Here are clips from performances and events on art venue Atalante in Gteborg, Sweden. Filmed by Niklas Rydn or Robert Eklund.
In a colourful tent is this event for children performed. Eight small children between 12-18 months old, one parent each, and some professional dancers. The dancers are carefully and with love imitating every movement the children are doing and are in this way creating a choreographic happening. The result is a charming communication pointing at how reacting on and seeing each other is a way towards meaning and growing. Originally an english concept by Tom Morris and Guy Dartnell. Here with Dansstationens Turnkompani.
Choreograper Talat Samawi is born in Bagdad but is living in Gteborg since almost 30 years. "Teamet" is the first godess in the old iraq civilisation, and the performance "Teamet's Lament" is about being a woman throughout the human history. Dancers are Ida Johanssson, Karin Nordling and Lina Hkansson.
Clara Gustavsson, or Curly Lou, has become an returning guest star with her irrestitible and devoted way of singing music from the old movies and musicals from the first half of the 20:th century. There are both swedish and american songs. After Gunilla Witt's Karin's krig, she performed in the Atalante foayer together with Niklas Rydn at the grand piano, and an enthusiastic audience.
Gunilla Witt is choreographer and poet. She was one of the founders of Atalante and is a former artistic director at the venue. Now she was back showing her very personal performance Karins krig. It is a story about the swedish poet Karin Boye, her last hours in life, before she died a cold april night 1941 after having taken sleeping pills. Karins krig is also about the atmosphere of the time she lived and had her dreams in. The piece is performed by Anna Westberg, with sound by Tommi Hildn and set design/tree by Kia Nordqvist.
Mte 09 at Atalante was one of the four parts of the big international lab called Mte 09 hold in Gteborg, Stockholm, Ume and Malm. All with different groups of artists. The group at Atalante included seven artists from France, Iceland, Denmark and Sweden. The last evening they invited the audience to share an evening on the theme of the week, meeting. See first clip. Another evening the audience was invited to participate in different acticvities together with the Mte09 people. There were also two different streetdance video happenings. The first with the extended staff off Atalannte, the second with audience and participants of the first open evening at Mte09 Gteborg. Read more at www.mote09.org.
The new master course in choreography at The Dance Academy in Stockholm guested Atalante this weekend. There were four students from the program, but in the solo project that was presented here, the group was extended with four extra choreographers. So we could see eight solos during the weekend, plus some extra material, e.g. mychoreography.org's version of Rites of Spring, with Stravinskijs original music. The last clip below is a part of this. In the solo project every choreographer have had the same limits, e.g. the piece should be 28 minutes and no light change could be used. This resulted in a variyng serie of solos. Below are extracts from those. The director of the course, Mrten Spngberg, made afterwards the cooking and served vegetarian sausages and free wine. The social energy was high and good and we hope this will be a recurrent evenemang with yearly visits.
The Atalante choreographer made this year the choreography for the last year students at the dance program at Balettakademin in Gteborg. It was performed at Teater Thalia, at the school, but we anyway put it here at Atalante TV for you to be able to watch.
The Six Tones is an unique ensemble formed during a project that explored co-laboration between vietnamese and swedish musicians. To vietnamese women playing traditional instruments, Nguyen Thanh Thuy and Ngo Tra My. One swedish guitarplayer, Stefan stersj, and one swedish composer and electronic musician, Henrik Frisk. During a few years they have explored how a meeting between contemporary western music and classical vietnamese music could look like. They have learned to play traditional vietnamese music together and they have had swedish composers writing new music for this special ensemble. It was lovely to hear their music and the vietnames intsrument were really great. The dan tranh is a vietnamese zither, like chinese guzheng or japanese koto. Dan bau is a one stringed instrument. The right hand plays the string and at the same time touches it at special places to create flageolettes, natural overtones. The other hand is controlling a pitch bender bending over an octave. This dan bau has a microphone inside and sounds like a developed teremin. Levande Musik arranged this evening and the project is touring with support from Rikskonserter.
