Co-designed residency
Description
Dance makers brought their artistic and creative perspective into the co – design process in order to explore and reflect on gender issues. After the inputs from the community dance maker, travelling dancemakers met the local communities from the other countries and contaminated the reflections carried out by the individual communities.
After a residency in their own country, they experienced a co-design residency abroad, in order to create a production participated by the community.
Relive the season of residencies
The season consisted of a 4-day creative workshop with Performing Gender traveling artist TC Howard, an individual research period, a weekend sharing session, a 2-day workshop on verbal and non-verbal communication with Ági, on gender identity and the transgender community with drama instructor Barbara Lévai and me, and a closing weekend with an open day.
In autumn 2022 two choreographers visited The Netherlands: Javier Vaquero (traveling dancemaker from Paso a 2 – Certamen Coreografico de Madrid) and Vita Osojnik (traveling dancemaker from City of Women) worked with the communities in ‘s-Hertogenbosch and Tilburg.
Both residencies were welcomed with a lot of positivity, power and pleasure by both Dutch communities.
Yorkshire Dance invited two international artists from Performing Gender to facilitate residencies with local people in Leeds. Agnes Grelinger from Budapest and Jija Sohn from Amsterdam, joined our community in autumn 2022, exploring themes of connection, identity and care.
Jija Sohn worked specifically with members of House of Flava,a QTIPOC group, who regularly work with rooted local dance artists Bakani Pick Up and Shirani Brookes. Her practice brought a sensibility and creativity to the group which enabled them to connect on a deeper level – exploring their identites and vulnerabilities through her practice.
Agnes Grelinger worked with a broader intergenerational group aged 17 to 80 years. The workshop sparked joy and connection and opened up new possibilities for this group to engage with dance in a way that promoted care, safety and self-expression. Participants explored their connection to music and costume and others in the space. Agnes created immersive spaces for improvisation, enabling the group to experience the boundaries of their identity.
The first travelling artist for the City of Women community was with TC Howard. The process took a week of work, research and training in modern performance art, with a focus on modern dance, performance and authored theatre. Audience developers Sara Šabec and TC Howard talk about the group, its specifics and the issues that were open during the process with local artists Teja Reba and Vita Osojnik.
Than was the turn of the travelling artists Sindri Runudde and Maia Means. Sindri and Maia focused on a multi-sensory approach to the body as a living archive. The main perspective was how our lived experiences become part of our body and how they influence our senses and perception of body movement.
In autumn 2022, the community participated in the artistic residencies led in Bologna by the Slovenian choreographer Vita Osojnik and French choreographer Arthur Perole, an opportunity to test ourselves with artistic visions that further diversified the languages we experimented.
These meetings were also a chance to present our community to those who did not yet know it – an exercise that allowed the group to look at, describe, and recognise themselves.
The group has also met several other choreographers, including Daniele Ninarello, who enabled them to explore the power of collective empathetic consciousness. During the past six months, pedagogue Louise Dursjö has deepened the participants’ improvisation skills in dance classes held at the local dance school, Balettakademien Umeå.
