bipod 2012
beirut international platform of dance
BIPOD–Beirut
International Platform of Dance
EIGHTH EDITION | 14th – 29th of April, 2012
Organized by Maqamat Dance Theatre
In partnership with Beiteddine Festival.
In its Eighth edition, and in partnership with Beiteddine Art Festival, BIPOD offers once again a rich international program of contemporary dance featuring renowned choreographers, companies, and artists from around the world. This year is a very distinctive one with the collaborations and partnerships that BIPOD looks forward to in Beirut.
Seventeen contemporary dance performances with internatioanlly renowned artists A fundraising opening to support the activities of BIPOD 2012 A video dance program curated by Cinedans (Netherlands) in collaboration with Metropolis Cinema A dance performance which is an outcome of a dance reserach residency The Hangar/Umam D&R A photo dance exhibition with Joe Kesrouani at the FFA Private Bank A community dance project with young dancers from Palestinian Refugge Camps A Dance Performance for Families Dance workshops, After performance discussions,
EIGHTH EDITION | 14th – 29th of April, 2012
Organized by Maqamat Dance Theatre
In partnership with Beiteddine Festival.
In its Eighth edition, and in partnership with Beiteddine Art Festival, BIPOD offers once again a rich international program of contemporary dance featuring renowned choreographers, companies, and artists from around the world. This year is a very distinctive one with the collaborations and partnerships that BIPOD looks forward to in Beirut.
Seventeen contemporary dance performances with internatioanlly renowned artists A fundraising opening to support the activities of BIPOD 2012 A video dance program curated by Cinedans (Netherlands) in collaboration with Metropolis Cinema A dance performance which is an outcome of a dance reserach residency The Hangar/Umam D&R A photo dance exhibition with Joe Kesrouani at the FFA Private Bank A community dance project with young dancers from Palestinian Refugge Camps A Dance Performance for Families Dance workshops, After performance discussions,
MIA HABIS (LE)
Sssshhhhh.....
Saturday 14th of April
8:00 pm | AL-MADINA THEATRE
This installation is about being silent towards atrocities.
.
.
MICHÈLE ANNE DE MEY | JACO VAN DORMAEL (BE)
KIss & Cry (nanodanses)
Saturday 14th of April
8:30 pm | AL-MADINA THEATRE
Kiss & Cry is an original show confronting
film, dance, words, theatre and brilliant DIY, a piece in which the audience is
invited to watch a thoroughly distinctive choreographic performance, a film
being screened and the film being made - all at the same time. Various codes
come together: cinematographic writing, the stage presence of theatre and the
sensory register of dance. The main characters are hands which engage us with
their sensual presence and nakedness. The set of miniatures they move around
testifies to work of absolute precision. Kiss & Cry is an
ambitious show supported by a group of artists who blur the boundaries between
artistic disciplines to create a different and unique work every day.
Ali Chahrour (LE)
Danas-mawt sagheer, first movement
Tuesday 17th of April
8:30 pm | AL-MADINA THEATRE
Danas inhabits the intimate moments of a buried body. A body in a mass grave, In a morgue, At the bottom of the ocean, A body lifted by men in a funeral procession, A cremated body, A stuffed body, A body without skeleton nor hips, A schizophrenic body, Amnesic. Decapitated at birth and ignored by history.
Mia HABIS ❙ OMAR RAJEH (LB)
intimate cONVERSATION WITH A RED FISH
Wednesday 18th of April
8:30 pm | Maqamat DanceHouse
This new performance created by Mia Habis & Omar Rajeh is inspired by the civil awakenings taking place in most of the Arab speaking countries. The active, resistant, and engaged body crossed the restrictions imposed on it and declared its being and presence. It manifested its power and awareness through its ‘liveness’. The body was never recorded, nor copied, and never virtual. It was in the streets proclaiming its ‘being’ and generating its future reality.
Carolyn Carlson (fr)
short stories / islands
Thursday 19th of April
8:30 pm | al-MADINA THEATRE
"Islands" in
constructed in 3 parts. Solos regarding women and their relationship to nature
as a primordial source of inspiration.
“Immersion”: water as connected to the fluidity and lyricism of a woman in the flow of nature in liquid undulation. “Wind Woman”: ephemeral grace and transparency that carries the wind in the center of all women, this same center that makes trees to blow her leaves in cry. “Mandala”: the force of fire and mother earth giving birth to our presence of being within the universal essence.
