Introduction to the project Appropriation and Dedication 

Monday 12 & Tuesday 13 May

Immediately following the course trip to Berlin and their time at the New Theater, the group reconnects in Arnhem with tutor Matthew Lutz-Kinoy and associate curator Susan Gibb to continue their collaborative work. A presentation of their shared process will be shown publically during the DAI's forthcoming gathering in June. 

During the workshop the group will refine and rehearse the presentation they devised in Berlin, and work collaboratively to construct the presentation’s scenography and publicity material.

If I Can't Dance's course at DAI this year is constructed around sessions with recurring tutor Matthew Lutz-Kinoy and sessions with our Commissioned Artists Gerry Bibby, Sara van der Heide, Snejanka Mihaylova and Emily Roysdon. At the end of the year, a collective performative work, developed with Matthew, will be presented publically.

Monday 5 May- Sunday 11 May

WORKSHOP

DAI trip Berlin - Appropriation and Dedication course

Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Susan Gibb, students Dutch Art Institute

New Theater, Berlin

Students of If I Can't Dance's course Appropriation and Dedication at the Dutch Art Institute/MFA ArtEZ are spending the week at the New Theater in Berlin with their tutor Matthew Lutz-Kinoy and If I Can't Dance associate curator Susan Gibb, for an extensive workshop developing material around Jean Genet's play The Balcony (1957). Genet's play is the point of departure for a presentation that will be shown in Arnhem in June.

In the weeklong development of their presentation, the students will meet with artists living and working in Berlin who engage in a variety of performance mediums. This will include sessions on scriptwriting with Calla Henkel, Max Pitegoff (New Theater) and Pablo Larios (Freize d/e); sound with artist Hannah Weinburger, Carsten Jost (Dial Records) and music scholar Bianca Hauser; movement with performers Susan Poltz and Adam Linder; and a meeting with artist Yorgos Sapountzis. The group will also attend exhibitions and performances happening in Berlin during the week, including a visit to the Hamburger Bahnhof.

The workshop is hosted at New Theater, an artist-run performance space that produces plays and performances by and with artists. It was founded by Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff in 2013 and is based in Kreuzberg, Berlin.

The past months the group has been introduced to different methodologies of performance practice in workshops led by If I Can't Dance's Commissioned Artists Sara van der Heide, Snejanka Mihaylova, Emily Roysdon and Gerry Bibby.

Monday April 7

In April the DAI students reconnect with tutor Matthew Lutz-Kinoy for a session in Arnhem that begins with a discussion on what has taken place in the workshops with If I Can't Dance's Commissioned Artists in the past months, and a review of the assignments and blog entries that the students have worked on since the start of the course.

In this month's workshop we will develop a short written 'pub-script' that is to be performed live later in the evening at a local pub. We will also be making a site visit to the Theater aan de Rijn for a brief tour.

The students will read a text by Claire Bishop from her 2012 book Artificial Hells, specifically the chapter 'Social Sadism Made Explicit'. Through a discussion of the text we will move towards the ideas for the forthcoming DAI trip to the New Theater in Berlin which will be the site for a weeklong working period in May.

If I Can't Dance's Vivian Ziherl and Susan Gibb will be present this month alongside Matthew and also participate in face to face meetings.

Monday March 10

In March the DAI students meet in Amsterdam with Gerry Bibby in order to take a wandering tour including the train-ride back to Arnhem. The session will be meandering and experiential, and is intended to be experienced alone. Gerry will not lead the session as such, but he will provide an 'action score' in the days prior. The experience of the wander and the 'work of not working' will be reflected upon in a session held the same evening at the DAI in Arnhem.

Monday February 10

As mentioned last week, Emily Roysdon has proposed to work with the group on a new element of her performance 'By Any Other Name' at the Stedelijk Museum. She has been developing this performance with If I Can't Dance over the past year, and the first presentation took place last November at the Playground festival at STUK in Leuven. For each presentation, she is working with a different set of collaborators - collaboration is really at the heart of Emily's practice.

