Performance Carousel

We are thrilled to share six short performances from recent graduates of the mime/dance/performance field – in a carousel format! These works haven’t had the possibility to move beyond the studio, until now. A vibrant cycling of art works and audiences.

With artists:
Sergi Casero, Martijn Schrier, Nathalie Vermeiren, Anto Lopez, Joost Koster, Niels van Heijningen and Aleksej Ovsiannikov.

Context

Recent graduates haven’t been able to show their work at the scale they usually would since the start of the pandemic, radically altering how young artists enter the professional field. With this in mind, we opened a call to graduates of the last two years to show their works in an adapted and safe carousel format.

The Carousel concept

The Carousel consists of three, one-hour time slots, with two performances being presented during each time slot. Audiences will see six performances altogether. After each one-hour time slot, the audience will leave through the back door and return through the front, after breaks. The space will be a site of constant transformation and movement. Artists will be using minimal props and scenography, so the theatre can be refreshed and re-cycled.

In between these one-hour time slots will be short breaks outside, including snacks and drinks ‘to go’.

We follow the COVID-19 regulations and take care to create a safe environment for everyone.

5 June 2021

13:00 — 17:00
€ 15

6 June 2021

13:00 — 17:00
€ 15

Tickets & times

The Carousel happens over two afternoons with the same program each day. On both days the program starts at 13:00 and ends at 17:00.

Ticket sales: We’re awaiting the outcome of the press conference on the 28th of May. After that we’ll know how many people we can host. So stay tuned! Tickets will cost €15 including snacks and drinks.

Good to know: You can only purchase tickets for the whole afternoon. It’s an opportunity to celebrate and meet the artists and their chance to finally perform again, with an audience.

The Artists

Sergi Casero | The Pact of Forgetting

My name is Sergi Casero, a designer with a performative practice from Barcelona based in Amsterdam. This performance is the result of one year’s research about how the historical memory of Spain has been transmitted from generation to generation and its representation in the national history account.

After the death of the dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, Spain approved an amnesty law known as “The Pact of Forgetting”. This law prevents any attempt to start a justice investigation on the crimes committed during the 39 years of dictatorship. A legally established silence that still affects institutions and society today.

Sergi is a graduate of the Information Design Master at the Design Academy, Eindhoven.

Nathalie Vermeiren | Alienated body

Alienated body shows the process of a body unable to form itself. Stuck in an indecisive form, unable to build up to the human structure we know. An empty shell, continuously distorting its image, twisted in its distortions and discomfort. Restless as this body tries to find its shape, left behind in a form it feels unfamiliar with and detached from. The work seeks to create an ambiguous angle to look from at the human body, to perhaps question how we perceive what we see.

Nathalie is a graduate of ArtEZ, Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Arnhem.

Martijn Schrier | Je ne tomberai pas

Martijn Schrier-Mime- Corps de ballet performs together with Principal artist- Anna Pavlova, his solo.

Anna Pavlova was one of the most famous principal ballet dancers. Her technique wasn’t perfect, but she had a fire in her that made her one of the greatest performers in the world. I create a homage to Anna, despite not having years of ballet training I will start an impossible strenuous dance.

During my performance I will use a text based on the book ‘Mr. Vertigo’ by Paul Auster.
You will see a body continuing to try over and over again. I will sweat, I will cry, but I will never fall or give up. Not until my dream is accomplished.

Martijn is a graduate of the Mime Academy at AHK, Amsterdam.

Joost Koster | You Do, Also Me

Over the past 1,5 years I’ve been working with the tension between the age-old body and the relatively newly invented screen. Through performance, video and audio work I’ve been researching what effects screens can have on the body. How do our bodies, that have hardly changed over the past millennia, manifest themselves in relation to the light-emitting rectangles we surround ourselves with? How does human focus, sweat, grease, saliva, muscle, energy, movement, and trembling interact with these ever present (non)objects? A lot of screens are designed to smoothly merge with us but they never fully succeed. With this research I am looking into the gap left between the hard edges of the rectangle and the smooth edges of the body.

Joost is a graduate of the Rietveld Akademie, Amsterdam.

Anto Lopez | I do have the intention of this, being, an act of love

The piece I am presenting is “I do have the intention of this, being, an act of love”, a full on lip-synced performance where I allow mine and others’ memories to conform an amalgamation of beings in order to propose a territory of nomadic estates, in which the performative subject is located at multiple times and locations, for a celebration of fragmented narratives to be invoked. From using common drag queen references, to recordings of somebody’s voice, to a text I wrote myself, this performance behaves as an aspiration of my vulnerable body to position itself in a constant arena of becoming, as a negotiation of how queer bodies inhabit a location and how these negotiate their relation with how spatiality (both inside the body and outside) is to be perceived.

Anto is a graduate of Sandberg Instituut, The Commoners Society, Amsterdam.

Aleksej Ovsiannikov and Niels van Heijningen | P2

Seated at a table, flighty thoughts,
shoulders spread, inflated chest,
I pronounced empty speeches,
still as a statue and just as loved.
— Daniil Kharms

The work feels like two bodies that are attempting to collide, melt, grow into one single organism. Taking inspiration from sculpture as well as paintings such as Francis Bacon. In a time where we are bound to take distance, be more on our own, the work challenges and invites to dig even deeper in how we can or could come closer. Investigating the possibilities of making one out of two. It proposes a new state of being where the individual cannot anymore be limited by himself.

Aleksej and Niels are about to graduate the Mime Academy at AHK, Amsterdam.