Gunilla Witt is poet and choreographer. She is one of the founders of Atalannte and was many one of the artistic directors at Atalante. This evening she read poems from her new book, Halvvgs nerfr Vasagatan. The big audience was enthusiastic. Also there was Bengt Berg, her publisher at Heidruns edition. He did also read some own texts. The evening was presented by Tomas Forser. In may Gunilla Witt will be back with the dance piece Karins krig, about the swedish poet Karin Boye.
At Atalante we first learned to know Mrten Spngberg in the 1990th in two different ways. He was a close friend to a producer in our staff, and he was writing about dance in swedens biggest newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Since then he has become a respected performance artist and teacher and researcher at the University Collage of Dance at Stockholm University. Therefore it was very nice having him here showing a solo piece from 2003 that has been shown all over the world. The piece consists of reconstructions of Steve Paxtons improvisation to the Goldberg variations as played by Glenn Gould 1982. They were filmed and edited, and that film is the origin for this reconstruction. Extract from this in the second video below. But first a short one with music from Keith Jarrets Kln Concert and last some songs by Buenavista Social Club.
Angered high school dance program have made a big performance every year at Atalante since many years. They always invite a guest choreographer for the third degree students. This year it was Olof Persson. A teacher do the choreography for the second degree students. This year Maria Kjellberg Hjelte was the one. There is also a part with the students own choreography. The students also study all the roundabouts like light design, running the coffeeshop, doing the cleaning, selling tickets, making the poster.... Here are axtracts from the dances.
This night Atalante was visited by Gungfly with the dancers Torun Odlw, Gunilla Jansson and sa Thegerstrm. They presented their piece "Klo, kropp & smlek", eg "Claw, body and disgrace". This is a piece created in cooperation with the choreographer and director Tim Zimmerman. He lives in Germany but is grown up in the USA. Over there still a very old fashioned and unequal tradition is characterizing the view on and reality of marriage. Tim wants to problematize the patriarcal view on the woman as an object, an object without her own sexuality, or more rigthly, an object whose sexuality must be controlled within the boarders of the marriage. Here is 14 minutes of the 55 minute performance.
David Sperling Bolander has got much attention for his deeply musical and personal style of combining music, movement and theatre. In "The last concert of Bengt-Erik Olsson" he does a visual, poetic, sad, beautiful, fun and visionary portrait of a former pianist and his piano. This man was brought up to be a pianoplayer. From his birth he lived with his piano teacher and they were like one person playing the piano and playing the life. But the teacher died unexpected and since then Bengt-Erik hasn't played the piano. But now's the time again, after 26 years... Here is some 12 minutes of the 60 minute performance in a production from akt r & vnner.
Weld is a venue and creative space in Stockholm. Directed by the choreographer Anna Koch Weld are focusing on artistic processes, and the development of forms for meetings and research in the art field. They encourage meetings between different art forms and with science of different forms. In many ways the profile of Weld is similar to that of Atalante. Therefore it was extra nice to have two solos from Weld this night. One with Kajsa Sandstrm, and one with Anna Koch. Below is video with Kajsa.
Danscentrum Vst is the west swedish department of the association of professional dancers in Sweden. This evening was the first in a new serie of meetings where talking about the art of dance is in focus. The choreographer Minna Kiper had prepared a program with three legs. First the participants presented themselves and told each other about an important personal art experience. After that Minna showed an revealing power point with texts about dance. After a paus Niklas Rydn had a talk about possible ways to define what is art in opposition to culture in a wider way, for example entertainment. After another brake there was a role play dividing tre group in two parts. One group was "the audience", asking questions about art, the other group was the "expert panel" delivering the answers. In the video below is a video from the play. The evening was a success and will be followed by more.
This week New Opera CO made a three day laboration ending with an open evening on saturday. The laborations involved vocal and movement improvisation, examinations of different song techniques and much dialogue and discussion. Below are some videos. First an improvisation from the monday session with focus on impuls as a phenomena in moves and sound. After that comes a conversation about the bringing up of children! This is followed by three songs from the newopera Vi i Villa sung by the opera singers Grith Fjeldmose and Gsta Zackrisson. Last a discussion with the audience. See also New Opera CO .
