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12 STATES, THINGS WE WANTED TO DO
DURATION: 40–70 MINUTES
CHOREOGRAPHY: DAVIDE TERLINGO, COLIN DUNNE, MICHAEL KLIEN
MUSIC: VARIOUS
Three choreographers, two titles and a partridge in a pear tree. A dance work that uses an eclectic format of performance and installation settings.
“Dance or life, it’s all the same thing. Take them as a sort of Rorschach inkblot test.”
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CHOREOGRAPHY FOR BLACKBOARDS
DURATION/FORMAT: 60 MINUTES/2 DAYS +
CHOREOGRAPHY: MICHAEL KLIEN
DRAMATURGY: STEVE VALK
ELECTRONIC MUSIC: VOLKMAR KLIEN
LIGHTING: DAVE GUY
Michael Klien’s new work for six blackboards, a time-based installation to be performed in galleries and museums, is a carefully constructed choreographic structure. Five participants, chosen both locally and internationally, work on six monolithic blackboards spread throughout a large open space. Actively drawing on the blackboards over a set period of time, they follow exact, rehearsed procedures, developing and exchanging insights and individual expressions in various, immediate communicative forms, weaving their relations into a concentrated collective dance of minds. (strike the surface) A silent and communal matrix of five individuals (dreaming the real) imprints a landscape of marks and meaning on the surfaces of blackboards.
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DUST
DURATION: APPROX. 12 MINUTES
CHOREOGRAPHY: MICHAEL KLIEN
MUSIC: VOLKMAR KLIEN
LIGHTING: DAVE GUY, MICHAEL KLIEN
A process and instance of loss and release.
“I can’t keep track of each fallen robin.” (Leonard Cohen)
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DYING SWAN
DURATION: 3 MINUTES
CHOREOGRAPHY: MICHAEL KLIEN
MUSIC: CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS
Dying Swan is a contemporary stance on the 1907 classic originally choreographed by Mikhail Fokine. In this version there is no “swan”, just a dancer, there is no death, something just “leaves”.
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EINEM …
DURATION: APPROX. 20 MINUTES
CHOREOGRAPHY: MICHAEL KLIEN
MUSIC: VOLKMAR KLIEN
SOFTWARE DESIGN: NICK ROTHWELL, MICHAEL KLIEN
Einem …, a “work in movement”, is subject to continuous change and adaptation. In synergy with the dancer Nicole Peisl, Einem … grows, learns, mutates and lives together through the dancer. This groundbreaking work was originally produced by Ballett Frankfurt, ZKM and Tanzquartier Wien and has been performed by Daghdha Dance Company to critical acclaim since 2004.
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EMPTY SHELLS
DURATION: 7 MINUTES
CHOREOGRAPHY: DAVIDE TERLINGO, ANGIE SMALIS
MUSIC: LORENZO BRUSCI’S ELABORATION ON PERGOLESI’S STABAT MATER
Empty Shells is a fleeting sight of two individuals’ single-minded stories. Personal memories guide the body both as formal and emotional generators, creating a tender and simple observation of human nature.
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FAMINE BLUE
“A BROKEN LANGUAGE AND BRUISES OF SPECIFIC COLOUR”
DURATION: 30 MINUTES
CHOREOGRAPHY/DANCE: MARK CARBERRY
MUSIC: JOHN GREENWOOD
Irish choreographer and dancer Mark Carberry’s first piece for Daghdha Dance Company’s repertoire, premiered in Daghdha Space in May 2008.
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FIELD STUDIES – AN EXCAVATION OF MIND AND NATURE
Michael Klien’s new work for Daghdha Dance Company takes the form of twenty-two interrelated choreographic fieldwork studies dispersed throughout the year. The project will begin as a collaboration between Daghdha’s dancer Elena Giannotti and Klien himself. Out of a series of preliminary investigations, a soft network of “intimate world building” will emerge. Field Studies is an artistic, systematic enquiry into the field of mental patterns and their relationship to the concept of unfathomable complexity in nature. As the work explores the active insertion of the dancer’s perception into the lived world throughout the period of a year, the Field Studies project can never be presented in its entirety. Various fragments and findings will be performed, exhibited and presented for discussion during Daghdha’s cultural calendar in 2007 and 2008. Field Studies will be at the heart of Daghdha’s work in 2007 with individual sections being presented during the Cultural Programme as part of Mamuska Limerick, Framemakers and Gravity and Grace.
