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A curated international group of practitioners, thinkers, writers, and scholars gathers to create a platform for encounters and practice sharing and to generate a monthly online magazine with associated live online events and off-screen activities. Grand re Union aims at documenting, while also cultivating and transmitting, relevant knowledge and practices honed in dance, movement, and choreographic reflection and creation.

 

Originally designed in-person conference in Poznan for June 2020, Grand re Union moves from being a ten-day in-person gathering to a 10 months platform for commissioning, collecting and archiving the intersecting, transdisciplinary practices of dance and choreography.. The project isprecipitated in response to growing extremism and polarization tearing at the fabric of inter-human and interspecies relations, and our connection to nature, positing that the body-based practice of dance and choreography can help heal our world.

 

Grand re Union conjures the first horizontal improvisational collective Grand Union, established in 1969 by protagonists of postmodern dance. Project partners and artists will exercise the choreographic traditions borne of that time?renewing the knowledge created then and adding to it the practices flourishing in the field since.

 

 

Talk with the Curators of Grand re Union with Marta Keil, Joanna Leśnierowska, Julie Phelps, Peter Pleyer and Rivca Rubin.

 

Saturday 20 June 2020, 10:30pm CET | 1:30pm PST | 4:30pm EST 

 

Join the international team of curators for a discussion on the plans and intentions for Grand re Union at www.grandreunion.net.

 

Dancing our resistance. Collaborating on connecting. 

 

It?s time, and it?s been time for a long time, to take action and do the work of responding to the global circumstances of injustice, extremism, polarization, exploitation, and environmental destruction. Grand re Union, a two-year commissioning and international and intergenerational convening project, was born out of a craving to address how choreographic and dance practice can be part of changing and healing the world and building more just futures for everyone. Instigated before the pandemic, this project?s aim is to be part of the global movement toward deep systematic change in the dominant world order, interhuman relationships, and human?s relationship to nature

 

We all have a part to play in the movement, and with this project we start from where we are ? deeply embedded in the practices, capacities, and shortcomings of the postmodern dance field. We?re showing up to be changed and offer what we have.

 

 

Grand re Union 

 

Contributions to kick off magazine issue by Lou Drago (GER), Jack Halberstam (USA), Eva Karczag (HUN), Anna Nowicka (POL/GER), Rivca Rubin (UK), Karen Schaffman (USA), Agata Siniarska (POL/GER).

 

And with special edition of ?moving the mirror? project by Peter Pleaer and Team (GER/POL)

 

Project organized by Art Stations Foundation (POL), CounterPulse (USA), Movement Reaserch (USA) With support of Trust for Mutual Understanding, Muzeum Susch, Goethe Institut Warschau, Embasse of the Netherlands, Adam Mickiewicz Institute/Culture.pl, Institute of Music and Dance

 

 

Statement

 

 

In the face of a world pulling apart, we insist on being together.  

 

Change is in the air.

 

Right now how we can be together has changed. However, a crisis was already with us before the pandemic. Art Stations Foundation, CounterPulse, and Movement Research partnered to create an international, intergenerational conference in Poland in June of 2020 to address this crisis. A crisis precipitated by growing extremism and polarization tearing at the fabric of inter-human and interspecies relations, and our connection to nature.

 

The center of the earth is directly beneath each of us. We have something in common. 

 

This project was originally designed as an in-person gathering-and in-person remains the ultimate aim-meant as an opportunity to pause, an invitation to suspend business as usual, a chance to create time, and make space for deep reflection on the global circumstances of our era. Little did we know that there would be no need to contrive the conditions under which to be suspended, that a pandemic would arrive and enforce such a pause. A pause greater than we could have imagined. Inside that pause, our intent is reborn stronger. 

 

Grand re Union is a revival and embrace of the spirit of being united in collective thinking, acting, and dancing.

We conjure the first horizontal improvisational collective Grand Union, established in 1969 by protagonists of postmodern dance. Grand re Union exercises the choreographic traditions borne of that time-renewing the knowledge created then, and adding to it the practices flourishing in the field since. Furthermore, we attempt to map this zeitgeist, proposing that coherence, while akin to control, is in service to organizing our collective power. And we crave action.

 

Choreographing change. Dancing our resistance. Collaborating on connecting.