“Immersion”: water as connected to the fluidity and lyricism of a woman in the flow of nature in liquid undulation. “Wind Woman”: ephemeral grace and transparency that carries the wind in the center of all women, this same center that makes trees to blow her leaves in cry. “Mandala”: the force of fire and mother earth giving birth to our presence of being within the universal essence.
claudio stellato (BE)
L'Autre
Friday 20th of April
12:00 am | Babel Theatre
In L'Autre, Claudio
Stellato takes us on a journey that shakes our senses. Combining manipulation
of objects with contortions of the body, this acrobat-dancer goes beyond his
own physical boundaries, challenging the laws of physics and skilfully playing
with our perceptions.
This act takes us through a world of illusions and contrasting forces, where what should be still comes to life and where living things escape the shackles of gravity. Every action seems implausible, yet scrupulously carried out.
This act takes us through a world of illusions and contrasting forces, where what should be still comes to life and where living things escape the shackles of gravity. Every action seems implausible, yet scrupulously carried out.
Taldans (TU)
Newyesterday
Saturday 21st of April
5:00 pm | The hangar/umam D&R
“Displaced,
deteriorated, moved, evacuated, to cross borders, to mix fronts, to walk, walk
and walk in the city, connect the neighborhoods that are politically separated,
put your body in the city and feel the body of the city: they speak about “the
need for a heart” and they transplant an organ without its cells…do you, do I,
do we really need a heart? Do we need center? Are any kinds of bodies centered?
There are legs, there are membranes, there are tissues, and let’s trust this
‘’bodyiastion’’ and follow its lines. The cells, more than the bones.”
Mouvoir/Stephanie Thiersch
as if (we would be)
Saturday 21st of April
8:30 pm | al-MADINA THEATRE
Nothing happening; secret
arrangements determine the mood; non-verbal human communication. Together with
media artist Angela Melitopoulos and 7 outstanding dancers, choreographer
Stephanie Thiersch shows how mimetic skills shape and constantly reinvent our
behavior and the world that surrounds us. The result of this complex work is a
composed study that captures the audience with highly aesthetic images. “A piece about adaptation, but in fact a
rebellion” (Nicole Strecker, WDR3)
guy nader (LE)
zenith
Tuesday 24th of April
8:30 pm | Theatre Monnot
Zenith
contemplates time as a fundamental concept, its measurements and the
applications of oscillations and rhythms.
Using
the sound as a marker of time and its relationship with the body, this piece explores
different types of movement, linear, circular and elliptical waves. Sounds made
by the body, movements made by the sounds. Two bodies interact and exhibit
flow, pulse, accent with different quality arragements, in a harmonious
sequence and pattern of movements alternating with stillness, of masses
alternating with void, sound with silence.
muriel romero | pablo palacio (SP)
stocos
Wednesday 25th of April
8:30 pm | al-MADINA THEATRE
Muriel
Romero and Pablo Palacio collaborate since 2007 in a project focused on the
analysis and development of the interaction between dance gesture and sonic
gesture. The trilogy Acusmatrix, Catexis and Stocos constitute so far the
result of this investigation. In this series of pieces the dancer’s activity evolve in a three dimensional sound space interacting with
sonic objects that are successively transformed according to their trajectory
and dynamic morphology. These works integrate in a performative context
abstractions taken from other disciplines such as artificial intelligence,
biology, mathematics or experimental psychology.
ballet boyz (uk)
the talent
Thursday 26th of April
8:30 pm | al-MADINA THEATRE
The performance of the
TALENT features three works. It is an explosive feast of exhilarating live
dance, cleverly fused with the company’s trademark use of live film and
behind-the-scenes footage. It features Russell Maliphant’s mesmerizing TORSION, Paul Roberts haunting ALPHA and the critically acclaimed VOID by Czech choreographer Jarek
Cemerek.
wee/francesco scavetta (IT/NO)
surprised body project
Friday 27th of April
12:00 am | theatre Monnot
The
Surprised body project is a dance piece that focuses on choreographical and
compositional issues and sees the body and the movement as its central element. Already as a title, Surprised body project defines a metaphorical space. The
image of a body in a constant alert, able to surprise himself, escaping from a
habitual daily body and from any kind of routine. A piece that makes you think of clouds of light floating across the sky
Maqamat Community project (with Palestinian camps)
loubna
Saturday 28th of April
5:00 pm | Maqamat DanceHouse
A community dance project organized by Maqamat dance theatre with participants from Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. IT aims at encouraging creative forces as well as building long term artistic collaborations.
