How do you start creating a physical language from zero? What can collaborative physical research look like? What happens when you put the language of the body first? These are some of the exploration points of the two-week Waiting Places workshop.
Performers
Bobbi Jene, Or Schraiber, Astrid Elbo, Kizzy Matiakis, Alexander Bozinoff
Choreography
Bobbi Jene and Or Schraiber
TEXT / WRITER
Nicole Krauss
SCENOGRAPHY AND COSTUMES
Christian Friedländer
WORKSHOP PERIOD
3rd - 14th of April 2023
THE DATE OF THE PREMIERE AT EDISON
10th of February 2024
Text
Mette Tranholm based on an interview by David Pepe Birch
Photos
Catrine Zorn
The internationally acclaimed choreographers and dancers Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber are invited to the Betty Nansen Theatre to create a new performance piece. Eight months prior to ordinary rehearsal start they shoot off the performance-making process with a two-week physical research workshop together with ballet dancers Kizzy Matiakis, Astrid Elbo and Alexander Bozinoff. Smith and Schraiber are both choreographers and they also perform in the piece. All five dancers are gathered at the Betty Nansen Theatre for the workshop and joined by writer Nicole Krauss who will create original text material for the performance.
about the working process and the early investigations: “I like to think that we start at zero. Zero is the desert and then we see what arrives. At the workshop we have been making connections with each other. Time together in the room is the most valuable. After the workshop we will look at the raw material. Always starting with the body, asking "what characters are attached to these movements?"
“We meet in the dream place of questioning. Things will arise and fall away and we begin to discover what is interesting to us all and what’s already there. The process is very collaborative and based on the ideas of the group. It’s a huge team effort. The people that are part of the piece create the piece.
The space will be an important character in this piece – this place of waiting, five people waiting in the same place but going through different things. The language and interactions between these five people will become the piece.
Hopefully the audience will see bits of themselves in the people dancing and recognize places in themselves that are waiting. I think we all know different parts of us that are waiting: to come alive, to escape, to be touched, to grieve, and hoping for those places to reawaken or die”.
