Happy to be here, on tour in may.

Happy to be here
a choreography by Anna Koch

The 7th of May at Made festival in Umeå and back at Weld the 9 and 10th of May.

for reviews please scroll down

Happy to be here – is a “dance-existential” premise, a soft, beautiful landscape where bastards come to life. In this context ‘dance-existential’ refers to both the dance’s existing space as a phenomena on stage as well as the existence of those dancing and those observing.

Anna Koch has been conducting a choreographic process with Marcus Doverud, Josefine Larson Olin, Marie Fahlin, Igor Koruga (SRB) and Dragana Zarevska (MKD) and Bure Holmbäck. 
They have made an inventory of each other's knowledge, looked into various choreographic methods, affirmed the flow of ideas and movements; revaluated them and turned them over.

Happy to be here is a struggle of aspirations and desires. Ingredients of different origins are processed and form a strange yet familiar entity. Rhythmic, insisting movements filter through an assiduous process. Solos, duets, trios and larger group-dynamics transpire. Storms of applauds intermingles with pure silence.

Happy to be here had its worldpremiere at Dansens Hus Mars 2+3rd 2010.

On stage: Marcus Doverud, Josefine Larson Olin, Marie Fahlin, Igor Karoga (SRB) and Dragana Zarevska (MCD) as well as Bure Holmbäck.
Music: Collage by Bure Holmbäck, Rohaeen
Lighting: Erik Westerlund
Costumes: Ingela Nilsson, Anna Koch
Length: 55min
Production: Weld

Marcus Doverud (SE) is an artist and performer in the fields of dance and performance art. He moves between different forms of expression, dealing with bodily, spatial and sonic utterances and their interrelations. Marcus’s work has been shown at Teater Giljotin/Alp Gallery, Gothenburg Dance and Theatre Festival, and he has collaborated with Rasmus Ölme, Suzanne Osten and Anna Koch, among others. He studied contemporary aesthetics at a master’s level at Södertörn University College and graduated with a degree in mime from the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts.

 

Marie Fahlin (SE) trained as a choreographer at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam and since 1992 has been working as a choreographer, dancer and teacher. Creator of some thirty choreographies, her work includes solos, larger group performances, stage works and projects in public spaces, performed at Moderna Dansteatern, Weld, Dansens Hus and Fylkingen, among other venues. Marie often collaborates with other artists, composers and choreographers, and conducts research projects and works as a dancer.

 

Bure Holmbäck (SE) is a self-taught artist and shaman in training. He works with movement, words and sound. He previously collaborated with Anna Koch on her work for the inauguration of Bonniers Konsthall (2006).

 

Anna Koch (SE) is a dancer/choreographer and artistic director of Weld in Stockholm. In recent years Anna has created a large number of projects in Sweden and abroad. She is a frequent participant in the worlds of art, music and theatre and is always working on expanding the boundaries of dance in different ways.

 

Igor Koruga (SRB) has been involved in alternative forms of theatre, performance art and modern dance since 1998. As a member of the NGO Station in Belgrade, he has participated as a dancer in various artistic projects and residencies in Serbia and abroad. In 2009, he was awarded two European dance education scholarships, from danceWeb and NOMAD Dance Academy respectively, and has recently started to create his own choreographic work. Igor also studies socio-cultural anthropology at the University of Belgrade.

Josefine Larson Olin (SE) recently graduated as a dancer from Balettakademien in Stockholm, with a background in visual arts. In 2009, she was awarded a danceWEB scholarship in Vienna where she participated as a dancer in works by Anne Juren, among others. Last autumn, she took part in a residency at the Danskonstkollektivet Sch!! in Norway and danced in works by the performance art group Superamas. She has worked as a dancer and choreographer in theatre and television and is initiator and member of the Af Dalmatinerhjärta foundation.

 

Dragana Zarevska (MCD), born in Kratovo, Macedonia, is a visual artist. Working primarily with video and graphic art her work can be described as ’minimal expressionism’, characterized by simplicity (‘low-fi’) with a streak of dark humour. Her work has been shown at HBJCEM 2009 (Biennale for Young Artists in Europe and Mediterranean), where she was awarded the ‘Artist in residence program 2010’, and at film festivals in Macedonia, Portugal, the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland. Dragana is studying a master’s degree in communication and media in Skopje, Macedonia.

 

Reviews

In Happy to be here at the House of Dance Anna Koch explores the basic foundations of dance. Maybe not a crowd pleaser but always created in relation to the audience, and with a drive of energy-charged bodies in constant motion.
When choreographer and dancer Anna Koch visits the House of Dance she does so with a work that seems to want to explore the basic foundation of dance, or its very inception. 
 

In collaboration with the participating dancers she allows her configurations and ideas to be carefully born and chiseled out. The fact that all of this is happens through energy-charged bodies in a constant state of motion, even when they are temporarily at rest, is always present as a basic premise.

What is highlighted is the very flow and that one movement leads to another, either as a repetition or as an answer.

