WhyNot x Julidans: OFF VENUE 2022

Performance tours through the vertical city

Location: De Duif, Amsterdam
Date: 2 & 3 July 2022
Times: 16:00

Different tours of 2 or 3 performances
Fee: Tickets via Julidans: €12,50 - €17,50 Get your tickets here
Accessibility: We recommend that you cycle the route. There is an elevator on the roof locations, but sometimes an extra staircase has to be climbed.

During OFF VENUE dance comes alive in relation to the city. Hop on your bike for a dance route along surprising locations and see Amsterdam in a new way thanks to the performance interventions of adventurous dance makers.

This year, OFF VENUE is taking to the sky: we'll take you to the rooftops of the city. In search of expansion and a different perspective, we rise to claim the vertical space. Short performances by promising choreographers including Astrid Boons (contemporary dance), Simon Bus (urban contemporary), Reza Mirabi (performance) and Ropes Aligned (aerial dance) all look for an escape in their own way.

For the fifth year in a row, Julidans OFF VENUE is produced in collaboration with the WhyNot Performance Festival. WhyNot’s events connect contemporary dance and performance with visual art, architecture, the landscape and the city. Why Not comes up with new formats that bring creative worlds together around a theme.

This year’s tour was inspired by 'Roof Piece' by Trisha Brown (USA, 1936-2017). Since its debut on the rooftops of New York's SoHo in 1971, the work has become legend over the years as a result of photographic documentation.

Brown placed dancers in bright red suits in various spots in the skyline; a symbolic commentary on the social, cultural and economic forces that at the time ruled the world beneath their feet. Once again we have dancers occupy the city to take a look from a bird's eye perspective and ask ourselves: who owns the city, how can you take up space, what is the state of the world and where can we go.

Also check out: WhyNot x Julidans Workshops

Have you always secretly dreamt of dancing through the air like in Cirque du Soleil? Then this is your chance! During Julidans, the dance makers of OFF VENUE give various workshops for dance professionals, amateur dancers and children. With: a vertical dance workshop by The Aerialettes / Ropes Aligned, a masterclass for professionals by Astrid Boons in the ITA Studio and a dance workshop for children. Stay tuned for more information on the workshops or register for our newsletter so you don't miss any updates!.
Check upcoming events for workshops

Performances

Double bill: Simon Bus: Self-Portrait, Man on Orange Floor & Alesya Dobysh / Corpo Máquina: Stop Making Sense | Performance, breakdance, house dance, experimental

Astrid Boons: Arise Untitled – Excerpt | Performance, contemporary dance

Ropes Aligned & Isabel Cordeiro: Ropes & Limbs | Vertical dance

Reza Mirabi: Listening to Stone Beings | Choreographic storytelling

Youri & Marie: Morning Mourning | Contemporary dance

You can choose from 8 different tours of 2 or 3 in different combinations of the performances above. For tours, starting times and starting locations, check: www.julidans.nl.

Double bill: Simon & Alesya

Simon Bus: Self-Portrait, Man on Orange Floor

Performance, breakdance, experimental

When he’s twelve years old, Simon Bus (Heerlen, 1989) gets into breaking after seeing a Run-DMC video. His B-boy name Statue reveals he’s always had a special feel for visual composition. Simon’s style became more and more 'experimental' and he turned out to be an outright innovator of the breakdance genre. Since 2018, Simon has been creating choreographies in which he continues to experiment with urban dance forms. “Self-portrait, man on orange floor” is a danced self-portrait on a two by two orange floor that functions as a dynamic canvas. While a painter is forced to slowly settle on a fixed self-image as he is painting, we see Simon fighting with different aspects of himself. With his hyperflexible body, he turns himself inside out and upside down, wavering between his ideal self-image on the one hand, and a caricature on the other.

credits

Choreography & performance: Simon Bus | music: Charlie Campbell – Showtime Paul | production: Korzo