Levande musik arranged an evening with two acts. First out was Fredrik Bergstrm playing "Vevlira" and electronics. After a pause it was time for Kyrillien, a concert with prepared piano, electronics, choreography and light design. Ylva Q Arkvik made electronical sound, Lisa Ulln was behind the piano, and Caroline stberg did the moves. heres an extract.
The success project Music Doc from Malm, are showing music documentaries in a relaxed form where the audience bring their own food and their best friends to a picnic-movie-theatre! In april there will be a Gteborg festival on Hagabion, Henriksberg and Mitt andra hem. At Atalante this evening they had arranged a preview with the film Wild Combination Ð A Portrait of Arthur Russell. The big audience could also listen to the duo Moustad, The Dora Steins and DJ Hanna & Hanna.
Mats Nordlund makes objects, films, sculptures and projections in a dramatized form, a kind of mobile art performance. He explores the question of different perspectives, different views, of how things not always are what they seem to be. Or how they can be what they are only seen from a very special place. This was Mats Nordlunds final exhibition in his studies for a masters degree at C-art/Art & Technology at Valand school of Fine Arts in Gteborg. The perfoemance was about 30 minutes. Afterwards people were able to visit the stage, and finally there was a talk.
Magic Bullet is an exhibition about film censorship in Sweden. The artist Markus hrn has put together this screening of 48 hours of film cut out by the Swedish board of film censors between 1934 and 1997. The screening is from 10 a.m. until 22.30 p.m. every day during Gteborg Film Festival 2009. Seminairs and discussions is also a part of the exhibition, which is a collaboration between hrn, Gteborg Film Festival, the cultural journal Glnta, and Atalante. Here is a clip from the first day.
Paletten is one of the most important art magazines in Sweden. They often invite guest editors to make a number. This time the theme was contemporary dance and performance. Choreographer Malin Elgn and curator Josefine Wikstrm have been guest editors, exploring the field of verbalizing dance. Here are som pictures from the mingle and the presentation with the editors and the chief of board, Love Jnsson.
Mndrucken, (Moondrunk), was a concert evening arranged in a cooperation between Levande Musik and Gteborgs Kammarmusikforening. (Two important associations on the chamber music scene in Gteborg.) With Monica Danielson, song, Joakim Kallhed, piano, Ann Elkjr, flute, Ragnar Arnberg, clarinet, Mattias Johansson, violin/viola, Christian Berg, violincello, Jerker Johansson, conductor. The evening started with poet Lina Ekdahl reading in the bar. In the first part on stage four composers were presented: John Cage, Christer Lindvall, Mats Persson and Paula af Malmborg Ward. Below are extracts from these. After paus Arnold Schoenbergs Pierrot Lunaire was sung by Monica Danielson and conducted by Jerker Johansson. Below are Mrta Scheles introduction, and the three parts complete, with seven songs each. All with english subtitles.
The two first weeks of January we had a laboration with projection techniques at Atalante. Visual artist Jim Berggren, choreographer Eva Ingemarsson and composer Niklas Rydn had a workshop for developing, exploring and to make playful experiments in the field. They had three computers, three projectors and three different areas for screening. They trained themself in realtime visual improvisation, found out how to divide one projection into parts, making one projector able to present different material on different surfaces. As source material they used photographies, text, movies, realtime video and realtime painting. They tried different ways to twist the original material and remix it. The software used mostly was Garagecubes Modul8. Sitting in the room, improvising with the visual material they became aware of that this is exactly like music creation. Since the 1990's new technique have opened music creation for new groups of artists. Sampling, looping and remixing have become established and accepted ways to create music. The last years similar tools for visual art, where you can sample, loop and remix pictures, movies and text, have become easy to use and affordable. This will open the visual field for new categories of artists and easen the use of projections in live performance.
On Sunday 18 audience was invited to look at the work and talk to the artists. There where over 40 people visiting, many of them collegues from the visual field. Projections and conversations filled easy one hour and everybody were enthusiastic. See some minutes on film below.
But first is a clip with some shots from the work during the week. Below in the list are also video examples from the animations Niklas Rydn created. His projection was screened on the three plates of cellular plastic at the left of the stage.