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FRAMEMAKERS SERIES
In spring 2008 Daghdha Dance Company published two books on Choreography as an Aesthetics of Change, a collection of essays from a diverse group of thinkers and leaders in their own fields, exploring the notion of choreography as the art and aesthetics of change.
BOOK OF RECOMMENDATIONS – CHOREOGRAPHY AS AN AESTHETICS OF CHANGE
A distilled text almost assuming the shape of a manifesto, written by Michael Klien, Steve Valk and Jeffrey Gormly, outlines a new found relevance of choreography and dance in the wider social sphere.
“Patterns are everywhere. Patterns are in between, ephemeral but real. They are only visible to us under certain conditions, on certain wavelengths for us to grasp. The fact is that these patterns govern our lives. Routines, solar systems, ordinary days and conversations – all governed by patterns of some sort … the patterns we live by. This is a search for patterns; the sort of patterns, that, as Gregory Bateson reminds us, connect the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose and all of them to me and me to you. A search that aims to imagine and formulate a vivid awareness of the profound and deeply ambiguous structures and dynamics working in man and nature.”
(Michael Klien, Steve Valk and Jeffrey Gormly)
FRAMEMAKERS – CHOREOGRAPHY AS AN AESTHETICS OF CHANGE
“I believe that action, if it is to be planned at all, must always be planned upon an aesthetic base.”
(Gregory Bateson)
Framemakers is an ongoing enquiry into a world understood in terms of relations, order, and ecologies. Daghdha Dance Company hosts a new kind of thinking space, one that invites citizens to enquire into the deeper structures and dynamics that bind our worlds, in which we have our being, together. Framemakers poses questions of how we move and are moved; how our assumptions frame our perception of “the way things are”; how we know what we think we know and organise bodies of knowledge to impose our rights, wrongs, needs and desires on our environment; how we can and do imaginatively order and re-order aspects of our personal, social, cultural and political lives. Framemakers expands a metaphor: Choreography as an Aesthetics of Change; a new understanding of choreography as a creative act setting humans, actions, ideas, and ten Framemakers thoughts in relation to one another, to create or reveal order, channel energies, explore dynamics and create conditions for something to happen.
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IM FETT
DURATION: APPROX. 10 MINUTES
CHOREOGRAPHY: MICHAEL KLIEN
MUSIC: VOLKMAR KLIEN
LIGHTING: DAVE GUY, MICHAEL KLIEN
Im Fett is inspired by the concept of mind streaming – collecting material from the past and transforming it into a crude abstraction of self. Originally conceived as a solo it can also be performed as a duet.
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IRIS
CONCEPT/CHOREOGRAPHY: MICHAEL KLIEN, DAVIDE TERLINGO
DESIGN: RAFAL KOSAKOWSKI
Commissioned by Cork 2005 (European Capital of Culture), and supported by Absolute Events, Iris saw the distribution by Daghdha Dance Company of almost 10,000 stainless steel rings throughout Cork city in 2005. Each ring is a symbol of an expanded community; an invitation to actively engage with each other, acknowledging potential in seemingly ordinary encounters. Each Iris ring comes with a set of five simple, written instructions, inviting the wearer of a ring to show a physical or mental response whenever he or she meets someone wearing the same ring. Here, the choreographers’ work was centred on facilitating a social dynamic. The work created; the human patterns of being and moving, become a choreographic work at once ephemeral and playful, the ring becoming the key to a world of invisible links.
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LECTURE SERIES
A series of public lectures, integrating workshops and performances are spread over a three-day period. The lectures aim to radically open the disciplines of dance and choreography to other fields of human knowledge production, such as physics, sociology, anthropology, system theory, biology, etc. The Lecture Series are the accumulation of several years of intensive research at Daghdha Dance Company and other institutions such as Ballett Frankfurt.
