Pictured: Boris Charmatz. Photo: (sic!).
The motto of (sic!) four seasons series in 2016 is TERAZ/NOW. The May edition will open with the presentation of Tino Sehgal and Boris Charmatz?s (unitled) (2000) on 5 May at 7 pm in the Laboratorium building of the Centre for Contemporary Art Zamek Ujazdowski in Warsaw. In the Museum of Modern Art, on Saturday May 7 from noon until 5 pm Charmatz will present expo zéro, a performance he created for the Musée de la Danse. The presentation will form part of the Pożegnanie Emilii (A Farewell to Emilia) event at the Museum, organised in collaboration with the ( sic! ), Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Institute of Music and Dance.
About the projects
(unitled) is a theatrical work Tino Sehgal created in 2000 to crown his discourse with the theatre before focusing on other fields of artistic activity. The piece describes the beginning of the artist?s relationship with visual arts and their role in community development. It presents 20th-century dance in a theatrical way, transferring choreographic practices and related images of the body into museum aesthetics. So, we can reflect together on what the world would look like if the society?s value system were created by dance and choreography. What would happen if the presence and transformation of actions, if the simultaneous creation and deconstruction of dance and choreography, were a model of organisation for the society?
Initially, Sehgal danced alone in this piece. Later, two new versions emerged, featuring interpretations by Frank Willens and Charmatz. Each of the dancers, moving alone in front of the audience, without any music or decorations, leaves his mark on the work, contributing the strength of his body and personality. In this way, the dancers remind us of the basic role of interpretation, and the audience find pleasure in discovering these differences.
Watching (unitled) gives the audience a picture of 20th-century dance. During the performance, there is little space for breathing, there is some laughter but not too often, the dancer?s body is transformed by pain, the eyes reflect despair, the world order is turned upside down. And then, we are left speechless, confronted with the portrait of the age of horror. The interpretation presented 15 years after the premiere provides an opportunity for adding contemporary reflection, thanks to the codes and influences of Segal?s latest visual works.
Boris Charmatz/Musée de la danse expo zéro
With Paweł Althamer, Romain Bigé, Boris Charmatz, Julie Cunningham, Janez Janša, Boris Ondreička, Chrysa Parkinson, Emily Roysdon, Marl?ne Saldana, Frank Willens
When Boris Charmatz became the director of the National Choreographic Centre of Rennes and Brittany in 2009, one of his first decisions was to change its name to Musée de la danse. In his manifesto, he states that he simply eliminated the words ?national?, ?choreographic? and ?centre? from the name. It was not only a gesture of rapprochement towards the visual arts and a timely decision embedded in the performative turn linking performing and contemporary arts, but also a research project on exhibiting movement and choreographic exhibitions merging theory and practice. ?In dance, we don’t usually have museums, because it’s in our bodies that we store things?, argues Charmatz.
Located at the ?zero point? of Musée de la danse, expo zéro has become one of the main protocols of Musée de la danse. It is an exhibition without any artwork, but with artists, choreographers, dancers, philosophers, theorists and curators. Instead of objects, photographs, sculptures or material installations, it offers live presence: conversations and situations featuring gestures, words, bodies and movements. Ten invited people, every time a different crew, spend four days ?in residence? working together as a do-and-think tank. They reflect on a ?museum of dance? from the perspective of their own disciplines, and conceive a living exhibition presenting the reasons and means of making movement, from the most personal to the most political. Previous editions took place at the Musée de la danse, Tate Modern, Berliner Festwochen/Foreign Affairs, BAK Utrecht, and Performa 11 in New York among others.
No other moment would be more suitable ? and yet difficult ? for expo zéro in Warsaw, than the time when the Emilia building hosting the Museum of Modern Art is closing down. This is the moment when the notion of museum is vulnerable again and in need of redefinition, when the only collection that remains is a group of bodies, both of performers and of spectators staying in the same space at the same time.
About the artists:
Tino Sehgal is a British-German artist born in London in 1976. After graduating in dance and political economics, he committed himself to visual arts. His works have been presented around the world, for example, at the Venice Biennial, where he received a Golden Lion in 2013, and at the dOCUMENTA (13) exhibition. Sehgal?s individual exhibitions have been hosted by, among others, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and London?s Tate Modern and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. In his performance (untitled) (2000), Sehgal revisits his past experiences as a dancer and choreographer. After creating this work, Sehgal gave up theatre for museums. Instead of items, the museums have started to present people, arranged situations, conversations, meetings, which resulted in launching performance, dance and theatre units. Sehgal does not agree to have his works documented, explaining that a performance may be documented ?only in the memory of the spectator?. His works in the museums, for example, in the hallway of Tate Modern, at the Guggenheim Museum or at the recent dOCUMENTA in Kassel, last at least six weeks, like exhibitions.
Boris Charmatz ? after studying at the Ecole de Danse de l’Opéra de Paris and at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon, Boris Charmatz was invited by Régine Chopinot to dance in Ana (1990) and Saint-Georges (1991). In 1992, he was asked by Odile Duboc to join her company Contrejour and dance in 7 jours/7 villes (1992), Projet de la Mati?re (1993) and Trois Boléros (1996). He also took part in the premiere of K de E, choreographed by Olivia Grandville and Xavier Marchand (1993).