In Happy to be here the choreographic processes are given a portrayal that is equally investigative as it is joyful. In other words, Anna Koch has brought her choreographic laboratory with her from Weld, where she is artistic director, to the House of Dance’s Small stage. 

Moreover, it appears that all encounters that occur on stage and every movement that these entail are of equal importance. Not in the sense of the meaning they bear, but in the in the way that both the slightest movement as well as every other detail is really treated as a completely necessary part of the whole. In this way attention is heightened to what is happening in and around the clearly demarcated stage space.



Even if you can neither describe Happy to be here as a crowd pleaser nor as especially aesthetically pleasing the performance has such nerve and drive, which means that the 50 minutes go by unusually fast. 
  And although the dancers several times literally turn their backs to the audience or close their eyes they are never completely closed off within themselves. Instead, a single look or a facial expression is enough to create a relation with the audience and not least expectations. 

Relations on stage are almost as subtle. Like for example when Maria Fahlin or Josefin Larson Olin detaches themselves from the group to perform a solo, the other participants are still present in their absence. 
  Because they are able to convince me that what is happening on stage is just a tiny excerpt and part of a larger course of events that just then is not being depicted.

Thomas Olsson /Nummer.se
 
Happy to be here isn’t bad at all as a title for Anna Koch’s new work, a concentrate of human encounters that takes place at the House of Dance’s Small stage and not “at home” at Weld, the platform for interdisciplinary artistic collaboration for which Koch is artistic director.
 
Yet it is still Weld’s spirit that pervades in the just under an hour-long piece in which six dancers – or personalities – of different ages, nationalities and backgrounds in dance, performance art, sound and visual art create a kind of tapestry of experiences and expression. You could call it explorative dialogues, interleaved with solos and choreographed “group discussions” where the dancers take each other in with individual displacements.
 


Already at the beginning of the piece a permissive and curious atmosphere is established, which is familiar in Koch’s work. The dancers run onto the stage, stand and close their eyes. Are. They play ‘Follow the Leader’, make simple movements in which the bodies respond to each other’s hips, jump, clapping sounds and grimaces. They communicate through their intrinsic differences. Someone is left alone.
 
This is dance that is not about perfection or show. Rather, there is a presence that is reminiscent of children’s relationship to their surroundings and the present; we are both by ourselves and together, under constant influence. Two strange hands tease in safe symbiosis. One word can mean different things.

A soft atmosphere lies over this “to be here”. It is beautiful when the group interacts only by quickly sniffing the air or moving almost in unison with their eyes closed. There are also some beautiful solos, in particular Marie Fahlin’s light, lightning-fast movements.
 
The choreography seems to be built on remnants, rhythms and irrational paths that have been processed and recycled. Equally subtle is the music; a faint hum of drum rhythms and sound patterns. Ironically, only the delight of the audience is heard clearly.

Anna Koch likes to break up the pretentious with mild humour. As when classic ballet peeps through in the pas de deux and Dragana Zarevska whistles triumphantly when she is lifted high up towards the audience.
 
Happy to be here also examines different approaches to being on stage. Through lateral black backdrops a game is played with the classic theatre space where performers time after time make an entrance or exit or observe everything a bit from the outside. Anna Koch and the ensemble not only investigate ways to expand dance as an art form but also raise general human existential questions about how we interact – and sometimes collide with a loud “ding”. You leave smiling a little more happy.

Anna Ångström/SVD


When choreographer Anna Koch now returns to the House of Dance after many years with a new performance, the title of the work “Happy to be here” could be interpreted ironically. Glad to be back, on the finest dance stage. As the energetic, successful artist director of the experimental performing arts platform Weld, Anna Koch has had her hands full with performance art in all imaginable shapes and forms.
 
Rather, the title “Happy to be here” is, if anything, frank. The happiness in being here is a bit of artistic credo.

How do you portray the ever-elusive present moment? How do you avoid stiffening into one shape or form?
 The answer is – as it is so often in the 21st century: by portraying the creative process itself. You know, the journey is the goal. This time Anna Koch is helped by a multifaceted and interdisciplinary group of artists. On stage are a half-dozen word-, visual- and video artists, stage performers in theatre, performance art and dance, as well as a choreographer, that is, besides Anna Koch herself.
 
The sextet Marie Fahlin, Josefine Larson Olin, Dragana Zarevska, Igor Koruga, Marcus Doverud and Bure Holmbäck thrash it out on stage. They run, meet, touch and are touched, imitate and sniff each other, give the heads up, breath sighs of relief. Yet, without the performance falling apart into meaninglessness.

“Happy to be here” offers a hidden – in some mysterious way – organized chaos, like that in the work of experimental writer Georges Perec. The observer need not actually try to crack the codes, see the structure behind the portrayal, since the goal is the journey itself. The ongoing creative process, the performers on stage right now. The journey naturally includes my own thoughts too. This perhaps sounds more difficult, more intellectual than it actually is.
 
“Happy to be here” is driven most of all by a soft, equally appealing as elusive flow. And by the six performers’ completely frank appreciation – or rather – happiness of being here. Right now.

Örjan Abrahamson /DN