Cosmic Love

In her group creation, Cosmic Love, Montreal-based choreographer Clara Furey has developed a work around intuitive and poetic representations of physical phenomena. In a minimalist setting, in which all forms of communication become possible, Clara Furey and her performers have addressed the constant transformation of energy and the ritualization of simple gestures.

By questioning the idea that space is a vacuum, given the energetic bonds and dynamic forces with which it is filled, Clara Furey has created a work of abstraction, which ultimately reveals the unique radiance of living bodies. Space vibrates as the seven performers move intently, paving the way for a synchronistic, participation-driven world, where energy is a shared resource.

To achieve her vision, Clara Furey surrounded herself with long-standing collaborators such as lighting designer Alexandre Pilon-Guay and musical composer Tomas Furey. The latter, who is also present on stage, delivers an immersive auditory experience designed to be embraced by all the senses that allows the audience to open new spaces for introspection and imagination.

As ice becomes water, then steam, the performers experienced a continuous transformative process, united by a gluey love. As an ocean of questions both challenging and light, a rigorous and tender machine, a core of indestructible energy. Like recognizing outlines in the sky, one constellation at a time, Cosmic Love revealed itself to be a piece about empathy and listening to one another.

Clara Furey

Clara Furey began her artistic practice in singing and music composition before entering the world of dance, studying throughout her childhood at the Paris Conservatory and later at l’École de danse contemporaine de Montréal. Early in her dance career, Clara Furey worked with a number of different choreographers, including George Stamos, Damien Jalet and Benoît Lachambre, who had a significant influence on her artistic vision.

Since 2011, she turns towards choreography and develops work that is centered on a Hyperawareness of sensory perception. She is interested in the physical and gestural search of an extreme precision, in the micro-details that form one’s individuality and in the macro that unites us all. She is interested in the constant transformation of energy and in leaving space for a communicative void and the creative minds of the spectators. She works on bringing choreographic performance to a proximity both sensitive and perceptible.

Many different collaborations brought her to think of an approach that attempts to expand the boundaries of dance; using museum spaces and crossing the disciplines of visual and fine arts and choreography. Clara Furey is interested in the dialogue between the different mediums that make a living artwork, inviting them to interact in a horizontal hierarchy.

Clara Furey is an artist associate of Par B.L.eux.

Over Your Fucking Body

Over your FERAL
LEAKING
MONSTER
NERVOUS
VISCERAL
PLEASURABLE
OPAQUE
CURIOUS
SOFT
HAIRY
FRENETIC
SPONTANEOUS
LOVING
AGING
and DECOMPOSING body

We have been working in the zone where there are no words but a lot of body. We have been working on foregrounding the body. To shake the body from the perpetual habits, and from the stories we constantly tell ourselves.  To disorientate our individuality and seek a softer more delicate way to inhabit our flesh. We are practising a kind of poetry, that overestimates the value of the body. Trying to understand our individual body and the communal bodies that we are a part of. Reframing the pedestrian body through, weight, duration, shape, rhythm and dynamics.

Repeatedly over the past years Janina Rajakangas and Neil Callaghan have tried to get to the core of unnamed states of bodily experience. They have embodied and presented knowledge that is shared between people and yet is inaccessible through language. Over Your Fucking Body started from their interest in these amorphous moments where words fail. They aim to physically articulate these unnameable states into dances. To present areas of experience that usually stay hidden from appearance.

Janina Rajakangas and Neil Callaghan

Janina Rajakangas works mainly as a choreographer, with a practice including performing, teaching and public reflection. Her latest directed works are Dinosaur (2015), Teen (2017) and Canary (2018). As a performer she works for Frauke Requardt, Requardt & Rosenberg and Robert Clark in London. Since 2019 Janina works on a 3-year-artist grant from Arts Promotion Centre Finland.

Neil Callaghan has been making work with various constellations of people since 2002 in the fields of dance, theatre and visual arts. He works alone and in collaboration with numerous others. He has previously worked with Lea Anderson, Doris Uhlich, Nicola Conibere, Dan Canham, Requardt & Rosenberg, Simone Kenyon and Vlatka Horvat. At present he tours with Until Our Hearts Stop by Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods.

Read more

Interview: Janina Rajakangas & Neil Callaghan (Zodiak, 17.10.2019)

New artistic director of Moving in November is Kerstin Schroth

The Dance Arena board has appointed Kerstin Schroth as the new artistic director of Moving in November festival for a 3-year fixed-term position. Schroth will curate the festival programme of 2020–2022.

Kerstin Schroth is a performing arts manager and curator based in Paris and Berlin. From 2006 to 2019 she acted as company manager of Great Investment, the organizational structure for choreographer Mette Ingvartsen. In 2006 Schroth initiated the sommer.bar festival within Tanz im August, Berlin and curated it for six years.

Schroth lectures, among others, at DOCH (Stockholm), Universität der Künste/ Sommerakademie (Berlin) and University of Gießen on production management, finances, curating, communication, time management, organization, and working conditions within the performing arts.

