential dancing, it is perhaps even the primal source for dancing [as Paxton demonstrates in an approach to perceiving movement which he calls the Small Dance], but it is not quite dancing. (2000, p.342)

What Lepecki is proposing, is a change in the ontology of dance: one that is marked by absence. ‘Under such conditions, the body finds itself in an unstable situation dominated by uncertainty, and staging the performance asserts its absence and disappearance, rather than its existence and presence’ (Dominguez, 2008, p.109). Through stillness itself, we may reconsider our own presence in this situation.

With no other performers, no collaborators, no set, no lights, no music, no costume and hardly any props or make-up, I find myself here & now, in front of you, ready to begin.

Bibliography

Corrieri, A. (2006). Words for later: Quartet and the poetics of performance. Dartington. Retrieved September 15, 2009, from Augusto Corrieri Web site:

http://www.augustocorrieri.com/Words%20for%20later%20-%20Augusto%20Corrieri.pdf

Dominguez, A. (2008). Unstable. In Ballettanz Dance in Art: Ballettanz das Jahrbuch 2008 (pp.104-109). Berlin: Friedrich Berlin Verlag.

Heathfield, A. (2004). Alive. In A. Heathfield and H. Glendinning (Eds.), Live: Art and Performance (pp.6-15). London: Tate Publishing.

Lepecki, A. (2000). Still: On the Vibratile Microscopy of Dance. In G. Brandstetter & H. Volckers (Eds.), Remembering the Body (pp.332-366). Austria: Hatje Cantz Publishers.

Open Offer for Elbow Room - The Letters

Laban, 23^rd September 2009

Dear Spectator

She invites you to read her performance.

Your contribution is appreciated.

55% + 1 L

Not quite Still distinguished.

Her name: Antje, Origin of ‘Antje’: German, Meaning of ‘Antje’: Grace

The apple doesn’t far from the tree.

sides

If I received a nickel for every time I saw someone as beautiful as you, I'd have five cents.

Do you have a map? Because I just keep getting lost in your eyes.

If I could rearrange the alphabet, I'd put U and I together.

Did the sun come up or did you just smile at me?

You must be a hell of a thief because you stole my heart from across the room.

Do you have a Band Aid? I just scraped my knee falling for you.

I must be a snowflake, because I've fallen for you.

I think there's something wrong with my eyes because I can't take them off you.

Your eyes are bluer than the Atlantic Ocean, and baby I'm lost at sea!

I think you just stole something. My heart.

As the penny drops, Brown disappears from the scene.

J.B. or Of the presence of the body.

10. Absence or The End.

Yours sincerely,

A.H.

Central Line, 24^th September 2009

Dear Performer

I invite her to read my letter.

I didn’t have any change on me, sorry. Are people looking at me?

55% of.... Water? Fish? Too many fish in the sea? Is she feeling sick?

What is not quite still distinguished? Did she fall in love making this piece?

Does Antje really mean Grace? Is she really German? She looks Polish. Is her name really Antje. [Yes, see programme notes] Why does the arrow point both ways? Is anyone else really bored?

Is she religious? Does she believe in paradise? Does she believe in love? Is she going against the apple? No chance, she will never win, she’s much heavier. I wonder how much she weighs. She doesn’t look like a dancer. Why is she using an apple? It’s so cliché. Does her family know she’s doing this? Is that her dad over there? I wonder what he thinks.

Is it a verb or a noun?

Where did she get those from? I’m sure she’s not serious right now. Why is she so serious? eX-boyfriends? Is this about love? Is this about seX? Is she gay or straight? Is this past, present, future? Maps, crosses, Trio.

Is this clever or is this silly? I think she might have a problem with making/taking things too literal. Technically the sign is brown too. And the coins are, too.

I hope I’m not the only one that knows all the songs from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack!? HE’S NOT REALLY DEAD! What moves you? I saw her performing last year. I lost two friends to cancer. I suppose he was right: You have to love dancing to stick to it. This is why I stopped. Is that her voice? That is the best German accent ever! I wish she would have turned on some music instead. I shall suggest that to her when she’s finished. I’m possibly having ‘the time of my life’ right now. Isn’t that the title of a book?

Will she come back? Should we applaud? This is definitely The End!? I wonder if I can find that penny that I put in. What if I take all? I wonder how much this is. What could I buy with this? Hummus. A cup of tea. Dark chocolate. Two cigarettes. A pint. What time is it? Goodbye, I’m off to the bar.

Yours sincerely,

A.H.

11 Burgess Road, 25^th September 2009

Dear Spectator

She invites you to read [1] her letter.

Without you, this performance does not exist.

Without you, this performance will not happen.

