Poetry is Dance – Festival Opening
Often dance and poetry are seen as distinctly separate art forms. This is true, they are. One is only and entirely in the moment, while the other one lives on on pages for as long as books are kept.
However, this evening will focus on how these disciplines’ forms can strengthen, push and shape each other. When it comes to bringing out what is underneath the surface, few art forms can manage to do this as immediately, passionately, and as personally as dance can.
It is here that the link with poetry is at its clearest: both are intense forms of expression revolving around rhythm and style. They stay clear of the rational and instead rattle your core, shake your limbs, and move your heart. And above all that, both are a joy. A joy to partake in, and a joy to behold.
This evening will be about exactly that experience, featuring films, performances, and attempts to rationalize what we have just witnessed through discussions.
Doortje Peters | Performance
Physical performer, Theatre maker, Tap dancer
When Doortje Peters she was six years old she started rhythm tap classes and later she learned from international teachers. The big discovery that tap is not only a dance form but also a music form and a way to tell a story changed her life. She worked with different jazz and classical music ensembles and with theatre companies like Vis à Vis, Mime Wave, House of Makers and the german Sebastian Weber Dance Company. Rhythm, movement and humor as main drive she got more and more inspired to combine different disciplines in her own work. With her company Tappin-It Collective she made performances in a mix of tap, contemporary dance, mime and music theatre.
Ulrike Almut Sandig | Performance
Prosa, Performance, Poesie
Ulrike Almut Sandig grew up in rural Saxony and published numerous volumes of poems and stories, music albums and radio plays. Her novel “Monster wie wir” (2020) was celebrated in the feuilleton.
She is the frontwoman of the poetry collective Landschaft and composes, films and recites her poetry in close collaboration with artists from all over the world. She was most recently honoured with the Erich Loest Prize (2021).
The F. A. Z. writes about her current volume of poetry “Lighting Sheep”: “Ulrike Almut Sandig’s poetry gives her readers freedom”. She produces German poems of contemporary poetry from Ukrainian. Her translation of the poems of the New Zealand poet Hinemoana Baker will be published under the title “Funkhaus” in autumn 2023. Sandig lives in Berlin with her family.
Boris Seewald | Guest
Filmmaker
Boris Seewald is an award-winning video director based in Berlin, Germany. He treats video like a choreography; composing and illustrating images that rhythmically visualise and enhance music and sound.
Drawn to the experimental and unconventional, he uses a variety of techniques in his work, combining abstract animation and mixed media with live action footage. The handmade animation style lends his videos the spontaneity and vibrance of a moving painting.
The Corporeal Poetry Collective | Guest
Author and dramaturg Bettina Henningsen, dance dramaturg Joachim Goldschmidt and spoken word artist and media artist Dean Ruddock began experimenting with literature and dance in 2016.
Since 2021, the intermediate artist, poet, and performer Kinga Tóth has been a member of the collective. The artistic collaboration focuses on the physical realization of certain themes with artistic means (dance, text, movement, sound, visuality). The (poetic) text is not only to be communicated but physically represented and expressed, creating a connection between the different art forms.
Since then, this interdisciplinary and collective approach has been used to approach various themes: during the pandemic, for example, lyrical-lucid video clips were created with collaged texts, nature-related sound art, and performative installations. The realization took place mainly with dancers from urban dance with contemporary influences and an affinity for krumping. They worked with ballads by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, variations of the Undine myth, and their own field studies on the question “What is truth?
At the moment, the group is developing a new play around the theme of dying and death. Based on their own personal as well as artistic approaches, they are researching in labs and interviews to find not only authentic words but also poetic movements for the speechlessness associated with the topics.
Anna Eijsbouts | Curator
"Poetry is Dance" Program
The Netherlands
Anna Eijsbouts is a director of slightly odd short animated films, the programmer for the Kaboom Animation Festival’s experimental screenings, a lecturer at the Utrecht School of the Arts and a board member for DAMD, the Dutch Union for Animators and Motion Designers.
She graduated with an MA in Animation from the Royal College of Art in 2012 with her film “Tired of Swimming”, which went on to win several awards, and more recently animated to Neil Gaiman’s poem “Hate for Sale” for the Visible Poetry Project, which also travelled the globe and won awards at festivals such as the Hiroshima Animation Festival, the Zebra Poetry Film Festival and Weimar’s Poetry Film Tage.
Her short films vary from small but detailed character studies in the peculiarly personal genre to ones she hopes will somehow change the world.
She fills the time she isn’t working on personal projects with whatever commercial work might fold itself around those, with travels, and with many an hour on the dance floor.
Momentum
Direction: Boris Seewald
Germany, 6:43min
For Patrick, a tortilla chip started his moment of self-discovery. With exuberant dancing and magical passion, he shares his inspiration and invites everyone to participate. Even his mother.”Momentum” explores the concept of spontaneous authenticity and the synopsis of body and soul… through tortilla chips and dance.
Roselyne
Direction: Tereza Vejvodová
Choreography: Cécile da Costa
19:30 min
Audiovisual poem based on a true story of Roselyne – a woman who forgot to live her life. She could be a reflection of our doubts, the decisions we did not take, the possibilities we did not enjoy. How do we become our true selves?
Original concept and choreography by French performer Cécile Da Costa.
Evidence of it all
Direction: Drew Jacoby
Text: Royce Vavrek
9:11 min
Choreographer Drew Jacoby (Nederlands Dans Theater, Royal Ballet of Flanders) directs her first short film for SFDanceworks. She commissioned Pulitzer winning librettist Royce Vavrek to create a story and text for the film based on the concept of the seven cardinal sins, through the lens of a woman in solitude, pulsating through her memories.
SHE
Direction: Emil Dan Seidel
7:30 min
Caught in a room the protagonist, Clarice, unfolds a vision of her own identity through a mirror interrogator.
‘SHE’ is a cinematic adaptation of a solo dance performance work with the same name.
Inspired by ‘The Passion According to G.H.’ by Clarice Lispector, the solo revolved around identity and doubt.
Bellydance Vogue
Direction: Hadi Moussally
4:55 min
“My birthday was on the 3rd of April 2020 and for the first time, I celebrated it by myself. That’s why I wanted to send you a film « Bellydance Vogue » that I did in confinement filmed while quarantine using VHS app and combining it with archive films that I have from the 80-the 90s. “