Siljeholm / Christophersen (NO)
Snik & snok on the moon (kids performance)
Saturday 28th of April
7:00 pm | theatre Monnot
Aimed at audience of 8-13 years. Animation, music and dance. The
global superheroes Snik and Snok are loved by the people, enjoying an easy life
and living their success of earlier superhero achievements. One day, the idyll
is interrupted; a tsunami of garbage threatens the world. At the same time
Skuggan, the worlds scapegoat, is driving the moon towards the earth. Skuggan
gets the blame. Snik and Snok take the challenge, and set out on a mission to
save the earth. But is Skuggan to blame for the pollution? Will Snik and Snok
manage to save the planet from drowning in garbage? And do the people really
want to be saved?
S20 - HIROAKI UMEDA (JA)
HOLISTIC STRATA & ACCUMULATED LAYOUT
Sunday 29th of April
8:30 pm | AL-MADINA THEATRE
Holistic
Strata
This
piece focuses on visual recognition and dance.
The
choreography and dance movement have been inspired by simple physical motion
and how to use natural forces in the body to form dance movements.
By
researching into physical laws, physics formulas and non-linear science, the
space becomes dynamic and organic with the human body as the object.
Accumulated
Layout
The artist plays with the spectator's perceptions. Leaving aside video and
working exclusively with light, he sculpts the space and controls the
spectator's perceptions.
By alternating between low and
bright lights and suddenly changing the light's sources, he creates special
conditions of perception and it is the accumulation of these various states of
perception, fragmented and multiple, which gives shape to the work.
Exhibition
Gravity
By Joe Kesrouani (LE)
Tuesday 17th of April
4:00 pm | FFA Private Bank
From April 17 to May 31
Hosted by FFA Private Bank (Marfaa 128 Bldg, Foch Street, Beirut Central District ) .
Hosted by FFA Private Bank (Marfaa 128 Bldg, Foch Street, Beirut Central District ) .
The exhibition is organized in collaboration with FFA Private Bank’s Art Consultant Mrs. Nada Boulos El Assaad.
Dancing is simply the translation of gravity into movement.
Defying it, dancers break through the barrier.
And…
For a fraction of a second,
They are suspended.
Released by the weight of the planet.
Raised by gravity itself.
Born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1968. Joe started painting and taking pictures in the mid 1980’s, at the age of fourteen.
In 1990, he fled war torn Beirut to persue his studies in architecture at the Ecole d’Architecture de Paris la Villette in the French capital.
Joe left Paris in 1998 to Beirut, where he currently lives and works, spending the better part of his day in his world of painting and photography.
In December 2009, he published “monochromes” that was recently added to the Maison Européenne de la Photographie’s library in Paris. A black and white photographic retrospective spanning from 1989 to 2009 and covering slices of a creative life.
In 2010 ,“ monochrome” received the “Certificate Of Merit” at the Premier Print Awards of the printing industries of America Inc.
In January 2012, Joe won the “ Prix du Jury” for “ City’s highlights 03” at the Salon D’automne XXXI.
Since 1993, Joe Kesrouani has participated in numerous solo and group painting and photography exhibitions in Beirut, Dubai, London and Paris.
Video Dance Screening
Cinedans
Monday 16th of April
8:00 pm | Metropolis Cinema
Monday 23rd of April
8:00 pm | Metropolis Cinema
In Collaboration with Metropolis Cinema
Cinedans - Dance on Screen Festival is unique – in the Netherlands and in the world. The central focus of the festival is on dance film. Cinedans sees the ideal dance film as a true synthesis between the two media of dance and cinematography. At Cinedans the emphasis lies on choreographies created specifically for the camera and on special film adaptations of existing dance performances. The festival also features a selection of special documentaries and retrospectives. Approximately 60 films from all over the world will be screened at this year’s festival. In addition to the film programme, Cinedans festival organises readings, debates and workshops for professionals and other interested parties.
In the ever-changing media landscape, creators are increasingly seeking different ways to tell their stories. New media and modern technology have entered the scene bringing new possibilities and insights. Dance film is no longer ‘movement on the black screen’, with new forms being developed such as installations, video clips, interactive projects and more. Contemporary dance films are often autonomous art works with a language of their own and an expressiveness that cannot be pigeonholed. Cinedans closely follows these movements. In addition to the film programme, the festival focuses on various forms of crossover projects and media installations that involve movement.
