Photo: Organisers.
On Saturday 20 February at 11 am and 2 pm, the Old Brewery New Dance for Children ? Dancing Families 2016 will host the premiere of a show for children aged 4-7, created by Dalija Aćin Thelander and Keren Levi. Up Side Down is an interactive performance which offers the youngest audience an involving and interactive experience of contemporary dance and visual arts. It invites children into a shared adventure which they can spectate, activate and influence. This unique sensual journey enhances and embodies children?s perception. The minimalist performance stimulates imagination, promotes simplicity and draws inspiration from everyday objects and actions. The show focuses on interaction and joint action: from space to objects, from objects to the body, from the body to action, from action to dance.
The project is the result of international collaboration comprising artistic exploration, research and evaluation, including rehearsals with target audience?s participation. The performance was co-created by Poznań-based dancers Krystyna Szydłowska, Dorota Michalak and Zofia Tomczyk, who use movements and gestures to encourage children to participate.
Concept and choreography: Dalija Aćin Thelander and Keren Levi
Music: Tom Parkinson
Video: Assi Weitz
Performers: Dorota Michalak, Krystyna Szydłowska, Zofia Tomczyk
Co-produced by: De Stilte ? Theatre for Children (Breda, the Netherlands), Art Stations Foundation (Poznań, Poland), Station Service for Contemporary Dance and Youth Center Belgrade (Belgrade, Serbia), Little Theatre Dusko Radovic (Belgrade, Serbia) and Weld (Stockholm, Sweden). Each partner has created a local version of the performance and organised presentations of the work.
Supported by: Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland, Arts Grants Sweden, Stockholm Stad, Ministry of Culture of the Republic Serbia
Dalija Aćin Thelander works within the performing arts field as a choreographer, theatre maker and cultural worker. She has presented her works internationally at numerous festivals, including Impulstanz, Tanz im August, Les Particules, Perforations and BITEF. In 2008 she received Prix Jardin d?Europe for the performance Handle With Great Care on 8:tension, Impulstanz Festival, Vienna. Her current work aspires to contribute to the notion of choreography as expanded practice and focuses on the interactive and participatory role of the audience. She is involved in intensive explorations in the field of contemporary dance for children and babies. She has created several dance performances for children and babies as well as a choreographed installation for babies Baby Space, so far produced in Serbia, Poland and Denmark.
She is the co-founder and coordinator of Station Service for Contemporary Dance Belgrade, and the co-founder of Nomad Dance Academy for which she initiated, curated and produced numerous programs and productions. She is also the co-founder and co-curator of Kondenz festival for performing arts in Belgrade. She has collaborated with numerous theatre directors and won several awards for choreography for drama theatre. As a freelance artist she has lived in Stockholm, Sweden since 2012.
Since 2004, Keren Levi (1972, Israel) has built an international profile as a choreographer with a body of work including Territory (2004/NL) about identity and framing, in collaboration with musician Tom Parkinson and media artist Tammuz Binshtock, which won them the BNG award, and the duo Couple-Like (2006 NL/BE), in collaboration with Belgian maker Ugo Dehaes. In 2007 Levi was invited by Tala, a Zagreb-based production house to make Out of Service, a performance about the gesture of performing, together with a local Croatian cast. Later that year she created The Prize Piece, from and about the award-commission which was given to her for Territory. In 2009 Levi made and performed Big Mouth, together with Israeli makers Oren Laor and Niv Sheinfeld, which was followed by Couple-Like # 2, another collaboration with Deheas and a winner of the prestigious Dutch award Silver Cricket for 2011. Together with Parkinson, Levi made Envelopes, a performance about kin relations between siblings, and between music and dance, which premiered at the Spring Dance Festival Utrecht, 2010. In 2012, Levi made The Dry Piece, a video-dance performance which opened the Festival a/d Werf and won the Dioraphte Award from De Nederlandse Dansdagen 2013. That year, she collaborated again with Parkinson on the creation of To Band, a music-dance concert which premiered at the Breakin’walls Festival in Frascati Theatre, Amsterdam. Her new creation Clubbing, which continues the long-term exchange with Parkinson, premiered in March 2015.
Levi teaches contemporary dance technique, body-work and choreography in the School for New Dance Development (SNDO) and in the Modern Dance Department of the School for Performing Arts Amsterdam (AHK), as well as during festivals and training programs, and in companies across Europe. She has recently completed the Amsterdam Master of Choreography (AMCh) MA program.
