Tools of the Trade

 

ITs Festival 2011 /// Video Collage

video by daniel b. bertina

audio by tim hecker

Nothing else matters?

By SIMONE VAN SAARLOOS

I should be squeezing my eyes because of the pictures being shown. They portray familiar images: naked and tortured ‘bad people in Guantanamo’ bay, staged by performers from the Accademia Teatrale di Roma. But I squeeze my eyes because of the flashing strobelights.

The piano verson of ‘Nothing else matters’ (Metallica) is playing. Eight actors on stage. Five of them prisoners. Three guards dressed in army pants and a butcher’s apron, violently shout, strike and shine them with their blinding lights. The prisoners are naked, vulnerable. The darkhaired bodies of the Italian actors show close resemblence with the Arabian prisoners.

Italian dreams of ‘white roses’ and ‘passionate glances’; romantic imagry at the level of ‘Ciao bella’ stands in sharp contrast with the brutal treatment in Guantanamo. That is what Bad People in Guantanamo does, portraying contrast.

SNDO’s Witness Protection Programme

By DANIELLE BALK

‘Some program content could be considered offensive’, says a warning note on the program that is handed out to the audience before the performance starts.

This is SNDO, School for New Dance Development. A professional education course that educates the students to become choreographers/dance makers and enabling them to contribute to the development of dance as an art form. WITNESS part 1 & 2 shows the work of six choreographers with several dancers consisting of students from all SNDO years. Here, they show ‘choreographic strategies, in which the body is allowed to speak for itself.’ They do so by showing the audience ‘fearless experimentation and attempts to give performance new direction.’

However. In SILK by Florentina Holzinger and Steve Martin Snider, the reason of writing the warning note becomes quite clear…

‘Look, I am the sun…’

Modern Dance Part 2, The Project in the Field, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA)

IMPRESSION by CHARLOTTE LEMSTRA & CHARLOTTE SCHULTZ

Is this an ode to nature? That we must live consciously and peacefully with nature, or just an awareness that nature is all around us?

“Look, I’m a planet,” shouts a female dancer as she stretches her arms and runs  around the stage in a big cirle. ”Look, I am the sun,” shouts another dancer, while he stands as if his whole body is embracing the sun. While the other dancers follow the female dancer, no one follows him. He raises his voice and says again: “Look, I am the sun!”

Or is nature just a theme to shed light on something else? 

Powerplay, Ice Cream, Rape and Expression

INSTED: Young Directors Meeting

IMPRESSION by SIMONE VAN SAARLOOS

‘Where the fuck am I going to fit in this world?’ That’s what actor and student-director Nikolei Faber from Denmark wonders out loud. He believes most modern theater is very archaic. ‘We are hiding behind conventional theatre that has nothing to do with society today.’  Today, the young and international directors of INSTED meet four Dutch directors. 

Transitions in Dance

IMPRESSION by MEREL ZUIDERDUIN

Transitions Dance Company from Londen, winner of last year’s ITs Guest award, bring two pieces to the festival this year. Expectations are high. Their first piece, The Other/s is a showy comical routine. Left to write, is a more serious contemporary piece.

The Other/s
“Laura has the feeling that three people in the room are very special.” A young man, looking like a seventies show host, says. Three of the other dancers raise their arm. Apparently they are special. One of them is Jesse, an Italian looking boy who tells us he has got shoes that walk for him. He takes the most shiny and glittery pair from the line of shoes at the front of the stage and puts them on. He makes it look as if he has no control over his movements what so ever. “Look! It’s not me, it’s the shoes!”