Cinedans also organises Cinedans on Tour, travelling all over the world to screen selections from its film programme. Workshops and lectures for professionals are often part of the touring programme.
VRRTI
Sliced
Contact
Magma
Falling
Ellipse
Deep End Dance
The Palindromist
IRC Dance Movement
Manoeuvres
Jeu de Société
White Swan
In Dreams I run Wild
Workshops
Guy Nader & Maria Campos Aroyo (LE/SP)
Friday 20th of April
5:00 pm | Maqamat Dance House
Saturday 21st of April
5:00 pm | Maqamat Dance House
The workshop begins with a dynamic warm up through basic exercises that
mobilize different body parts, giving special attention to articulations and
toning up muscles as a way to prepare the body and the concentration. We
will focus on awakening the corporal awareness but also the awareness within the
space and the group. In this first part of the workshop, we will propose patterns
and sequences of movement on a horizontal plane, entering and leaving the floor
based in the floor work/release technique. We will introduce the principles
of weight and gravity as well as working with a low centre to empower the pelvic
area and to be able move lightly out of the floor and to jump later on. We
will explore different ways of falling into the floor and moving on it in a dynamic
and more smooth way with the muscle tone needed and avoiding extra
information that may slower our moves.
This second part of the workshop is based on partnering and contact work. We will
work on developing the ability of trusting the other as well as taking risks. To
achieve this will go through the basic principles of giving weight, finding common
axis, counterweight, balance. We will study different ways to carry the partner
(portés), to carry / give weight to someone not by muscular strength but applying
the technique as a tool. We will learn movement sequences in pairs of earlier
works of the teachers ("repertoire") as well as create and compose sequences
based on partner work through concrete physical tasks.
The workshop is aimed to professional dancers, dance students and people
interested in developing further knowledge of movement.
Pablo Palacio & Muriel Romero (SP)
Tuesday 24th of April
5:00 pm | Maqamat Dance House
In this workshop Muriel Romero and Pablo Palacio will explore the
gestural relations between human motion and sound, relying on the
existence of a common gestural substrate for both phenomena.
The material will deal with different abstractions that are
susceptible to be applied to body motion in a trans-disciplinary
framework such as random walks, spatialisation, texture, mass
and disorder.
Francesco Scavetta (NO/ IT)
Thursday 26th of April
5:00 pm | Maqamat Dance House
The physical training aims at awakening our awareness and sensitivity and at creating occasions for discoveries.
The basic class concentrates on centering and gravity. Activating the center, as engine of the movement, we will aim in letting the movement to cross freely, throughout the body, with isolation in the limbs. Harmonizing the movement with our breathing, we will release contractions in the joints, allowing the sense of the gravity to be a constant part of our awareness. We will work on emphasizing antagonists to our movement, to explore the suspension in the fall or the extension in the reaching, and to wide the transformations of the central body and the shifts in the dynamics.
The workshop, after a first part dedicated to ground the principals of the work, will articulate through a series of investigations on the movement and structured improvisations, intended as a conceptual, but also physical and mental, challenge and connected with the process of the performance "Surprised body project".
Partners
organized by
Maqamat Dance Theatre
Partners and funders
Maqamat Dance Theatre
Partners and funders
Beiteddine Festival - Ministry of Culture in Beirut – Qattan Foundation- Wallonie-Bruxelles International- Wallonie-Bruxelles Theatre/Danse- Goethe Institute - Instituto Cervantes - Norwegian Embassy in Beirut – Institut Francais Liban – Institut Francais- British Council- Institut Ramon Lull ( Catalan Language and culture) – Sica ( Dutch centre for international cultural activities)- Tin ( Theatre instituut Nederland) La caldera
Supported by
Wardé - Le Bristol Hotel - CCA Group- Dance Ware - Dots - Verde Rosa
In Collaboration With
Metropolis – Umam/Le Hangar D&R
Media Partners
MTV - Agenda Culturel - Al Akhbar - Time Out Beirut - Beirut.com - Agenda Culturel (behind the scenes)
Food and Beverage
Bardo (meeting point)
Mayrig- Walimat Warde- BOBO – Olio - Bread Republic – Cow & Apple- Casablanka- Lux