Lagos - THE UNKNOWN

This video compilation consists of two events from November 14, 2009. The first is a video shot out of the window while driving from Mile 2 to Festac Town in Lagos, Nigeria to a performance. The second is the performance itself, at the gala event celebrating 365 days of the leadership of the local government of the Amuwo Odofin area. The dancers are from the choreography workshop I led at the Society for the Performing Arts in Nigeria. Additional Sound Track for the video compilation: Eric Dolphy performing "God Bless the Child," on the bass clarinet. In a very short period of time we created the work. Since the Choreography Workshop was all about the individual in the collective, each dancers created for this work their own movement phrase. It was challenging for them. Truly challenging it was for the Nigerian Audience to see a dance without music and the use of 360 degree performance space.

DIALOGUE '120 dishes' begins!

The new project DIALOGUE '120 dishes' was born during the two-week residency at Tanzhaus Zurich in February 2009! For the development of the work I invited six performers (Einy Aam, Elke Rindfleisch, Yin Hou, Francesca Honegger, Katja Vaghi, Laura Vogel) living and working in Switzerland, New York and China, and the Chinese artists Zhao Xiaoyu (composer) and Xiaohua Sun (new media). I approach DIALOGUE ‘120 dishes’ as a social experiment in communication, set on and around an arrangement of conference tables, that overtime take new configuration to establish new "dialogue' situations (One- to- One, Panel, Round table etc.).  It is a dance piece, a theater work, an installation, and a verbal dialogue. Some of the residency questions we embodied were: Who are we as performers with different dance traditions in different cultural and social settings (what role art plays in this social/political settings)? How do we negotiate between each other, the audience and the architecture (table formation etc)? What means individuality towards collective decision making. How to give everyone in the room a voice? How we can expand the dialogue also into the virtual world --where audience can send their thoughts to the performers with help of the mobile phone..?--{The Resources of this new work ranges by looking at gatherings in commercial context, within a cultural venue, at community board or in the context of a political or civic debate. By taking this highly formalized events, both spatially and corporally we are trying to find possibilities for a more dynamic, anti-formal approach to space, body, movement, gesture..

Thanks to co-director Meret Schlegel at Tanzhaus Zurich with her team and production manager Martina Alfonso with her wonderful friends we were able to present to the Zurcher Audience the first stage of this new project last Tuesday, March 3rd. Check out the result of this two week residency by clicking on the slideshow RESIDENCY DIALOGUE 120 DISHES. Photos by photographer Christian Glauser.