Without you - here and now - this time and space is wasted.

Without you, I have no reason to be.

The percentage of water in a woman’s body plus the amount of water that she’s drinking right now.

The symbol for fish.

Water. Body. Difference.

Zurrutada Pieza Distinguida #32 by La Ribot.

Fish. Water. Difference. Body.

The human condition. From here to there. We. Two.

Falling in love.

Literally.

Slowly.

Repeatedly.

She believes in honesty. http://www.babynology.com/meaning-antje-f24.html

Apple – Eve - Fallen from Grace

the fact of becoming different; variety or novelty; a different set of clothes; money exchanged for its equivalent in a larger denomination or in a different currency; the balance of money when the amount paid is larger than the amount due; coins of a small denomination; to make or become different; to replace with or exchange for another; to give and receive (something) in return; to give or receive (money) in exchange for its equivalent sum in a smaller denomination or different currency; to put on other clothes; to get off one bus; train or airliner and on to another. [2]

EK: Love is a resistance to the usual economy of giving and receiving. In the act of giving myself over to another I do not demand return for my investment, I destabilise the usual economics of exchange. [PAUSE] This is the fantasy we have of love.[3]

To stand in front of other people. To be there. To be present. To be visible.[4]

8. Her trainers and Gordon in our ‘current economic climate’.

9. Bad, Le Sacre Du Printemps, Loops, The Time of My Life, Beat It, Blaubart, Exercise Piece, Be My Baby, Thriller, Cafe Müller, Changing Steps, She's Like the Wind, Earth Song, Kontakthof, Rebus, Hungry Eyes, Billie Jean, 1980, Solo, Stay, Wanna Be Starting Something, Nelken, Sounddance, Yes, The Way You Make Me Feel, Two Cigarettes in the Dark, Blue Studio: 5 Fragments, You Don't Own Me, Man in the Mirror, Viktor, Fractions, Hey Baby, Smooth Criminal, Palermo Palermo, Exchange, Overload, Remember the Time, Nur Du, Beach Birds, Love Is Strange, Heal the World, Der Fensterputzer, Beach Birds for Camera, Where Are You Tonight?, Black or White, O Dido, Biped, In the Still of the Night, Gone Too Soon, Wiesenland, Interscape, Big Girls Don't Cry, Dangerous, Für die Kinder von gestern, heute und morgen, Fluid Canvas, Will You Love Me Tomorrow, Scream, Rough Cut, Squaregame, Cry to Me, Stranger in Moscow, Vollmond, Split Sides, Love Man, They Don’t Care About Us, Bamboo Blues, Views on Stage, Do You Love Me, Invincible, Sweet Mambo, Eyespace, Some Kind of Wonderful, You Rock My World, New Piece, Nearly Ninety, These Arms of Mine.

The End of Jérôme Bel’s The Last Performance, and André Lepecki.

A tribute to some of the famous people that have fallen to their deaths this year: Michael Jackson, Pina Bausch, Merce Cunningham and Patrick Swayze.

You may take what you have given. You may take what you have not given. You may leave what you have given. You may take what you have been given.

You may leave what you have been given.

You may leave.

The Here & Now.

Yours sincerely,

A.H.

[1] to look at and understand or take in (written or printed matter); to look at and say aloud; to have a certain wording; to interpret in a specified way; to interpret the significance or meaning of; to register or show; to make out the true nature or mood of; to interpret (signs, characters, etc.) other than by visual means; to have sufficient knowledge of (a language) to understand the written word; to undertake a course of study in (a subject); to gain knowledge by reading; to hear and understand, esp. when using a two-way radio.

from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Read

[2] http://www.thefreedictionary.com/change

[3] Quote from Building a Potential Structure - A script of the Performance by Patricia Lennox-Boyd

[4] Quote from A six-thousand-and-forty-seven-word manifesto on liveness in three parts with three interludes by Tim Etchells

Teaching

I have been leading workshops and classes in contemporary dance and somatic practice for children, young people and adults since 2003. I recently started teaching on the BA Dance at the University of Wolverhampton; subject areas include: choreographic strategies, improvistion and dance history.

Photography: Hanne Carstens

Curation

Halfway House @ House Gallery presents

The way we read: performance / text / image

30th July 2010

If seeing establishes our way of being in the world, how do we read this world? How do we interpret what we see, the people and things that we encounter in our life? How is meaning produced and manipulated in this context? We can never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between ourselves and the object. This relationship between what we see and what we know is therefore never fixed. Things are not as they seem.

The way we read is curated by performance maker and choreographer Antje Hildebrandt who will be presenting her performance lecture Open Offer for Elbow Room. The evening also includes work by artists Stuart Alexander and Dori Deng.