“Kerstin’s belief in the potential of contemporary dance and performing arts is inspiring. She has strong strategic skills and an extensive knowledge of the international performing arts scene and its networks. We believe that with Kerstin as its artistic director, Moving in November festival will continue to develop locally and to strengthen its position internationally,” states Liisa Pentti, chairman of the board of Dance Arena and Isabel González, executive producer of Moving in November festival, who oversaw the recruitment process.

“I believe there is a real need for the performing arts community to open up more, and it is up to us to reflect and discuss collectively what art and culture represents, in all their diversity, complexity and richness. We must feed ourselves with difference, scarcity, the unknown, contradiction, and resist the temptation to secure existing models and systems,” says Kerstin Schroth.

In total 16 persons and 5 teams from the local and international field applied for the position. The 2019 festival is curated by Mikael Aaltonen, who will join the programming team of Dance House Helsinki in September 2019.

Moving in November festival is seeking an Artistic Director

Moving in November is the oldest and most significant contemporary dance festival in the Helsinki area. Each year, the festival introduces international and topical dance works in its program. The festival has had a pivotal role in developing the contemporary dance scene in Finland.

Moving in November is an independent festival with a visionary and bold program that is organized in collaboration with local partners. The organization behind Moving in November is Tanssiareena ry / Dance Arena association. Its member organizations are Esitystaiteen keskus ry (Center for Performance Art), Nuoren Voiman Liitto and University of the Arts / Theatre Academy Helsinki.

We are seeking an Artistic Director or a curatorial team with strong knowledge in Finnish and international contemporary dance, international networks, teamworking skills and experience in management. Good conceptual and communicative skills as well as motivation to develop the festival and international performance scene in Helsinki will be beneficial in this position. The festival’s working languages are English and Finnish.

The Artistic Director will be responsible for curating the program and the artistic vision of the festival. Together with the Executive Producer, they are responsible of the festival’s production and partnerships. The team takes part in the festival’s strategic planning that is led by the Dance Arena board.

You can apply for the position as an individual or a team. The position is part-time, and the annual salary is 15 000 € (for both individual, or a team) The Artistic Director is a contractual 3-years fixed-term position. The current Artistic Director is in charge of the 2019 festival programme.

The festival wishes that the new Artistic Director could work together with the current Artistic Director for a transition period of approx. 1 month between September and December 2019.

A few words from the curators

The darkening beginning of November marks an annual gathering of international dance. It is an invitation to experience current works by new or already familiar artists. In the 2019 Moving in November festival, invited artists and works appear to be coming from different worlds, and this is our intention.

The works seen in the festival articulate the diversity of bodies, corporealities and cultural references. During the festival week, the concept of the stage is explored from different localities, resulting in a range of views and possibilities of humanity, bodies and desires.

Festival works are intimate, personal and deeply experienced. The subjectivities we face in them are in states of constant motion and formation, and it is therefore difficult to set boundaries or attributes to them. The human existence appears at times as playful mirroring through cultural imagery and identities, and at other times as serious settling into the fleeing essence of existence.

The works open up unresolved questions of humanity from different perspectives – all individually articulating the staged time and the bodily presence that is shared with the audience.

We see the Moving in November Festival and its program as a momentary reorganisation of our experienced world, as its possible destabilisation, and as the emergence of new parallels and relationships.

Moving in November is built on long-term international and local cooperation. Deepening relationships with our long-term partners and the formation of new partnerships enrich the festival’s operating environment, and thus increase the opportunities for the audience to encounter the power and depth of dance as an art form.

We thank the artists, staff, partners and supporters of the festival for their work in the advancement of dance.

Mikael Aaltonen & Ari Tenhula

Radio Salon

Radio Salon is a space for dialogues that have no time to sprout in foyers or are swallowed by the noise of festival clubs. In the Salon we discuss the program of the festival with curators, critics and artists with both critical and collegial intensions in an intimate setting.

The Salon accommodates a small audience. Afterwards the dialogues will be published in Esitysradio podcast.

Radio Salon is a concept developed by Esitysradio and Moving in November festival. In collaboration with Goethe-Institut Finnland, Nuoren Voiman Liitto and The Finnish Critics’ Association.

Radio Salon: The Curators

The first Radio Salon was recorded without an audience on 29.10.2018. As guests the curators of this year’s Moving in November festival, Mikael Aaltonen and Ari Tenhula. Esitysradio is represented by Janina Rajakangas and Tuomas Laitinen. The discussion is in Finnish.

Listen to the discussion here.

Radio Salon: The Critics

Sat 10.11.2018 at 18-20
As guests Mia Hannula, Eeva Kauppinen and Maria Säkö.
Esitysradio is represented by Janina Rajakangas and Tuomas Laitinen.
The discussion is in Finnish.

Listen to the discussion here.

Radio Salon: The Artists

Sun 11.11.2018 at 18-20
As guests Eisa Jocson, Benoît Lachambre and Elina Pirinen
Esitysradio is represented by Janina Rajakangas and Tuomas Laitinen.
The discussion is in English.

Listen to the discussion here.

Esitysradio

Esitysradio is a series of conversations on performances in audio format by Mira Kautto, Tuomas Laitinen and Janina Rajakangas.

