This international performance festival is an event part of Queer Zagreb Season that brings together artists in dance and choreography with strong authorship in their performance practice researching sound, voice and music.
During the festival were held three art workshops, which were led by Jeanine Durning, Alma Söderberg, Jolika Sudermann and Jule Flierl.
At the workshop in Zagreb Linyekula with professional dancers wants to continue his highly personal exploration of concepts such as memory, identity and name. He decided to call the workshop “Not a Self-portrait and ‘about it says only:’ My dance will be an attempt to recall my name. Surely I lost it in the dark, back streets of memories. And since then I wander … ‘
Searching in our voice we meet different parts of our selves. We know only a part of our voice. All kind of emotions are written in our body and almost hidden for the voice.
By awakening the primal sounds of the body, we are enabled to produce a deeper and a richer voice. Within this method there is special attention paid to the use of our breath, the power and emotions of the voice, the support of the group, being part of the group and at the same time the conserving and remaining of yourself, your own personality. Anne-Marie stipulates that you must stay true to yourself whilst you are singing. Sing from your heart and understand that singing is more than just technique.
This workshop is for everybody who likes to sing. The work can help actors, singers and speakers in their use of their voice. The workshop is led by Anne-Marie Blink and is English spoken.
She works as a conductor, voice teacher and voice coach in the Netherlands as well as in different countries abroad on invitation. She gives also concerts in different regions of the voice. Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf, Astor Piazzolla and Gypsiemusic.
Practical research related to contemporary art practices in a range of Artaud to body art, focused on the performances of the body and the affirmation of corporal presence.
In the workshop we are working on voice through the body – the body is an instrument of voice, body resonates when we sing and the body carries the voice.
»Voice has many bodies, body has many voices. So they are never in lack of each other. Height depends on how deep you stand, the depth depends on how high you imagination is jumping. Feeling of being in tune comes from feeling the other – the one who sings next to/in you – a feeling in between your ribs. A bit lower or a bit higher…it depends on which body you are in. It depends on which voice you sing in, in which one you hear… Or you just feel it in such a way as if you don’t feel anything…because you are no longer – you yourself is absent, but you are all in the singing – you are present… In the moment when you have forgotten the text, you knock on the door of improvisation, innovation and we might find many fancy names on iiii, but thanks to a music, we forgot about it. So just fallow the rhythm. And the rest will come.When you’re out of tune, you’re just out of tune. Or you could hear inside that a voice that is escaping from you and wants to play with you. If you have a text, but no melody, then you just need to sustain and stand the silence – you need to listen to it as long as it’s needed for a mumbling to become a rhythm, to become a melody, to seduce you and finally until it bites your body. To hear yourself you need to be brave. Eh, just open that door and start to voice yourself out!«
In the workshop we are working on voice through the body – the body is an instrument of voice, body resonates when we sing and the body carries the voice. Through the physical exercises, through connecting to the body and it’s movement we come also to the voice – seeing and hearing how the voice can be prolongation and continuation of physical action. With exercises of breathing and relaxing the body, we can resonate with voice and by opening an ear to it, we can come to our own rhythms and melodies which we organically carry. Experimenting with voice can bring us to different faces, stories that each voice has.
On the other hand taking the text and working with it as a composition, we can embody it and come to singing with it, or just speaking it to the space, sending it to space to resonate. By approaching it musically we can come to different text interpretations.
At the end singing is just singing – working with old songs, learning them and just singing them as simple as singing can be, learning about singing through them, can bring us to simple beauty of a song.
Biography
Irena Tomažin is a dancer and singer. Until now, she has created five performances and has collaborated with many Slovenian directors, choreographers and musicians. Her dance-theater and voice education she gathered in dance-theatre, in programs such as Laboratorij of EN-KNAP; the educational program Agon of EMANAT; in the contemporary performing arts seminars of Maska Ljubljana, as well as in many workshops and seminars in Slovenia and abroad. In 2004, she received a scholarship from the Dance Web program in the frame of the ImPulzTanz festival, and in 2007, she was selected by Atelier of workshops and creation in Wroclaw, organized by the Grotowski Institute. She has her own project for voice and dictaphones entitled iT, which she has performed at many festivals at home and abroad. She collaborated with Bast Kolektiv of Aldo Ivančič in the recording of the cd Retinal Circus, as well with many different musicians. She participates in the experimental improvised music workshops organized by Tomaž Grom and gives a voice workshop. For her performances Caprice and caprice (re)lapsed, she received the Golden Bird Award of the Liberal Arts Academy. She is also a postgraduate student of philosophy.
Inclusive dance workshop (Iva Nerina Sibila)
IMRC (Integrated Movement Research Collective) is an integrated contemporary dance group founded in 2012, based at the Zagreb Dance Centre and supported by HIPP. Its premise is that dance and movement are not conditioned on certain physical given abilities, but that physical expression, experience of dance and performance of it belongs to everyone. It is currently the only inclusive dance group of its kind in Croatia.
IMRC – Integrated Movement Research Collective is calling all those interested in dance, including both professional dance artists as well as all those regardless of any physical challenges or other disabilities to join in the free dance workshop aimed for all sorts of bodies.
Unlimited Access, a project co-funded by the EU Culture programme, seeks to profile some of the best disabled-led performing arts work in Europe, and to promote increased access to the arts of both disabled audiences and disabled artists alike. Throughout 2014, a series of ‘Creative Encounters’ in Croatia, Portugal and Greece are providing an experimental space for disabled and non-disabled artists and performers to interact, connect and learn from each other in practical dance workshops.
Spanish choreographer and performer Jordi Cortés Molina is the Artistic Director of Jordi Cortés – Alta Realitat Company, Barcelona’s leading integrated dance organisation. As part of Unlimited Access, Jordi facilitated Croatia’s Creative Encounter in Zagreb in December 2013.