Collegium: Martin Nachbar. Dancing Archives

COLLEGIUM: MARTIN NACHBAR
Bucharest, September 8-11, 2021
registration ongoing

IP—The Institute of the Present announces the 2021 edition of COLLEGIUM—a layer of action within its educational programme centred on the artists’ engagement with pedagogy and other forms of reflection upon the process of working. With each edition conceived in the form of an intensive workshop for professionals from Romania and the countries of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, COLLEGIUM puts forward a knowledge-resource space, advocating for a confrontational field featuring a variety of practices of performance and visual arts, which facilitates an unmediated contact with leading personalities and landmark moments of the international art scene. The Institute puts artists at the core of its endeavour, generating new formats for encountering, displaying and experiencing their work, while opening the artists’ laboratory to interested professionals in the fields of performing and visual culture.

MARTIN NACHBAR: DANCING ARCHIVES. Somatic, choreographic and academic approaches to dance reconstruction and other ways of remembering
“In this workshop, we will look at how bodies can function as archives that store, remember, actualise, but also forget and get rid of movement patterns, and of connected memories as well as imaginations. These patterns, memories and imaginations may be individual ones. Or they can be shared in wider contexts, such as families or societies, and in between different bodies as well as different kinds of ‘bodies’ such as media and archives (such as books, films, photos etc.).

How do our bodies open up to different pasts, actualise them in the present and unfold them towards the future? How can we search, unearth, work with and transform materials from the various archives at hand? How do we circulate between different media and ways of experiencing and doing in order to make different kinds of pasts productive for us now? How does each of us want to work within various frames of doing, doing again and undoing

While the moving body is central, we will move between different praxes and methods as a way to make our researches and experiences relate dynamically. We will refer to academic research on memory and archive such as Henri Bergson’s, Jacques Derrida’s and Bessel van der Kolk’s, to somatic research such as BMC and Alexander-Technique, to Dore Hoyer’s dance cycle Affectos Humanos from 1962, and to Repeater—Dance Piece with Father from 2007. These sources will act as examples, triggers and frames for the questions and interests the participants bring into the workshop. During the workshop we will work practically as well as theoretically—we will move, read, write, talk, and surely we will dance.”—Martin Nachbar

MARTIN NACHBAR is a choreographer, researcher, teacher, curator and writer in the field of contemporary dance and performance. Since 2020 he holds a professorship for movement and creative senses for actors at the HfMDK in Frankfurt. From 2019 to 2020 he was coordinator of the MA dance at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp. Since 2008 Martin has also taught for various institutions in Europe.

As dancer and performer he worked with companies and choreographers such as Les Ballets C. de las B., Vera Mantero, Thomas Lehmen, Jochen Roller, Nicole Beutler and Meg Stuart. Since 2004 he has choreographed more than 30 small and larger scale pieces, for different spaces, with different kinds of performers and for different audiences. Among these pieces are Urheben  Aufheben with a reconstruction of Dore Hoyer’s Affectos Humanos, and Repeater, with which Martin brought family relations and archives with and through movement on to the stage. This duet with his 70-year old father toured worldwide. Martin has also organised several festivals and symposia such as meeting on dance education 2005, Tierforme/l/n and FELDspiele. From 2018 to 2019 he was founding member of FELD Theatre for Young Audiences. His work has been sponsored by the Berlin Senate, the HKF, the NPN, the Kunststiftung NRW, the Goethe-Institut and others.

In his work he mixes somatic approaches with movement and dance, and with choreographic thought. The outcomes are performances that invite an audience to co-think and -feel around the topic addressed. Martin tries to give his dancers and other co-workers as much agency in the process as possible. While he likes to give direction to the outcome, he is not interested in controlling it. His teaching is based on similar principles.

DETAILS AND REGISTRATION
The workshop is open to artists from the fields of dance and performance (performers, dancers, choreographers, visual artists from Romania and the countries of Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Professionals interested are requested to fill in a short application form available at https://forms.gle/JJCjpdR26cq1vLVAA. A total of max. 12 artists shall be invited to participate in the workshop, and all applicants shall be notified about their application on an ongoing basis. The registration is open until occupation is completed.

The registration fee for confirmed participants is 250 Ron or 50 Euro and represents a contribution to the costs of the project. Accommodation in Bucharest may be secured for a limited number of foreign participants and for Romanian professionals not based in Bucharest. The workshop will take place at AREAL | space for choreographic development on September 8-11, 2021, on September 8 between 16:00-21:00 and on Sep 9-11 each day between 10:00–15:00, Bucharest time. For more information, contact ip@institutulprezentului.ro.

In organising this workshop, the Institute of the Present will comply with the ongoing restrictions imposed by the sanitary crisis. In order to secure the best safety conditions for all involved, participants are encouraged to get vaccinated or take a Covid test before the start of the workshop.

The workshop is accompanied by an artist talk given by Martin Nachbar in the frame of Looking Forward, Looking Back lecture series of the Institute of the Present, and will be hosted by Rezidența BRD Scena 9 on September 10, 19:00.

The Institute of the Present’s COLLEGIUM is curated by Ștefania Ferchedău.

COLLEGIUM is organised in 2021 in the frame of the project Digital Parkour of Visual and Performing Works. Partners: Goethe-Institut Bucharest, AREAL | space for choreographic development, Rezidența BRD Scena 9. Event identity by Pren.

Cultural project co-funded by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund and supported by Goethe-Institut Bucharest. The project does not necessarily represent the standpoint of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN cannot be held liable for the content of the project or the manner in which the outcomes of the project may be used. These shall devolve entirely on the beneficiary of the financing.