How does sharing an experience affect the expenditure of energy involved? Fountain/To The Mountain is a choreographic investigation into the mechanics of communal effort. The first part, Jeremy Wade’s Fountain is a sensory preparation for the audience as well as an introduction to the choreographic techniques involved in making the second part. In To The Mountain Florentina Holzinger, Ligia Lewis and Rodrigo Sobarzo process a series of tasks, fantastic images and scores as they go on a physical journey. An abstract progression of energetic states and physical intensities, their bodies become motors that run on a multitude of images, virtual landscapes, affects and impulses. Their ever-changing configurations become planes of expression.
Sensation 1 (Conviction Series)
SENSATION 1 (CONVICTION SERIES) 2011
Through the abstraction of wailing in silence, a suspended temporal sculpture of intensified feeling emerges.
A choreography in 2 parts, Sensation 1 firstly removes the function of sound from a wailing body, consequently producing a sounding body rendered mute. The amplification and extension of a moment in time, the utterance and suspension of a final spellbinding note made mute. The gesture of a singing body in rapture is illuminated in total silence.
Whitney Houston’s I will always loves you, follows in complete darkness.
Concept/Performance: Ligia Manuela Lewis
Light and Sound Design: Johannes Wengel
Music: Whitney Houston “I will always love you” (Divas Live, 1999 live performance)
additional thanks to: sommer.bar
Sensation 2
SENSATION 2 (CONVICTION SERIES)
Sensation 2 takes the theater as an artifice for designing a choreography where fantasy touches and abstracts the sensational. The second work in the series takes the neck as a historically aesthetic anatomical landmark and a site of cultural constructions of the feminine. The effect of the movements of the neck are amplified through hair.
For the purpose of Sensation 2, I put a weave in.The artifice of fake hair exposes the illusion of beauty without a negation of its undeniable appeal.The choreography appropriates canonical images of feminine beauty, it travels through these sensuous and representational constructs into a spectacular pop-body. Touch is the sensation that is reconsidered as wind machines blow across the space and make the sensation of touch palpable for the spectator.
Concept/Performance: Ligia Manuela Lewis
Sound: Johannes Wengel
Dramaturgy: Timothy Murray
Light: Sandera Blatterer/Denis Richter
production: Ligia Manuela Lewis
coproduction: Sophiensaele Theater (Tanztage Festival)
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Simply Irresistible aka nigger, nigger, nigger aka triple nigger
They were people who went in for Negroes-Michael and Anne-the Carraways. But not in the social-service, philanthropic sort of way, no. They saw no use in helping a race that was already too charming and naive and lovely for words. Leave them unspoiled and just enjoy them, Michael and Anne felt. So they went in for the Art of Negroes-the dancing that had such jungle life about it, the songs that were so simple and fervent, the poetry that was so direct, so real. They never tried to influence that art, they only bought it and raved over it, and copied it. For they were artists, too.
-opening lines to “Slave on the Block” by Langston Hughes
part 1: a short story
part 2: a short reflection
part 3: a jam (love vs money, the dream) coupled with a little dance
part 4: a conversation
an intimate performance featured in the Living Room Festival, hosted by Jefta Van Dinther and Frederic Gies
Simply Irresistible weaves together the poetics of Langston Hughes, a love ballad (love vs money), alongside personal reflections on dance practice. Placing the dancer as the protagonist, this performance talks about the hustle and unrelenting grind of the dancer(nigger nigger nigger). By opening up into a conversation, for many voices, I propose to think of a space in which this grind could potentially be a place where the arduous labor love could have transformative potential.
A CALL FOR EMPATHY performance stills
A CALL FOR EMPATHY 2007-lo-fi action performance
Can the body when placed in an appropriate context render not only discourse but sensation? At what point does the experience of seeing cross over into an empathetic witnessing of a situation? I stage an unprompted action, that takes place in close proximity to the spectator implicating their bodies as both an audience to and participant in a complex series of movements.
An uncompromising score, it insists on its emotional intensity and physical duress, to render a reactionaryreality. Empathy is a state in which there is a certain type of exchange. The empathic gesture can be seen as an event that draws the viewer into a cathartic but also self-defensive range of thoughts and emotions. I use the banality of crying to call upon the audience to negotiate their own memories, and ethical sensibility
and force them to make the decision to engage or detach from the event I’ve set up.
FOUNTAIN TO THE MOUNTAIN
Choreografie / Konzept / Performance: Jeremy Wade
Choreografie / Performance: Florentina Holzinger, Ligia Manuela Lewis, Rodrigo Sobarzo
Musik: Tian Rotteveel
Kostümdesign: Jean-Paul Lespagnard
Lichtdesign: Andreas Harder
Dramaturgie: Eike Wittrock
Hospitanz: Nina Djekic
Presse & Produktion: Björn Pätz & Björn Frers – björn & björn
LEWIS FOREVER in residency at New Museum (NYC) 2009
Lewis Forever’s Guide to Kinship and Maybe Magic is a multi-tier work and ultimately a film investigating the sociological implications of a family having to navigate the complications of collectivity. What is at stake are the personal relationships between siblings, Sarah, Isabel, Ligia, and George. The work unfolds on multiple platforms utilizing internet-based social media as well as the techniques of performance and film to create an at once intimate and complex portrayal of artistic collaboration.
SISTER
Trailer for the film SISTER, by performance collective Lewis Forever. Directed by Isabel Lewis, cinematography by Anthony Rocco, performance by Isabel Lewis, Sarah Lewis, and Ligia Lewis.
Costumes by Camilla Carper
Trailer Music: Elizabeth Skadden and Jonny Teardrop
Film Scoring: George Lewis Jr
Produced by Isabel Lewis, Josep Maynou, Anthony Rocco, Amy Patton, and Dance New Amsterdam (NYC).
Production Manager: Sarah Lewis
Production Assistants: Michael Norton and Alex Coggin
Sound Assistant: Mercè Salom
Shot on location at TURMWERK in Woltersdorf Germany thanks to IAMX in July 2011.
my fantasy of Kat Valastur’s work, Oh deep sea corpus 1
Oh! Deep Sea Corpus 1
Choreographed by Kat Válastur
Dramaturgy: Nikos Flessas/ Nikos Kamontos
Light designer: Nysos Vasilopoulos
Music: Antonis Anissegos
Costumes: Sasa Kovacevic
Choreographer’s assistant: kiriakos Hadjiioannou
Set construction: Pavlos Kapalas ( inspired by Marchel Duchamp’s installation at the “Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, 1938” )
Performed by : Laura Lozza, Ligia-Manuela Lewis, Kat Válastur
Supported by the Hellenic Festival, Senatskanzlei Kulturelle Angelegenheiten and Goethe institute of Athens
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