THIS IS CONCRETE, Jefta van Dinther and Thiago Granato, May 21-23
THIS IS CONCRETE is a slow ride. Two men's bodies intermingle with each other incessantly, blurring their boundaries. Infused in a sonic environment of dizzying beats and revolving shadows, the performers’ trip is lengthy, sedated, coital. Movements mutate into words as the two men's voices start to speak their mouths and bodies. In the corporeal and social fusion generated between them, their drive slides into pleasure, talking into eating, fucking into dancing and symbiosis into parasitism.
THIS IS CONCRETE is a collaboration between choreographers and dancers Jefta van Dinther and Thiago Granato. The performance ventures staging something intimate, incorporating the volatile as building blocks in its composition – offering to its audience to spend time with something uncertain; something uncertain and infectiously slow.
THIS IS CONCRETE is a production by Jefta van Dinther – Sure Basic and Thiago Granato | Administrative structure: Interim kultur – Sweden and Sure Basic – The Netherlands | Co-production: PACT Zollverein, Grand Theatre Groningen, Panorama Festival Rio de Janeiro, CNDC Angers and Fabrik Potsdam / Étape Danse | Funded by: the Swedish Arts Council, the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, City of Stockholm and Fonds Podiumkunsten The Netherlands.
Choreography and Dance: Jefta van Dinther and Thiago Granato
Lighting design: Jan Fedinger
Sound design: David Kiers
Production management: Emelie Bergbohm
Artistic advice: Sandro Amaral, Frederic Gies and Robert Steijn
Jefta van Dinther (SE/NL)
is a choreographer and dancer working between Amsterdam, Stockholm and Berlin. He grew up in Sweden, after which he moved to the Netherlands and graduated from the Amsterdam School of the Arts (MTD) in 2003. Jefta makes performances, both alone and in collaboration with other artists. His own works includes GRIND (2011), made in collaboration with lighting designer Minna Tiikkainen and sound designer David Kiers, The Blanket Dance (2011), in collaboration with Frederic Gies and DD Dorvillier, Kneeding (2010), IT’S IN THE AIR (2009), in collaboration with Mette Ingvartsen and The Way Things Go (2009). The latter piece is also performed as repertory by the Cullberg Ballet. Jefta has been engaged as a performer with various other choreographers including Mette Ingvartsen, Xavier Le Roy, Ivana Muller, Kristine Slettevold, Frederic Gies, Keren Levi, Leine/Roebana, Pere Faura, Carolien Hermans. He teaches in choreography, sharing his methods of work and practices. Recently, he has been appointed artistic co-director of the MA program in Choreography together with Frederic Gies at the University of Dance and Circus in Stockholm. He also organizes The Living Room Festival. He is currently preparing for a new big scale production with the Cullberg Ballet entitled Plateau Effect that will premiere in the summer of 2013. www.jeftavandinther.com
Thiago Granato (BR)
is a Brazilian dance artist, who lives and works between Brazil, France and Germany. He works as a performer and choreographer since 1998. He collaborated with coreographers such as Lia Rodrigues, Adriana Grechi, João Saldanha, Cristina Moura, Cristian Duarte, Thelma Bonavita, Mathilde Monnier, Cecília Bengolea and François Chaignaud. To name a few, his own works includes PLANO B (2008), in collaboration with Cristian Duarte, WE ARE NOT SUPERFICIAL, WE LOVE PENETRATION (2008), TOMBO (2009), in collaboration with Cristian Duarte and Thelma Bonavita. Together with Sandro Amaral, he develops the ongoing choreographic project BASEMENT, which is an open source dance/performance event where a group of artists are invited to give visibility to what usually remains unspoken publicly. He is currently working in collaboration with the artists Neto Machado, Jefta van Dinther, Lenio Kaklea, Enorà Rivièré and Frederic Gies. He also collaborates with the Festival Contemporâneo de Dança de São Paulo (Brazil). During 2008, he was part of the education project Ex.e.r.ce 08, coordinated by Xavier Le Roy, at the Centre Choregraphique National de Montpellier (France), and during 2013 he will be an artist resident at Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart (Germany).
Jan Fedinger (DE)
is a light artist and lighting designer based i the Netherlands. He graduated from Amsterdam School of Arts with a degree in technical theatre making and holds a master in lighting design from Helsinki theatre academy. In his collaborative work with contemporary theatre and performance makers like David Weber-Krebs, Rodrigo Sobarzo, Joao Evangelista, Violetta Perra and Aitana Cordero among others he has developed his own way of communicating through light with the audience. Aside of theatre, he develops light art installations that have been on display in for example Enschede, Helsinki and Paris. Currently, he is developing the installation series land [e]scapes that seeks to create an awareness for natural light phenomena in a digitalizing world in order to create an archive of experiences. In both theatre and installation-art Jan Fedinger seeks to challenge his audience’s perception through the use of light on a conscious and unconscious level. In this way, he seeks to create environments that possibly haven't yet been perceived, but only dreamed of.
www.janfedinger.net
David Kiers (NL)
graduated from the Sonology degree program at the Royal Conservatory in Den Haag, the Netherlands. In the recent years his main focus as an image and sound artist has been on the collaboration with Gideon Kiers and Lucas van der Velden under the Telcosystems moniker. Their search for a personal language in the world of abstract computer generated image and sound has produced a string of performances, installations and short films, which have been shown and nominated for awards all over the world (Sonar/Barcelona, de Appel/Amsterdam, International Short Film Festival/Oberhausen, Boijmans van Beuningen/Rotterdam, New York Digital Salon, ArsElectronica/Linz, Cyberarts Festival/Boston, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Transmediale/Berlin, Wood Street Galleries/Pittsburgh USA). In 2009 Telcosystems received the Gus Van Sant award for best experimental film, for their short film Loud things. Besides this he has composed music for various theatre and video productions like the Panic Productions pieces Dead Meat (2007) and Private Dancer (2008), Jefta van Dinther’s and Minna Tiikkainen's GRIND (2011), and Skubriocha, a sound poetry performance with Valeri Scherstjanoi, performed during the 2007 International Poetry Festival in Berlin.www.telcosystems.net