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LIMERICK TRILOGY
DURATION: APPROX. 55 MINUTES
CHOREOGRAPHY: MICHAEL KLIEN
MUSIC: LOCKERUNGEN BY VOLKMAR KLIEN
LIGHTING/STAGE: DAVE GUY
Limerick Trilogy, a choreography for three dancers, sheds a distinct light over an artist’s enquiry that, far detached from the clichés of social representation, probes deeply into the function of human consciousness and social coding. Limerick Trilogy is a recollection of movements, processes and thoughts uncovered and woven together at Daghdha Dance Company. Michael Klien in collaboration with the dancers has developed new choreographic and compositional methodologies, which filter and reconfigure the sediments of everyday life into patterns and movements. Limerick Trilogy outlines an unassuming, rudimentary aesthetic – a primer in the life of steady movement. This delicate process lays bare the human capacity for sensitive knowing. Its manifestation in movement yields a simple and nameless beauty.
“As creators and investigators of every movement, there is an earnestness and truthfulness behind every action.”
(The Irish Times)
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MUD
DURATION: APPROX. 9 MINUTES
CHOREOGRAPHY: MICHAEL KLIEN
MUSIC: VOLKMAR KLIEN
LIGHTING: DAVE GUY, MICHAEL KLIEN
Mud is a realm of effortless existence, embracing a life unknown … a softening of distinctions … a rare instance of dedicated spacetime … a patient substance … a place to roam the territory of some newfound reality.
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ONCE BENEATH THE SKIN
DURATION: APPROX. 55 MINUTES
CHOREOGRAPHY: MICHAEL KLIEN
MUSIC: GOLDBERG VARIATIONS BY J. S. BACH
PIANO: FRANÇOISE PAPILLON
LIGHTING: DAVE GUY, MICHAEL KLIEN
Once Beneath the Skin is a meeting of two works, Bach’s famous Goldberg Variations and a dance-duet choreographed by Daghdha Dance Company’s artistic director Michael Klien. Klien’s examination of the semantics of Bach’s work is reflected in the choreographic structure of the duet. The pieces, although sharing the same stage are very much sovereign, allowing the dance as well as the music, the time and the space to unfold. Synergies appear and dissolve, are created and abandoned. During Once Beneath the Skin the dancers explore their most precious personal memories, facing demons and reliving moments that formed them, creating a physical album of what has been and what is left behind. Endless stories embedded in a directed stream of consciousness.
“Because there is always time for a bit more consciousness.”
“Once Beneath the Skin is refreshingly less about the ego of the director and more about the interior of the dancer.” (Irish Independent)
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REMOTE IRELAND TOUR
A national tour that puts the concept of Social Choreography as developed by Daghdha Dance Company into practice around remote locations in Ireland. This production sees dance-artist Daniel Vais travel to various remote locations in Ireland during July 2007. Vais and numerous guest artists will create improvised, socially inclusive, choreographed gatherings at remote locations involving local people and special guests. A photographic and video journal of this tour will be presented in Daghdha Space, St. John’s Church during Gravity and Grace in December 2007.
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R.I.C.E.
R.I.C.E. embodies a new and growing consciousness about how human activity transforms the world. Initiated by Daghdha Dance Company, R.I.C.E. choreographs unique social situations that allow a deeper surface to become apparent, enabling citizens to sense the encompassing systems within which we perform our private and public lives. R.I.C.E. is led by Jeffrey Gormly and Steve Valk, and supported by the Limerick City Council.
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SEDIMENTS OF AN ORDINARY MIND
DURATION: APPROX. 55 MINUTES
CHOREOGRAPHY: MICHAEL KLIEN
MUSIC: VOLKMAR KLIEN (IM FETT IN COLLABORATION WITH WEIPING LIN)
LIGHTING/STAGE: DAVE GUY, MICHAEL KLIEN
A thought is a physical act. Sediments of an Ordinary Mind, a work for four dancers, is an enigma of human idiosyncrasies and extraordinary traces of the ordinary. Michael Klien has devised a range of procedures guiding the dancers to embody their personal “streams of consciousness” in real-time on stage. Thereby an artefact is created that actively and purposefully channels the existing personal and social setup of the four dancers. A world that is as real as it is fake, utilising underlying dynamics of the human condition: learning, faith, love, trust, hate, remembering and forgetting, trial and error … in search of the social glue. Daghdha Dance Company has commissioned Irish writer Jeffrey Gormly to write a book documenting and exploring the choreography and processes behind Sediments of an Ordinary Mind. The book will be published during 2007.
