Lands of Concert
“At the end of Lands of Concert: Body Works Edition, I speak to Andrea, a performer from Spain. “Thank you,” I say, “I appreciate the invitation for us all to practice intimacy.” “And care”, she says. I also thank the two other performers: Jija (from Japan) and Lucy (from Germany). It’s disarming what they have done, this patient plea for us to truly take each other in, without irony, and in such a quiet and unassuming manner.“
David Barlow in een essay voor Dans&Durf, augustus 2019
Lands of Concert is a living practice of four collaborating artists: Jija Sohn, Andrea Zavala Folache, Lucy Wilke and Oneka Von Schrader. They work on a continuous reshaping of body-mind territories, an exploration to break through established personal, cultural and theatrical codes and boundaries. They create a space where the lines between instructing and performing and between staging and witnessing are blurred. It is an ever unfolding landscape, physically exploring the notion of the other and the intimacy we can find there. Lands of Concert is inviting the audience to come on this journey of fantasies, questions and collective care. The performers propose different protocols of giving- and receiving and guide the public to be part of a topography of ‘elevated actions’ where movements, sounds and objects are continuously shifting, losing their initial formal and defined boundaries. It is an invitation to an experience of liquid roles and relationships that change the immediate present we are in.
During the confinement, self isolation and social distancing, we wanted to take the opportunity to look closer into our collective body practice and how it manifests itself within this situation.
We developed something we called distant research, where we applied mostly the same principles we used in the studio, but with giving extra attention to the different possibility and perception of time, own well being and energy. We wanted to create a living organism that could create space for each and everyone to be engaged in their own temporality and as such enable an amorphous tool that could be accessed, used and appropriated to each needs. At the same time unfold a collective perspective that would give a comforting typology to keep a creative exchange flowing and in motion.
Notions such as care, diversity and accessibility took on a new place in our discourse maybe as far as a new position within a value system we lived by till now. So we questioned how could a previous research and studio practice be a methodology and strategy to understand these notions in their new urgency and altered needs? How to become alive in a body that is not your own, inhabit it, as a form of unlearning and reconfiguring our senses, habits, actions.
Biography
Andrea Zavala Folache is a choreographer, performer and visual artist based between Amsterdam and Madrid. She graduated at SNDO in Amsterdam and holds a BA Fine Arts at Universidad Complutense Madrid. Her practice unfolds at the intersection of dance, performance, the visual arts and the theater, in the gap where the body manifests as an artistic and critical device. Andrea has moved from drawing and painting into film, and is now following her fascination of how to stage where these mediums intersect. As a choreographer she facilitates the tensions between these intersections for the exposure of the “not yet”, architectural voids and ethics emerging in front of who is watching and who is watched. She has shown at RAKETE in TanzQuartier Wien, La Casa Encendida Madrid, FLAM Amsterdam, Dansmakers Amsterdam, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genéve, amongst others.
Lucy Wilke, Born in 1984; is an actress singer, author, illustrator and director. She creates children’s books, screenplays and directs short films and plays. All over Germany she performs with her band blind&lame. She has SMA and uses a wheelchair. Lucy has completed several professional arts training courses. She is a trained voice-over artist, studied design at the FOS Munich for three years and completed her three-year stage training at the International Munich Art Lab. She went on tour performing a musical, assisted in various productions and lived in London for three months on a scholarship. In Munich, she also collaborates with the inclusive dance company abArt.
In 2017 Lucy acted in the theatre Performance „FUCKING DISABLED“ directed by David von Westphalen in Pathos Theatre Munich. In 2018 she perfomed in the dance play „ANTHROPOMORPHIA“, a produktion of the DANCE LABORATORY Leipzig in LOFFT Theatre, aswell as in the un-label Show „SEIN- Show der Begegnung“. In february 2019 Lucy played Phaidra in the Monster Truck Produktion „PHAIDRA“ in Sophiensälen Berlin and comming up in Kammerspiele Munich. Lucy is a big fan of black humor and irony. She loves life and lives and breathes art and love
Jija Sohn a Japanese-Korean performer and choreographer, studied Applied Linguistics in the USA before deciding to change direction and focus on performance art. In 2015, she graduated from the School of New Dance Development (SNDO) in Amsterdam and was the first choreographer to be selected for the Moving Forward process. During this process, she developed the production Geisha’s miracle (2016) – an intelligently layered exploration of femininity and play with tradition that embraces the modern age with complete commitment. In 2017 Jija Sohn was selected for the ‘3package deal’, enabling her to work on her –slightly autobiographic- new piece. In 2018, she explores with her piece Kyabajo the condition of estrangement behind a submissive role from the perspective of a Japanese hostess and by doing this dives deeper into questions regarding identity and empowerment. In the period of 2017-2019 she was part of the international project, Performing Gender. She has been collaborating diverse artists’ projects and she has worked as a performer in Ivo Dimchev’s X-on in 2013, for Dries Verhoeven’s Guilty Landscapes in 2018 amongst others. Currently, she works with Dans Brabant, which supports her current practice with the support of PLAN – Talent Development PLAN Brabant.
Oneka Von Schrader, is an Austrian performer and sound artist based in Amsterdam and Vienna. She graduated from the School of New Dance Development (SNDO) in Amsterdam and has been working internationally as performer, musician and creator in diverse projects. Sinds the end of 2019 she is a vital part of the Lands of Concert artistic team. For this project, she has taken on the role of performing and translating the physical studio practice in a sound concept, auditioning the tactility of the project through the sonor senses.
Credits
Concept: Jija Sohn, Andrea Zavala Folache, Lucy Wilke, Oneka von Schrader and Julia Reist
Performer: Andrea Zavala Folache, Lucy Wilke
Performing Assistant: Jija Sohn
Sound design and performer: Oneka von Schrader
Scenography and Costumes: Rosemarie Allaert
Advisor: Sabine Cmelniski
Light Advisor: Vinny Jones
Creative Production, conceptual advisor: Julia Reist / arp:works
Co-Producers: DansBrabant(NL) , under the support of PLAN, Kunstencentrum Buda(BE) and Vooruit(BE)
Supported by: Boulevard Theater Festival (NL), i-Portunus, Batard Festival (BE), Need Company (BE)
Residency: CSC (IT), Tanzhaus (CH), Dansbrabant (NL), Festival Boulevard (NL), Dansatelier (NL), City of Women(SK),
Need Company (BE)
This project is initiated by Jija Sohn