For the Stedelijk Museum, she is reworking the material and adding on a new part, which she would like to develop with this group during the Monday workshop. It means you will be performing with her on two public presentations Thursday evening. The idea is that you will develop a group movement that is performed outside the museum at a distance from the audience. You will also be able to see the full performance during the rehearsal. It's an amazing opportunity to work closely with Emily and gain insight in the process of staging a performance...

We will work with a specially adapted schedule to accommodate the work. It will be as follows: 

- Monday 10 February, 10.00 hrs: meet at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam,.

10:00 - 12:00 introduction with Emily Roysdon, Stedelijk Meeting Room

12:00 - 13:00 lunch at the Stedelijk canteen

13:00 - 18:00 workshop with Emily Roysdon

18:30 train back to Arnhem, dinner at DAI after arrival

Evening program DAI ( see bulletin nr 5) 

Monday January 6

In January we are meeting with Snejanka Mihaylova, continuing our series of workshops with the artists If I Can't Dance is currently collaborating with and their individual approach to performance. You will be introduced to Snejanka's work through a workshop in which we will together go into her practice. In January Susan Gibb will come to Arnhem as well.

Matthew has set a new exercise that you can find in the attached document. The exercises are intended to familiarize you with a set of ideas to explore and work through, that indicate direction to the work to be developed when Matthew returns in April. Please post your exercises to the blog by Saturday 4 January, so that we all have a chance to look at them before we meet - and I will look at them in dialogue with Matthew as well. 

On Tuesday morning we will meet at 9.30 as a group, to discuss together the work you have done on the exercises on the blog so far. Afterwards, there will be face to face meetings with Snejanka, Susan and myself as usual.

Tuesday January 7

09:30-10:30 group meeting. Location: mezzanine

Face to Face meetings with Snejanka Mihaylova, Tanja Baudoin and Susan Gibbs

Monday November 25

Amsterdam, 8 November 2013

Dear all,

Hereby I would like to welcome you all for the celebration of 'The 100th Anniversary of the Victory over the Sun' on Monday 25 November. We will have a closer look at the opera the Victory over the Sun. The opera was a collaboration by three young men 100 years ago in 1913, with the writer Aleksei Kruchenykh, who invented 'zaum', a language beyond logic: fragmented and non-linear. The sound and prologue was created by Velimir Khlebnikov, who was interested in creating new words. Kazimir Malevich made the costumes and the scenery. All three of them rejected the figurative and the linear narrative. In the piece they proposed to capture and destroy the 'sun', which was a symbol of rationality. In the beginning of the 20th century when the piece was made, there was a strong believe in new technology and the idea that machines would make everyone's life better.

For the workshop I would like to invite you all to think about how do we relate to the figure the Sun, today? And what does the figure represent today? What values or objects are there to capture and destroy, today? Or, to put it in another way, what is there to capture and nurture instead of to destroy? And how do we relate today to the idea of the 'superman', which believes in the idea that technology and the industrialization will make us better people. And how do we relate to the idea of continuous growth? We will try to translate our ideas in short performances with a self-made background, of maximum 5 minutes. For now, each of you is asked to think about those ideas before we will meet and bring your notes. On the 25th we will come together and discuss all your ideas. These ideas will be the starting point for the day and the performances.

PROGRAM 25th November:

- Welcome

- Presentation of Sara van der Heide her practice

- watch parts of the 'The Victory over the Sun', restaged in 1980 directed by Robert Benedetti

- Introduction and further explanation of the program

- 8 pm presentation of the performances with background

Please bring: Your ideas Clothes, that fit loosely and can become dirty Sketchbook and material

Please read: http://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/27/arts/theater-victory-over-the-sun.html

I highly recommend you to visit the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and see the current Malevich exhibition there.

Artists you might find interesting in relation to time: Hanne Darboven, On Kawara

Looking forward meeting you!

Sara van der Heide

Tuesday November 26

Face to Face meetings with Sara van der Heide, Tanja Baudoin and Susan Gibbs

Monday October 14

Tuesday October 15

Face to Face meetings Matthew Lutz- Kinnoy and Tanja Baudoin