“Michael Klien doesn’t necessarily embrace randomness, but he trusts his methodology to articulate his vision.”
(The Irish Times)
“A beautiful piece of pure movement.” (Irish Examiner)
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SENSE AND MEANING
DURATION: 60 MINUTES
CHOREOGRAPHY: MICHAEL KLIEN
DANCE: ELENA GIANNOTTI
MUSIC: VOLKMAR KLIEN
Choreographer Michael Klien and dancer Elena Giannotti have been in conversation for over a year, working on the disclosure of reality through dance in a process entitled Field Studies. In Sense and Meaning they present traces of the mental spaces carved out through that process. Initially a series of strategies, memories, mental states and procedures, Sense and Meaning binds them together within a comprehensive field for embodied thought. Sense and Meaning premiered in December 2007 and will be shown in Paris in June 2008.
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SLATTERY’S LAMP
CONCEPT: MICHAEL KLIEN
TECHNICAL DESIGN: DAVE GUY
PROGRAMMING: NICK ROTHWELL
Michael Klien’s installation of a street-lamp, previously situated in Limerick has been selected to join IMMA’s (Irish Museum of Modern Art) permanent collection in Spring 2007. Originally conceived as an installation complimentary to Klien’s choreography Sediments of an Ordinary Mind, the lamp presents a working mind spread across the fields of the social, the ordinary and the in-between. The lamp is technologically equipped with the capabilities to gain knowledge, to build meaning and to express itself in a limited manner. It gathers information in a public space and uses its light to communicate its findings. To fully perceive and engage with Slattery’s Lamp is an exercise in trust. Slattery’s Lamp was originally produced as part of EV+A 2004.
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STANDING IN INK
“THE END OF ADDICTION”
DURATION: 20 MINUTES
CHOREOGRAPHY: MICHAEL KLIEN
DANCE: MARK CARBERRY, LAURA DANNEQUIN
MUSIC: VOLKMAR KLIEN
Two dancers on stage. Nothing agreed, nothing set. They are poised to dance together. Standing in Ink emerged out of a yearlong conversation between the choreographer and the dancers, systematically examining their own processes of thought, perception and co-existence. Dancing differently to what the eye is used to and choreographed differently to what one would expect, Standing in Ink is a deceivingly simple duet; yet it carries the potential to spark a subtle revolution in dance.
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TO BUILD A HALL
DURATION: 60 MINUTES
CHOREOGRAPHY: MICHAEL KLIEN
DANCE: ANGIE SMALIS
MUSIC: VOLKMAR KLIEN
Angie Smalis explores personal life activities and mental patterns through bodily thinking and movement. Michael Klien and Angie Smalis have worked together to create a work in dance that utilises her perception of reality, clearing space for new thought to emerge.
“The sensitivity to dance possessed by each and everyone of us comes from the fact that dance answers, after its own fashion, Spinoza’s question: What is a body capable of? It is capable of art, that is, it can be exhibited as native thought. How can we name this emotion that seizes us at this point? I will name this emotion an exact vertigo.” (Alain Badiou, The Handbook of Inaesthetics)
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YOUR TRUTH DOESN’T INTEREST ME. I KNOW NOTHING OF SUBSTANCE,
AND I AM STUMPED BY WHAT YOU CALL REALITY
3 LECTURES
A series of three public lectures by artistic director Michael Klien and renowned dramaturge Steve Valk (formerly Ballett Frankfurt) presents fundamental and far-reaching socio-cultural developments. The lectures Choreography as an Aesthetics of Change, Dance as a Metaphor for Thought, Social Choreography/Social Dreaming focus on choreography as an emerging autonomous discipline, the consequences for dance as well as the conceptual framework for new creative thinking and engagement within the social sphere. Drawing from various sources (Bateson, Beuys, Derrida, Badiou, Hoffmeyer, Keeney, etc.) Klien and Valk outline and contextualise the profound paradigmatic shifts happening in contemporary western cultural practice.
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