In 1992, he co-founded edna association with Dimitri Chamblas. They choreographed together A bras-le -corps (1993) and Les Disparates (1994). Next, Charmatz started to create his own works, including Aatt enen tionon (1996), a vertical piece for three dancers, and herses (une lente introduction) (1997), a piece for five dancers and a cellist, set to music by Helmut Lachenmann. In 1999, he choreographed Con forts fleuve, a group piece performed to texts by John Giorno and music by Otomo Yoshihide. In 2002, he created héâtre-élévision, a provocative installation piece influenced by the Russian matryoshka dolls and designed for one spectator at a time. In 2006, he presented régi, a performance with Julia Cima, Raimund Hoghe and himself, as well as Quintette cercle (2006), a live version of héâtre-élévision. The piece La danseuse malade (The Ill Dancer, 2008) performed by Jeanne Balibar and Boris Charmatz, was inspired by the texts of Tatsumi Hijikata, the founder of butoh dance.
Charmatz?s work 50 Years of Dance (Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, December 2009) is performed by former dancers of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Conceived as a choreographic flip-book, it takes the book Merce Cunningham, Fifty Years by David Vaughan as its score.
Since 1997, in collaboration with Ang?le Le Grand, Charmatz has developed a range of projects at edna, aimed at creating a space open to multiple experiments: thematic sessions, production of films (Les Disparates by César Vayssié, Horace Benedict by Dimitri Chamblas and Aldo Lee, Une lente introduction by Boris Charmatz), Hors-série programmes proposed by the edna team (La chaise and Visitations by Julia Cima, Jach?res by Vincent Dupont), production of installations (Programme court avec essorage), organisation of exhibitions (Complexe, Statuts), and trans-media projects (Ouvrée ? artistes en alpages, Entraînements ? série d’actions artistiques, Facultés, Education).
While maintaining an extensive touring schedule, he also participates in improvisation events on a regular basis (recently with Saul Williams, Archie Shepp and Han Bennink) and continues to pursue his performing career (with Odile Duboc for Projet de la Mati?re and Trois boléros, as part of the piece d?un Faune (éclats) by the Albrecht Knust Quartet and with Fanny de Chaillé for Underwear), to name a few.
From 2002 to 2004, while an artist-in-residence at the Centre national de la danse in Pantin, he was driven by the idea of exploring the theme of education in depth, and developed the Bocal project, a nomadic and ephemeral school that brought together students with different backgrounds. He was visiting professor at Berlin?s Akademie der Künste, where he contributed to the creation of a new dance curriculum implemented in 2007.
Charmatz has co-authored a book with Isabelle Launay, Entretenir / ? propos d?une danse contemporaine, published jointly by the Centre National de la Danse and Les Presses du Réel. His next book, I Am a School, was published in April 2009 by Les Prairies ordinaires.
A director of the Rennes and Britanny National Choreographic Centre since 2009, Charmatz intends to transform it into a Dance Museum of a new kind. Some of the museum projects include préfiguration, expo zéro, héliogravures, and rebutoh. More information is available at: www.museedeladanse.org
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expo zéro is a project by Boris Charmatz / Musée de la Danse.
The presentation at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw was initiated by Magda Lipska and Joanna Warsza, and curated together with Boris Charmatz and Martina Hochmuth.
With the support of Adam Mickiewicz Institute, the Institute of Music and Dance and (sic!) four seasons / Ciało Się Foundation
Musée de la danse / Centre chorégraphique national de Rennes et de Bretagne. Directed by Boris Charmatz. The association receives grants from the Ministry of Culture and Communication (Regional Direction of Cultural Affairs / Brittany), the City of Rennes, the Regional Council of Brittany and Ille-et-Vilaine General Council. www.museedeladanse.org
(sic!) four seasons
Starting from this year, the Centre for Contemporary Art ? Ujazdowski Castle becomes a partner of (sic!) four seasons, as the project becomes part of the centre’s schedule. Thus, a new consistent and well-thought-out programme will be designed around dance improvisation as a creative method and a mode of making and presenting art.
The showcase is primarily not about formal solutions but the reason to take action. The organisers wish to present the best of improvisation delivered by brave and uncompromising artists. Their works are extremely different and their methods not obvious as they are used to carry out an unpredictable activity: live interaction of the artist with the subject matter, person, reality, everything that exists here and now. Life and its many different manifestations as well as the format of presentation are the interests that the artists all share.
Being the basis of all creative activity, improvisation has an universal aspect to it that is closely linked with our existence. Its main principle ? acting in real time ? may be related to life as such. Apart from the most prominent, world-famous artists, the organisers would like to present young creators, emerging artists, students and recent graduates of dance collages.
The programme will feature educational projects: workshops, panel discussions, publication of materials on the theory of improvised dance. The organisers will also explore the relation between dance and visual arts, the two disciplines’ mutual influences, interdependence, and the way they inspire each other. As a form, spatial architecture, artistic expression, captured reality, a state of an individual or the world, dance is more and more often finding a common denominator with visual arts. Together, they want to render a piece of reality or fiction subjected to artistic vision or activity, give ideas and issues a form, without formal or psychological exaltation or aesthetic preoccupation. It is about one art being useful for the other but about their shared manner of presence ? dance is also a visual art.
More information: www.sic.warszawa.pl
