Cliff Catalyst — Newsletter 2

Cliff represents internationally

and collaborates with:

André Uerba . Anna Nowicka . Aura da Fonseca . João Estevens . Mikko Hyvönen . Milla Koistinen . Sara Anjo . Tom Lönnqvist

News — December, 2023

‘The opening’ by Anna Nowicka

‘The opening’ instantly transform audience’s night dreams into choreographic situations, cultivating a sense of community, intimacy, and openness. Spectators are invited to bring their dreams to the theatre, and these dreams become content for the stage work. Anna embodies images from audience’s dreams and uses dreaming principles to compose live unrepeatable dances, accompanied by live music of Jasmine Guffond and live light design of Aleksandr Prowaliński. One dream at a time, a unique composition is built for the individual who brought the dream, and for the whole temporary community, who dive into the story together. Spectators’ dreams come true through a highly physical dance, playful, light and full of hope.

Performance: Anna Nowicka — Music, Sound: Jasmine Guffond — Light design: Aleksandr Prowaliński — Dreamaturgy: Annika Stadler

Dates: Thu, 14 — Sun, 17 December | 07.00 Location: DOCK 11, Kastanienallee 79 10435 Berlin

Anna Nowicka — Teaching at Diorama, Berlin

In the Volta sessions we will practice dancing our unique languages of imagination. We will notice how images move us, and how our actions transform inner landscapes. We will shift perspectives within and without the body, move between giving and receiving, doing and observing, dancing and being still. We will depart from inner images to see how they manifest in one-of-a-kind dances. The practice will be experiential, physical and fun! Bring comfortable clothes and something to write and draw.

Dates: 4, 6, 11, 13 December in the framework of Volta Location: Diorama, Hauptstraße 13, 10317 Berlin

Read more about Anna here >

Aura da Fonseca joins Cliff Catalyst in December

Aura (1997. Porto) is a transdisciplinary artist interested in issues of identity and sustainability and co-founder of Asterisco, a space for artists belonging to social minorities.

Read more about Aura here >

Latest Work Trans*Performativity

‘Trans*Performativity’ is an ongoing project that consists in the transposition of trans* experiences into contemporary practices that fuse the sharing of testimonial stories through audiovisuals and the creation of collective performances.

Kosmos — Reunion by Mikko Hyvönen and the group explores a person's relationship with themselves and others

What is the human relationship to the cosmos inside and outside us? In the work premiered at Pannuhalli stage at Dance House Helsinki three performers move between modern, historical and futuristic myths. The myths that are the inspiration for the show and the subject of re-variation reach from ancient myths to future technology. "I'm interested in different connections: human connections in a group, temporal connections, how historical inspiration is connected to the future - and how these different dimensions talk to each other in the same space and time," says choreographer Mikko Hyvönen. The meditative work provides a counterweight to the busy rhythm of everyday life. "The purpose is to create a shared experience and a return to physicality, where you are not looking at your phone or computer," states Hyvönen.

Mikko Hyvönen is a choreographer-dancer who graduated from P.A.R.T.S. dance school in Brussels and has worked internationally as a performer. The working group includes performers Elias Girod, Mira Kautto and Pie Kär who are also creating choreography, music and sound designer Stav Yeini and light and space designer Teo Lanerva.

Read more about Mikko here >

Modular Performance by Tom Lönnqvist at Forum Stadt Park Graz, Austria

Tom Lönnqvist is a Helsinki based artist working with sound, space and performance. His compositional sound work on Mille Plateaux includes the albums ENTER, Music for Ningen, ARIA and NOIR.

Read more about Tom here >

HIDDEN TRACK — Sound Walk with Sara Anjo

“Hidden Track” is a sound walk, a journey mediated by sound and walking as an experimental artistic practice. Walking implies the transformation of the place and its meanings and the change in perceptions that arises when crossing a territory, it is a form of transformation of the landscape that, without leaving tangible marks, results in a transformation of the place itself. “Hidden track” is also a term known in the music field as an unlisted sound piece or ghost song that is present on a digital or physical audio device in a secret or invisible way. So “Hidden Track” is still a secret, unlisted soundwalk. It proposes to uncover a hidden route, a journey that transforms oneself and the place through sounds and steps.

Circular Walk — Approximately 6 km
Starting and Arrival Point: Casa do Burro - Parque Ecológico do Funchal
Registration: angeli.sara@gmail.com or 9142719178

Funchal Ecological Park at Madeira Island December 23rd 3:00pm — 6:00pm

Dancing Dots — Sara Anjo’s new book

How many times we feel as a dot lost in the infinity? And how many times we imagined that dot connected to everything around us through ten thousand dots? Dancing Dot it is a book that explores a figurative and abstract imagination to tell the story of a dot. Tells its dances from childhood until adult, the challenges to find its place in the world and finally its freedom. Through the book there has been developed performances and workshops for children as well as for teachers.

Text, Sara Anjo — Illustration, Martina Manyà — Design, Sílvia Prudêncio Publisher, Whilepaper

Read more about Sara here>

Milla Koistinen — Magenta Haze will be presented at the main program of Ice Hot Oslo 2024, Nordic Dance Platform.

With Magenta Haze, Milla Koistinen continues her exploration of crowd behaviour, the individual within the collective, communal joy and ecstasy.

Read more about Milla here >

COSMIC PHASE/STAGE — Rediscovering collaboration and (re)imagining the future

COSMIC PHASE/STAGE tries to dialog with an environment in which performing arts adjust to the technological transformation of societies. This opened space for artistic research that reflects more on hybridity, post-humanism, and more-than-human issues. Here, we used the context of the performative experience, highlighting how the stage is occupied and performed by other bodies and forms than human performers following the assumptions of object-oriented ontology (OOO) and scientific arguments explored within the field of science and technology studies (STS). The project emerges as an emancipatory tool of common articulation for an artistic-speculative imaginary by proposing a narrative that is constantly transforming and gradually losing linearity. There is the real-time construction of an immersive and contemplative environment that stimulates reflection on forms of communication and the perception of otherness. In this way, we found a way for the emergence of (new) possibilities in the construction of meanings. The creative choices, both in terms of the disposition and the narrative, derive from an artistic research that reflects on a series of questions: How is the audiences perception affected when the referent shifts from human to non-human? Do they engage similarly? What are the communicational challenges (in the discovery and construction of new languages) that can be found? How to merge assumptions from performance and installation devices? This mature research aims to contribute to critical thinking on the subject and to contact with experimental forms of performance. Text by João Estevens.

André Uerba — Selected for Pina Bausch Fellowship 2023

In the framework of the fellowship, André is cooperating with Portuguese choreographer, dancer and writer Diana Niepce at Teatro Nacional D. Maria II. André immerses himself in the field of disability arts and neurodiversity and is participating and assisting in Niepce training program NORMA.

Read more about André here>