 

Still centering the generative act of being together while unhinging from geographies gives us the opportunity to transcend ephemerality for a moment. Togetherness for us now is a shared focus on this act of mapping. Grand re Union moves from being a ten-day in-person gathering to a two-year platform for commissioning, collecting and archiving the wisdom of our fields. A group of practitioners, thinkers, writers, and scholars will generate a monthly online magazine with associated live online meetings and off-screen activities (and we hold space for localized in person gatherings as possible) aimed at documenting, while also cultivating and transmitting, relevant knowledge and practices honed in dance, movement, and choreographic reflection and creation. The magazine will be accompanied by the book contextualizing the generated and collected practices. We search out ways to extend existing and create new frameworks to reach beyond the dance field to likely and unlikely collaborators and conspirators.  We welcome the friction that emerges between new acquaintances and new ideas. 

 

We show up to be changed, and by extension, change the world. Together.  

 

So we begin again. We believe resistance and sustainable change to the dominant world order is possible. It is happening before our eyes just now. Choreographic practices provide alternative ways of being human, of being in the world with each other, and being in relationship to nature; of caring for each other and with each other. The only way out is through, and we want to co-map the way.

 

We know that there is much that we do not know. We are also aware that mapping is and has always been a political project. In every map there is just as much information missing as is present. And so we chose to focus on practices that help us navigate not knowing. We find two areas that are distinctly relevant in this. The first is the plethora of somatic practices that in our digital, disembodied times reconnect us with physical experience and return to us a grounded awareness of our own body as well as respectful possible interaction with other bodies. The second is improvisation, perceived as a laboratory for brave and generous experimentation toward testing and developing the necessary adaptability to respond to ever-changing realities through considerate participation.

 

We unite in radical connection, transdisciplinarity, and post-hierarchical collective actions. 

 

We commit to the political potential of live gathering. We will start now with the launch of www.grandreunion.net platform and  gathering online (20.06) and from September 2020, we will continue monthly (every 3rd Saturday). Then in the near future hopefully we can convene local gatherings, and eventually,we desire to meet all together in-person across the borders of nations, and place, and time. The diversity of these frames will enable us to experience and reflect on the potential of varied ways of being together and supporting each other. We intend each gathering to strengthen us all in our everyday encounters during the pandemic and beyond.

 

***

 

Digital magazines, meetings, and all project elements will be held in English online (until further notice) on the 3rd Saturdays of each month September 2020 – June 2021.

 

***

 

Curatorial team: 

Marta Keil | Joanna Leśnierowska | Julie Phelps | Peter Pleyer | Rivca Rubin 

 

Production Team:

Justin Ebrahemi, Natalia Gorzelańczyk, Marta Harasimowicz, Łukasz Kędzierski, Michał Łuczak 

 

Lead Producing Partners: 

www.artstationsfoundation5050.com? | ?www.counterpulse.org? | ?www.movementresearch.org

 

 

About Art Stations Foundation

Since 2004, Art Stations Foundation (ASF) has been providing extensive support to the development of contemporary choreography (with special focus on Polish artists) through its performative programme based in Poznan?, recognized internationally under the name Old Brewery New Dance. It provided the Polish and international dance community with a unique meeting point – a platform for research, creation and choreographic (self)reflection bringing forward the art of choreography in dialogue with other disciplines, examining its history, theory and future, revisiting and interrogating its own artistic, but also political and social, content and contexts. ? turning Old Brewery center and ASF into a leading organization on the Central Eastern European dance map.

 

 

About CounterPulse

CounterPulse is building a movement of risk-taking art that shatters assumptions and builds community. We provide space and resources for emerging artists and cultural innovators, serving as an incubator for the creation of socially relevant, community-based art and culture. CounterPulse acts as a catalyst for art and action; creating a forum for the open exchange of art and ideas, catalyzing transformation in our communities and our society. We work towards a world that celebrates diversity of race, class, cultural heritage, artistic expression, ability, gender identity, and sexual orientation. We strive to create an environment that is physically and economically accessible to everyone.

 

 

About Movement Research

Based in New York City, Movement Research is one of the world’s leading laboratories for the investigation of dance and movement-based forms. Valuing the individual artist, their creative process and their vital role within society, Movement Research is dedicated to the creation and implementation of free and low-cost programs that nurture and instigate discourse and experimentation. Movement Research strives to reflect the cultural, political and economic diversity of its moving community, including artists and audiences alike.

 

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