Photo: Katarzyna Szu Szugajew.
We are glad to inform that Magdalena Ptasznik and Eleonora Zdębiak are participating in the residency and sholarship programme Tanzrecherche NRW. Their work-in-progress surfing, or Tanzrecherche # 11, will be presented on 19 July 2013 (8 pm) at DansArt Tanznetworks in Bielefeld, Germany, where the residency is taking place.
Tanzrecherche NRW (Dance Research NRW) is an unusual international grant programme set up by the NRW KULTURsekretariat, a grants initiative of the 21 major cities and a regional association in North Rhine-Westphalia launched in 1974 to promote culture projects. The programme offers dancers, choreographers and performers the opportunity to spend several weeks working and conducting research in NRW. This funding programme is run several times a year in various dance cities in North Rhine-Westphalia, most recently in the autumn of 2012 in Essen and Düsseldorf.
Tanzrecherche NRW is not focused on production. Instead, the emphasis is on fostering artistic work and quality, thus distinguishing itself from the majority of sponsorship schemes in the dance world. Apart from rent-free accommodation for 1 – 2 people and a scholarship of up to 7,500 euro, the artists-in-residence are provided with personal support, mentoring and the possibility to publicly present the outcomes of their research in the host city. Successful candidates are chosen by a jury (composed since 2011 of Roman Arndt, Robert Steijn and Melanie Suchy).
Interest in the programme continues to grow. In 2013 three member cities will offer simultaneous research residencies for the first time, running between May and July. Each dance research will be guided by a separate motto, unique to its location. Magdalena Ptasznik & Eleonora Zdębiak’s Tanzrecherche NRW No. 11 in Bielefeld will focus on the terms “texture”, “materiality” and “material character”; its partner is the DansArt dance network. Tanzrecherche NRW No. 12 in Neuss will take as its theme “Custom and modernity – maintaining the particular in a networked world”; its partner is the Alte Post culture forum. Finally, Tanzrecherche NRW No. 13 will be hosted in Cologne with a project on “Architecture and Dance – Volume – Movement – Identity in Fluid and Firm Structures”; its partners are tanZkoeln, tanZbüro Köln, Quartier am Hafen and Westwerk Immobilien.
More: http://nrw-kultur.de/en/projects/projects/dance-research-nrw/info/
surfing(work-in-progress)
choreography and performance: Magdalena Ptasznik
concept advice and dramaturgy: Eleonora Zdebiak
surfingis a presentation of my work in progress and its content that surfaced during Tanzrecherche#11. Facing the opportunity of a long term research I was circling around “materiality” and allowed myself to approach this subject from a wider perspective and then focused my question through observations on actions I am engaging in. This also means a research on my methodology of creating. I am looking for manners of working which lead me to material that derives from the exchange between acting and reflecting, that recognizes and follows the outcome that surfaces in the process.
surfingcomes from the experience of personal attachment and inclination to objects. It does not aim to explore and represent relations of objects and subjects but searches for the experience of objects. At the starting point of the process we decided to shift our manners of looking at objects – to first of all look at objects and their responses to physical actions and ask what this brings into space instead of asking what the object provokes in my body.
How do objects perform, manifest their independence in time and space while being in relation with us? What do they bring back to body and space? In order to explore possible answers we were looking at what meetings, clashes and frictions between the surfaces of objects/matters do bring up.
There are different matters and different surfaces. They take my energy to act in their own way. I’m alive when I experience. Matter is only observable in the experience. I know I experience when friction appears. Friction appears when surfaces meet. Surface becomes present when it meets another one. Surface is the only experience accessible to perception. Surface is the meeting point. Surface gives the resistance. Surface does not deny the depth. We do not aim to collect the knowledge about objetcts/matters/surfaces but rather to experience their meetings. This is the ritual which does not reflect experience but turns towards it.
Prezention of Tanzrecherche #11
19 July 2013, 8 pm
DansArt Tanznetworks
Am Bach 11, Bielefeld
