Research 2008

Research 2008

Keith Hennessy & Faustin Linyekula Ngoy
Coaching Project: Choreo-Graphy: Poetics Of The Political Body

© Jörg Müller | Agathe Poupeney
Coaching Project
Week 4, 4.8.–8.8.2008
10:00–16:00
PB Turn
Choreo-Graphy: Poetics of the Political Body This coaching laboratory will explore the delicate balance between the political and the poetic making of performance, staging of the body and choreo-graphy. We will engage questions in response to the fierce tensions between the individual and the social body. This will result in an exploration of transnational and postcolonial issues and aesthetics, a research on how history, geography, ethnicity, class and globalisation may have an impact on a dancer‘s creative process. We will enter the crowded borderlands, caught between the globalised/universal body and a specific/local body, attempting to clear a space for performance, translation, and transformation. Keith Hennessy Keith Hennessy is a Canadian-born performer, director and organiser living in San Francisco since 1982. Creating performances for theaters and streets, Keith’s work is marked by queerly evocative images, untamed physicality, and sharp political texts. He directs CIRCO ZERO, a diverse crew of circus and music artists working the fusion of spectacle, ritual, and action. Hennessy’s most recent choreography includes “SDF USA”, a performance poem about homeless despair, “Mercy”, an experimental circus with circus artists, dancers, and performers and “Chosen”, a solo performance by Hennessy which explores questions of fate, land, and identity through dance, rant/prayer and aerial action. Keith has won numerous American awards and commissions for his collaborative work as a choreographer, performer, and organiser, besides international commissions from Les Subsistances (Lyon), Les Laboratoires (Aubervilliers) and La Villette (Paris). His work is discussed in the books “How To Make Dances in an Epidemic” (David Gere, U of Wisconson, 2004) and “Gay Ideas” (Richard Mohr, Beacon, 1992). Keith’s solo work has been produced throughout the U.S., in Canada, Israel, New Zealand, France and Australia, including several gay and lesbian performance festivals. From 1998 to 2002 he performed with CAHIN-CAHA, cirque bâtard, a French/American, mongrel circus based in France. Keith was a member of the extreme performance collective CORE and a founding member of CONTRABAND, an award winning, internationally acclaimed dance/performance company directed by Sara Shelton Mann. From 1991 to 2003 Keith co-directed 848 Community Space, a thriving urban performance gallery. He has been teaching unique hybrids of performance, improvisation, circus, and public ritual for 20 years and has been on faculty at JFK University, University of San Francisco, Goddard College, and the New College of California. Keith is a member of Alternate ROOTS, a visionary service organisation for community-based artists, and serves radical cultural agendas as a consultant, director, teacher, curator, and agitator. In 2003 Keith was intentionally arrested twice as part of the largest global mobilisation for peace in world history. Faustin Linyekula Ngoy Faustin Linyekula is dancer and choreographer, living and working between Kisangani (the town where he grew up) in the Democratic Republic of Congo. After his literature and theatre studies in Kisangani he went to Nairobi (Kenya) in 1993, where he founded together with Opiyo Okach and Afrah Tenambergen Gàara, the first contemporary dance company in Kenya. In 2000 he created a piece with South-African choreographer Gregory Maqoma for the ImPulsTanz-festival in Austria. In 2001 he moved back to Congo and founded the Studios Kabako in Kinshasa, a dance and theatre centre for the artistic exchange, as well as a dance company. He created six pieces together with the company: "Spectacularly empty“ (2001), "Triptyque sans titre“ (2002), "Spectacularly empty II“ (2003). "Radio Okapi“ (2003-2006), a performance space including guests and live radio that was performed in France, Nairobi and Vienna. "Festival of Lies“ (2005-2006) dealing with memory and the consequence of collective amnesia within a context of political, social and economic realities of a turbulent and constantly changing nation. Recycling fragments of memory and propaganda, it reflects a generation that struggles collectively to simultaneously forget and unearth their history. "The Dialogue Series III: Dinozord“ (2006), is a return to the native country. What have become of Faustin's friends, Aimé, Vumi, Kabako...? And what are the dreams of young people in Kisangani now, after several years of heavy conflicts? Currently he is working on a new theatre piece, staging a text of Marie-Loise Bibish Mumbu. Faustin teaches in Europe, the US and Africa. In December 2007, he received the Principal Award of the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development. For several months, he has been working on the development of a series of cultural centres around performing art and image in Kisangani.
Keith HennessyFaustin Linyekula Ngoy
© Emilia Milewska
© Emilia Milewska
© Emilia Milewska
© Robbie Sweeny
© Robbie Sweeny
© Kat Reynolds