More about Simon Bus

Since 2002 Simon Bus has been part of the breakdance crew 'Trashcan Heroes', with which he participated fanatically in as many battles as possible, both in the Netherlands and abroad. About ten years later, he completed his study Visual Communication at the Academy of Visual Arts in Maastricht. Here Simon developed an investigative way of looking and moving that strongly influenced his vision on breakdance and led to his own unique movement language. In 2018, Bus began working as a choreographer. Virtuosity and extreme physical possibilities in his works always prove to be a source of humor and perspective. Additionally, Simon remains a much sought-after dancer, working with Guilherme Miotto, Shailesh Bahoran and Dunja Jocic, among others. Since 2017 Simon’s work is supported by ThinX/Parktheater in collaboration with Corpo Máquina Society, completing a FPK-supported New Makers trajectory with them in 2019 and 2020. This collaboration continues. Since 2021, Simon is also supported by PLAN Brabant.

www.simonbus.nl

Alesya Dobysh / Corpo Máquina: Stop Making Sense

Dynamics, rhythm, flow and explosion. As the uncrowned queen of house dance, Alesya Dobysh shares her love of dance with unprecedented generosity and cheerfully winks at our strangely limited relationship with our bodies. In the solo Stop Making Sense, she constantly throws herself through space on the border of tumbling and control, mastering and letting go. Inspired by the famous series 'Men in the City' by visual artist Robert Longo, Dobysh suggests unstable terrain. She brilliantly alternates Longo's falling figures with lightning-fast footwork, twists and turns. In this way, she creates a unique, rhythmic language that makes the body vulnerable and let it breathe unpredictability.

More about Alesya Dobysh

After developing from the battle culture in Moscow as a professional dancer and after numerous victories at international competitions, Alesya Dobysh settled in Eindhoven. There she brings new energy into the club scene. From her passion, Alesya mastered styles such as house, jazz-fusion, hip-hop and breaking and contemporary modern basic techniques. With precision, musicality, subtlety and aesthetic forms, she always manages to give her own twist. Last year she joined Corpo Máquina Society, the choreographic platform with which artistic director Guilherme Miotto stimulates young makers from the urban scene in their curiosity for theatricality and theatrical forms.

Credits

Choreography and performance Alesya Dobysh
Soundscape Max Frimout

MORE ABOUT ALESYA DOBYSH

Astrid Boons: Arise Untitled – Excerpt

Performance, contemporary dance

Do you adapt to social norms or do you find agency and resist? Arise is a reflection on the tention between these two fields. Choreographer Astrid Boons (BE, 1988) shows a personal perspective, where the social and societal expectations placed on women prescribe which ambitions are suitable. We witness how three performers struggle in an environment where the pressure from outside is palpable. Afterwards, as they find themselves in an in-between world, we question what there is on the other side. Will there be release? Can their environment change in such a way so that it empowers them? Getting known in the European dance scene for her emotionally demanding pieces, Boons’ creations offer a space to deeply experience the body as the site of boundaries and expansion between us and the world. She creates work with a distinctive female perspective foregrounding the subjective connectivity as a form of resistance, together with the continuous search for personal agency.

In 2021 Boons was nominated for the prestigious Prize of The Netherlands Dance Days for choreography. In the same year dancer Karolina Szymura was nominated for a ‘Swan for most impressive dance performance’ for her role in Arise.

Credits

Choreography: Astrid Boons Performers: Reiko Ohta, Alice Gioria and Karolina Szymura/Astrid Boons Music: Miguelángel Clerc Parada Dramaturgical support: Eva Martinez Light design: Bernie Van Velzen Costume design: Min Li Produced by: Korzo Theatre and De Châtel Sur Place

More about Astrid Boons

Astrid received the BNG Bank Dance Award 2017 and Piket Art Award 2017 for her duet Rhizoma (2016). Since 2017 Astrid is connected as a choreographer to Korzo Theatre in The Hague, The Netherlands. Her work has been produced by Korzo Theatre, Nederlands Dans Theater, Dance Theater Heidelberg, among others.

www.astridboons.com

Ropes Aligned & Isabel Cordeiro: Ropes & Limbs

Women walking down a building – a nod to Trisha Brown
Vertical dance

Ropes & Limbs is an iteration of a research project by visual artist Isabel Cordeiro and the vertical dance collective Ropes Aligned, examining how bodies are shaped within the forces of gravity, withing the materiality of the world and in relation to each other. Two suspended performers walk down the side of a building while interacting with different materials – ropes, textiles and aluminum - that inform their movements. In the process of entanglement, unraveling and unfolding lies a transference of knowledge from the material’s imprinted history into the performers’ bodies.