After experiencing a performance they talk with the authors about the performance, the making of it and art in general. The project aims to enrich the dialogue that surrounds performances.

Esitysradio wants to bring coffee break conversations within the reach of audiences and challenge the artists to articulate their views. They are interested in why artists make performances and what they are about.

Esitysradio is available through iTunes and Google Podcasts and on the website esitysradio.fi.

Over Your Fucking Body

Janina Rajakangas and Neil Callaghan want to make Over Your Fucking Body with the audience present from the start. Instead of a duet, they are making a trio, where audience takes the place of the third performer.

“Together, we will be looking into the problems proposed by the piece: How understand the audience as one part of a trio and still respect the audience as a diverse presence of individuals? How do individuals form a collective called an audience?”

“We are using the triangle of us and the audience to create possibilities of sharing intimate reactions. The sharing of the opening of the rehearsal period will be uncomfortable and brave, it will be a generous gesture and an ask for a helping hand.”

The artists started the piece with a workshop at Zodiak Centre for New Dance 3.-5.11. and a work-in-progress showing at Kunsthalle Helsinki on 5.11. Over Your Fucking Body will be premiered at Moving in November Festival 2019.

Neil Callaghan and Janina Rajakangas

Neil Callaghan has been making work with various constellations of people since 2002 in the fields of dance, theatre and visual arts. He works alone and in collaboration with Lea Anderson, Doris Uhlich, Nicola Coniber, Dan Canham, Requardt & Rosenberg, Simone Kenyon, Janina Rajakangas and Vlatka Horvat. At present he tours with Until Our Hearts Stop by Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods.

Janina Rajakangas works mainly as a choreographer, with a practice including performing, teaching and public reflection. Her latest directed works are Dinosaur (2015),  Teen (2017) and Canary (2018). As a performer she works for Frauke Requardt, Requardt & Rosenberg and Robert Clark in London. In 2018 Janina works on an Artist Grant from Arts Promotion Centre, Finland.

Workshop: Starting the Piece with an Audience

Janina Rajakangas and Neil Callaghan will be opening the doors to their first meeting to start making Over Your Fucking Body for Moving in November festival 2019. Those who want an insight to their working methods and to be involved in the beginning of their process should join them for 3 days in November. The last day of the meeting will be open to the festival crowd.

Rajakangas and Callaghan want to make Over Your Fucking Body with the audience present from the start. Instead of a duet, they are making a trio, where audience takes the place of the third performer. The artists will reveal how they approach the piece and share exercises and research methods with anyone wanting to take part.

“Together, we will be looking into the problems proposed by the piece: How understand the audience as one part of a trio and still respect the audience as a diverse presence of individuals? How do individuals form a collective called an audience?”

“We are using the triangle of us and the audience to create possibilities of sharing intimate reactions. The sharing of the opening of the rehearsal period will be uncomfortable and brave, it will be a generous gesture and an ask for a helping hand.”

Neil Callaghan and Janina Rajakangas

Neil Callaghan has been making work with various constellations of people since 2002 in the fields of dance, theatre and visual arts. He works alone and in collaboration with Lea Anderson, Doris Uhlich, Nicola Coniber, Dan Canham, Requardt & Rosenberg, Simone Kenyon, Janina Rajakangas and Vlatka Horvat. At present he tours with Until Our Hearts Stop by Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods.

Janina Rajakangas works mainly as a choreographer, with a practice including performing, teaching and public reflection. Her latest directed works are Dinosaur (2015),  Teen (2017) and Canary (2018). As a performer she works for Frauke Requardt, Requardt & Rosenberg and Robert Clark in London. In 2018 Janina works on an Artist Grant from Arts Promotion Centre, Finland.

Workshop: Interrelational Mobile Choreographic Architectures

The aim of the workshop Interrelational Mobile Choreographic Architectures is to combine an awareness of corporal energy streams with the inter-spatial dynamics of fluids. With the participants, Benoît Lachambre focuses on the creation of somatic images and their capacity to generate moving sensorial architectures.

He invites participants to examine the choreographic act by simultaneously reducing the stress of the learned roles of dancers and choreographers. He is thus proposing a transformation of models. With kinaesthetic awareness, and within a community of shared gestures, Lachambre works on a deepening of perceptions and feeling. To this end, he places bodies in a state of connectivity and openness, resulting in a dialogue centered on interspacial links and connective tissues.

In this forum for exchanges and learning Benoît Lachambre invites participants to reflect on the following questions:

  • How can we reconsider the performative/choreographic action through an exchange and inclusion of connective phenomena?
  • Is it possible to be a spectator, subject, performer and transmitter all at the same time?
  • Can an empathetic movement be a vector for positive change and for transformations via a meeting/breaking-down of the boundaries of established roles?

With the aim of transmitting his knowledge and techniques, Benoît Lachambre has developed with Par B.L.eux a pedagogical program offered to schools and choreographic centres. He is thus combining his 25-year career as a choreographer-dancer with his skills and experience as a teacher. His training classes and workshops, given around the world, have earned him widespread renown.