selections
On tour 2006/07
"At Arm's Length"
"Desire"
"Ein Tag Zu Frueh"
"Hydra"
"Hydra Tempted"
"Lena's Bath"
"Rooms"
"WRATH"
"Repertoire Program"
More works:
"Alternate Reality" 1-3
"Anders Als Du"
"Arabian Nights"
"Aurora"
"Caru"
"Conversation in Blue & Green"
"Half Me, Twice You"
"Green"
"Inertia"
"Just Can't Stop"
"Jeux Bleu"
"Kopfueber"
"Lux Etaerna"
"Lux Etaerna II"
"MiDi"
"Nebel/Leben"
"Outer Half"
"Seven Deadly Sins"
"Split Second"
"Swim Baby!"
"Table"
"Sixth Sock"
"The Magic Flower"
"Distance Between Things"
"Fibonacci & Phi"
"Link With Darkness"
"Une Journee Abstraite"
outdoor & site specific:
"Animate"
"Counterpart"
"Hydra"
"Hydra Tempted"
"Sculpture"
"Und So Der Wind"
Film:
"Glacier Knocks"
a dance quartet
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Piece Description:
Celebrating its 10th year, alban elved dane company will premiere an evening of several new works presented together under the program title "Desire - A Collage of Strange Encounters and Scary Moments". All works are tied together by the common underlying theme of the color orange and its psychological and physiological effects on us, thereby creating stunningly beautiful visual metaphors and images, surreal encounters and moving works that go under the skin and touch us very deep under our layer of civilized, evolved, 21st century identities.
We will create 4-5 shorter stand-alone works that can be performed at festivals but that fit together as an evening as well.
This project is collaborative and we are looking forward to not only have scenic artist Jennifer O’Kelly design some of the set and the lighting but to entirely base one or more of the pieces on her works of art, paintings and sculptures. An artshow by MS O'kelly will be opening just prior to the premiere in Janaury 2007 in NC.
„A Collage of Strange Encounters and Scary Moments ”is an amalgamation of dance, visual art, sculpture, live music of different styles and surrealism with a dose of 1920’s slapstick.
THE ARTISTS INVOLVED:
Artistic Director & Choreographer: Karola Lüttringhaus
Lighting & Scenic Designer: Jennifer O’Kelly
Composers: Minda Malibiran, Till Schmidt-Rimpler, Karola Lüttringhaus, Jeffrey D. Schmitt, and others
Dancers: Karola Lüttringhaus, Dawn Shropshire Webster, Andrea Lieske, Alayna Stroud
Costumes/Props: Karola Lüttringhaus, Dawn Shropshire Webster, Jennifer O’Kelly
a) „Carrotopia“ - A silent movie performed live - all in orange. A humorous social critical analysis of genetic engineering and misguided intentions, desires and clichees of human emotions. Minda Malibiran accompanies the piece in the style of silent movies on the piano. We follow two labworkers over a time period of several days as they reveal secret desires, fears and their relationship to their work in a carrot lab. The labworkers are complimentary opposites, one loving her job, appreciating it after growing up so poor that food was a rare commodity. The other labworker, coming from an aristrocrat background having lost everything and now having to work in the lab, hates her job. She despises being „just like everyone else“ and plots to destroy the lab.
Our story is funny, bizarre, and touches on topics such as poverty, envy, honesty, deception and in a very bizarre way: genetic engineering and cloning.
b) “aestuo- Dogma Engine” focuses on a sculpture by Jennifer O’Kelly. Suspended in midair in the middle of the stage is a fantastical machine. It’s central focus is a large 3 foot long sweet potato carved from wood. Attached to its ends are a hand crank on one end and a propellor on the other. The potato is supended by a rope which leads back to a funnel made of a large orange parachute material which appears to be made to catch rain water. This device could bee a primitive battery, but the purpose of the machine is unknown to the viewer and will remain a mystery. With this work we have an original soundscore made by Karola Luttringhaus, the dancers, the designer and Minda Malibiran.
This work will contain some (partial) nudity. What we want to go back to with this work is a duality of a very primitive, in some ways, yet highly evolved perception of our world in other ways. We want to go back to the time where people did not understand most of its mysteries and were amazed by its beauty and secrets. We want to go to the place where the discovery of machines was emotional, sensual and ground-breaking even life theatening to the inventor. The thematic inspiration is the color orange inspiring Desire, which is a hunger; a thirst. Hence the funneling of a liquid into the machine by means of the large sheet. Desire inspires passion. The combination spawns both lusty greed and selflessness. The title ‘aestuo’ in Latin means to burn with desire, blaze.
We are thinking of moments to be captured such as the inventor becoming lost in passionate pursuit of an alternative power source... the object of study becoming the end and not the means, imbued with false preciousness, the mundane or simple becoming sacred, the protagonist having lost his way becomes mired in dogma.... the only way out would be to free the dogma and open the mind to new possibilities. "The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal" William James.
c) „Read only memory - I just can’t find the door“ will be a new 8 minute solo dance piece. The dance is accompanied by a dynamic live drumset.
d) „Desire - Spontaneous combustion of nothing“ focuses on the psychological effects of the color orange on the body and nervous system. 2-4 athletic female dancers surface from an environment that is not placeable within a familiar space, completely drenched in an orange environment. The body’s surface becomes a canvas on which we paint our identities, literally, but also through how we dress it, move it, or hide it within this dominant set design. Through these abstract images in a surrealistic world, the viewers might find themselves swept away like in a dream, challenged to swim along and make up their own meaning. By bringing out the artistic voices of all participants in addition to giving full expression to the creative impulses of the choreographer we will create a collage of pieces that reflects on an individualized and yet universal understanding of the topics and emotions explored.
Among others we are looking at feelings like anger, guilt, love and fear. How does our environment shape us? We want to explore the physicality of emotions and bring them to an extreme. How much can we intertwine, can we dance and keep a physical habit, a tick? This brings us to the idea of character development as in theater. A significant time of the process will be spend on exploring manneurisms, observing movement habits in people, analysing one self, etc. Then we want to take the results and exaggerate, or simplify and extract the unusual. We want to push our physical boundaries and bring a hint or a good dose of ugliness and rawness into the picture. Every work we create reflects something about where we are in life. As a young company we encounter many ups and downs. ‚Desire’ walks the thin line of persistence and obsession. Fundamentally about perception and expectations, the foremost emotion underlying the piece, as the title suggests, is desire and the need to gain, reach, understand and be close to another person or an idea or, after all, to ourselves. In ‚Desire’ we do what we feel like at the moment, resisting conformity and what is expected of us, allowing for an honest self portrait.
Premiere:
January 18, 2007
Salem College, NC
Press
Length: 45 min.
View piece description below