Ropes & Limbs is inspired by the piece ‘Man Walking Down the Side of A Building’ (1970) by choreographer Trisha Brown (US, 1936-2017) in which a solitary dancer, secured by harnesses, attached to a single cable, walks down the side of the building at a ninety degree angle to the wall. Compelled by gravity, the performer exerted considerable effort as he performed the normally mundane task of walking. Brown’s intention was not to create a sense of theatricality but to draw attention to the simple and natural act of walking in an unnatural scenario. In Ropes & Limbs, as in Brown’s piece, no particular instructions are given for how the performers should move, leaving them open to focus on their own physical reaction to walking in this unusual way. Introducing Cordeiro’s objects allows for a new layer of embodied exploration.

Credits

Concept: Isabel Cordeiro, Ropes Aligned
Vertical dancers: Suzanne de Bekker & Natasja Bode (Ropes Aligned)
Visual art: Isabel Cordeiro
A coproduction of Ropes Aligned, Isabel Cordeiro and WhyNot.
Thanks to: Het Motorblok, Zaandam

More about the makers

Ropes Aligned - Vertical Dance Theater Amsterdam aims to promote vertical dance in the Netherlands and beyond. Founders and directors Suzanne de Bekker and Natasja Bode create vertical dance performances for public spaces, using climbing and abseiling techniques. They make works for public spaces in urban environments as well as in nature.

Isabel Cordeiro is an Amsterdam-based artist, curator, and teacher at several Dutch art academies. She holds an MA in Fine Arts from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam and a degree in Architecture from the Faculty of Architecture of Lisbon. Her works have been shown internationally at, amongst others, at7 Project Space Amsterdam (2019), Bradwolff Projects, Amsterdam (2017), Glasgow Sculpture Studios (2016), Halle 14, Leipzig (2014), Das Weisse Haus, Vienna (2010), Jorge Shirley Gallery, Lisbon (2012) and Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag (2008).

www.ropesaligned.org
www.isabelcordeiro.com

Reza Mirabi: Listening to Stone Beings

Choreographic storytelling

Unable to attend the 40 days mourning ceremony 13 years ago, Reza Mirabi now wishes to ritualize his grief (ذکر Zikr) literally meaning ‘remembrance’) for his grandfather, Jawad Mirabi, through story. Together with cellist Sheng-Chiun Lin, Mirabi invites you to an embodied journey through time, taps into transpersonal memories and finds himself as a 12 year old boy in the Kurdish Valley of Zaman (دره زمان).With the help of a few stones, Reza Mirabi is remembering, and reimagining a fleeting moment in the childhood of his late grandfather. Listening To Stone Beings is part of Mirabi’s research into his family archives, to meditate on the stories of displacement, refuge, the loss of languages, practices, land and seeds, and to dance with the question of home.

Credits

Choreography, Writing, and Dance: Reza Mirabi
Cello: Sheng-Chiun Lin
Thanks to: BAU and Dancing on the Edge

More about Reza Mirabi

Reza Mirabi is a choreographer, visual artist, dancer and seed collector, with a background in horticulture, environmental education, and reforestation projects in Iran, Kurdistan, India, and Portugal. Mirabi studied Fine Arts at the University of Mumbai and graduated from DAS Choreography, Master program at the University of the Arts, Amsterdam.

With his practice, he looks for ways to enter into states of embodied listening. Listening for him becomes a choreographic process and political act to tap into archives that have been rendered invisible; both personal and collective histories, memories, and forms of loss. More recently, Mirabi has moved out of the black box and into site-specific contexts, where listening becomes the ground for co-composing with the material textures, languages, and (hi)stories of a place.

Yuri & Marie: Morning, Mourning

How do we deal with ending? That is what Morning, Mourning questions, dragging a lifeless body through space, as an endless journey into a hopeless effort.

Morning, Mourning has been the first piece choreographed by Youri and Marie. After having performed it themselves over 120 times, in the Netherlands and abroad, they decided to transmit it to two other dancers, curious how that would influence the piece and its interpretation by the audience.

"Slowly it's slipping away

He does not accept it. He refuses to give up.

He attempts to hold on

One more time."

Credits

Concept & choreography: Youri & Marie
Performance: Facundo Ebenegger and Tijmen Teunissen