Mar 30 – Apr 1: Dalija Aćin Thelander (RS/SE)
Exercise for Choreography of Attention ‘Point of No Return'
Weld presents the serbian-swedish choreographer Dalija Acin Thelander with her two new works Exercise for choreography of attention 'Point of no return' and Recollections. Both works delegates the performing to the audience, solely, proposing to them one other experience of choreography. Within these two works Dalija explore and develope choreographic and performative procedures aiming to translate the choreography into means other then dance, bodily expression and representation.
Dalija chooses to choreograph the audience's attention and presence using the texts, drawings and spatial dispostifs, within the proposed set-ups which involve audience in reading, listening, gazing and consequently moving. Performative conditions of Exercise for choreography of attention 'Point of no return' and Recollections are subtly addressing the issues such as autonomy, responsibility, contribution and self organization.
Exercise for Choreography of Attention ‘Point of No Return'
Concept, choreography: Dalija Aćin Thelander
Drawings performed on choreographic assignment: Siniša Ilić
Graphic design and layout performed on choreographic assignment: Katarina Popović
Performed solely by audience
Produced by Station, Service for contemporary dance, Belgrade 2012
"The performance is realised as an exercise in choreographing attention: a series of incidental, behavioural micro-performances induced by reading a book. In both of its assigned roles, the audience, here also positioned as the only performer, remains in constant search of performance. At first, performance emerges here as a temporally suspended and graphically mediated performing of the author in the book itself – drawing qua performance, text qua performance, the visual artist and graphic designer’s ‘dancing’ to the choreographer’s textual propositions and the like. Then, performance comes as initiated by the information regarding performance – the recognition of performing the role of the audience and the collective performance of the given theatrical situation. Finally, the performance also comes into being as the sum of all individual imaginary and perceptual responses from the audience to the impulses issuing from the book – as a mental performance of a visual-textual template.
In this exercise, attention is directed primarily at the book as an unexpected interface of partaking in a theatrical situation. The book, in this case a workbook, is neither the performer, nor an instruction manual, but a sort of inductor or performance regulator. Depending on the book’s contents and form, the performance emerges by means of interacting with it, through the procedurality of reading. Typically, reading a book is an intimate and individual rather than a public act; nonetheless, reading one and the same book brings its readers together – notwithstanding the huge temporal and spatial distances separating them – into a kind of community. In this case, a book is introduced into public space, that is, it is as though the book qua performance interface were becoming public space. The private act of consuming a book becomes an act of community in public – theatre."
Excerpt from "A Few Points about Exercise for Choreography of Attention Point of no Return"
by Bojan Đorđev
Recollections
Concept, text/choreography and lights: Dalija Aćin Thelander (RS/SE)
Voice: Kristiina Viiala (FI/SE)
In a dialog with Mala Kline (SI)
Featuring the work Flipsides by Tian Rotteveel (NL)
Performed solely by the audience
Recollections is a choreographed environment created for you to mediate with and share with others. It proposes an experience which you are invited to carry out. It entrusts you with a text to follow, to perform and embody it – however you choose to understand performing and embodiment. It opens multiple spaces for wandering between visible and invisible, private and public, comfort and complaisance. It invites you to negotiate, to drift away or enforce, to take up with or abandon. Recollections designs unrestrained zone. It addressed the responsibility and welcomes the uncertainty and chance. Your interpretation of what is proposed to you, your choices and your involvement will inevitably influence your experience and co-create the experience of other/s.
Recollections is not about fulfillment. It is contemplation and mediation.
Recollections is a choreography. But it is also an opportunity to recollect the self, the other, space, time and… everything else in-between.
Supported by: Weld, Kulturrådet, Stockholm Stad, Konstnärsnämnden, apap – advancing performing arts project, Tanzfabrik Berlin, DOCH and The Swedish Public Employment Service
Administrative structure: Interim kultur AB (svb)
Dalija Aćin Thelander
is a choreographer, theatre maker and cultural worker.
She presented her works internationally on numerous festivals such as Impulstanz, Tanz im August, Les Particules, Perforations, BITEF etc. In 2008 she received Prix Jardin d’Europe for the performance Handle with great care on 8:tension, Impulstanz Festival, Vienna. Her current work aspires to contribute to the notion of choreography as expanded practice and focuses on the participatory role of the audience. She is involved in intensive explorations in the field of contemporary dance for children and babies and produced numerous work which were awarded.
She is co-founder and coordinator of Station Service for Contemporary Dance Belgrade, co-founder of Nomad Dance Academy for which she initiated, curated and produced numerous programs and productions. She is a co-founder and co-curator of Kondenz festival for performing arts in Belgrade.
She collaborated with numerous theatre directors and won several awards for choreography for drama theatre. As a free lance artist she lives in Stockholm, Sweden since 2012.