15744

Two days ago, on my last day of my 6 weeks trip in Japan, I visited Christian Boltanski’s archive in Teshima island (Japan), “the island where hearts from over the world gather”. I was the 15744 visitor who recorded and added his heart beats to his special exhibition “Les Archives du Cour”. I spent some time in his exhibition, listening to my own heart and others hearts while looking to the beautiful view of the window.

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And I start reading his exhibition notes in the special box which I received together with by heart beat recording.

“Les Archives du Couer”
Here, people are immersed in a variety of thoughts.
The transience, fragility, value of human life –
The desire to leave something behind and the idea that nothing will remain.

“Living a good life” doesn’t mean to remain fixed on youth nor does it mean to attempt to live a longer life.

It means to accept the natural cycle that begins with birth and ends with death.
There are people who lived before us and people who will be born after us. What’s important is the spirit of transmission.

People only come back to life in other people’s memories.”

While listening and reading, I start thinking to our project about fragility. For sure, the soundtrack of our performance will have some beats on it.

[Fragile] is entering soon on the final stage of development. Stay tuned for a very special experience.

no friends

//

I feel the most fragile when I really, really want something.I feel the most fragile when I really, really want something.
I moved to the end of the world one year ago today. I didn’t know
anyone up here back then, I don’t really know that many people now either.
Maybe only on the surface – the casual «hello» kind of knowing.
I have nobody close by to share deeper, intimate things with in my everyday life.
Sometimes, I joke about it, saying «I have no friends!» and then laughing.
But in reality it’s true. Joking and laughing is my biggest shield and defense mechanism in life.

Well, actually, talking about «no friends» – there is this one guy. But I suspect
that he has started to get some feelings for me, and I don’t want that to develop
any further, so….

Sometimes, when I go to bed, I miss the feeling of another body so bad that I hug and spoon with my pillow. It’s been three months and three days since the last time I kissed someone.

Tanya

//

Dear Tanja,
Dear Giselda,
Dear Cristian,

Hope you are well enjoying the summer. First of all, Tanya, I’m happy that you can join us for the final phase of the “Fragile” project in Bucharest. The two weeks in Riga were intensive and unfortunately Natalia, the third performer who was selected following the workshop in Riga, was not strong enough to deal with artistic proposal. Therefore I decided to stop the collaboration with her after the two weeks research in Riga. It’s a very unfortunate situation but I’m very confident that Tanja will catch up very fast and will make a very nice team with Giselda and Cristian.

Please find bellow the short summary of the artistic process. I’m gonna try to make a selection of photo and videos and send it to everybody via wetransfer this week. Tanja, I would like to propose you a Skype meeting starting with Wednesday to talk you more in details ad the project and its needs. Please let me know what time you prefer, either during the day or night.

Here a short summary of the our first residence in Riga:
a) format of the final performance
– ideally in my mind the performance would start in a private secret location (basically in people’s apartments/houses or a gallery/ZonaD studio) develop a bit into the city and end up on the black box. in Riga we tried a version that included – performative actions in the private flat, a running & dancing section in the city followed by a final performance in the black box. the total duration of the whole experience in Riga was about 3 hours but from my side didn’t work well. We need more time in the flat to build up a relationship with the audience, so at least the duration of the performance in the secret location should be 2 hours, which will go finally to a -6 hours experience which is maybe too much :). on the first week in Bucharest in October we gonna try a version to split the performances in the two spaces in two as follows:
– 2 hours performance in the flat ending up with 30 minutes running & dancing in the city
– 30 – 45 minutes running & dancing in the city ending up with a 60-90 minute on the black box with audience on the stage
Depending in how it will work we gonna decide what would be the final version. In Bucharest we have the stage booked for November 8 and 9 and we will have a trial version of the performance in the flat scheduled for November 1.

b) sections & ideas to be tried & developed:
– Dance like you’ll never do again (individual solo and a trio group version)
– Smelling Cristian solo (with tenderness quality), Transparency Giselda (with male side) solo
– Tanya’ solo (poliical & sexual identity, maybe ???)
– Kiss & Heart Solos/Group
– Emotional trip (performed by you with/for the audience)
– Life percent (Cristian performed 60 % of Giselda’s quality of movement)
– GAME (spin the botle /spin the body, other social games that can be used)
– Change of identity & cloths (between the performers and the audience)

c) Re-visiting master piece and Re-Enactments
This is soo contemporary – by Tihno Segal’s work read more here http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/australia-culture-blog/2014/feb/06/tino-sehgal-this-is-so-contemporary-review -transformed in THIS IS MY MASTERPIECE
First Kiss (https://vimeo.com/88671403) > ?
Rythm O by Marina Abramovic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwPTKmFcYAQ) or MANIFESTO (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsPx9sLcbeI) ?

d) Questions, yet to be answered:
– How to get into people’s fragility and how to show/share their/own fragility on stage
– What is the Wild Giselda/Cristian/Tanya
– How to hijack the audience (and the performance)
– What you can still from the audience (maybe a smile, a kiss, a private conversation, a personal touch etc)
– How to dare more and push the limits (ours/audience) –
– What are the strategies to approach and engage the audiene (eye looking gaze, smelling, hugging, whispering at the hear….

This is in short something we work on Riga, tried or just discussed.
Giselda and Cristian, in case I forgot something from my diary, please add them to the conversation.
Based on the very good experience of the workshop in Riga, I’m gonna lead a new workshop (longer) in Bucharest during our final phase. I’m thinking to involve also the participants in the workshop in the running & dancing sections and in the black box performance…Maybe they can also learn the emotional trip exercice and do it with the audience, so more groups will work in the same time.

Tanja, please find attached a document regarding the speach by Jaques Ranciere called “the Emancipated Spectator”, which I kindly ask you to read as a preparation for the project.

As a home work for everybody 🙂 until we meet again in October, I would like to ask everybody to re-read the Alice in the Wonderland by Carol Lewis and see the movie made by Tim Burton based on this book (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TfanDv5iRk). I would like to ask everyone to choose a character from this book, obviously Alice will be the audience.

As a task for everybody, please buy one piece of cloths (can be a dress, underwear, wig, socks, tshirt, material) for yourself and one for somebody else. Please keep the receipt and you will be reimbursed in Bucharest (maximum 100 Euro/person). Myself I will buy some staff from Japan, so please send me your size.

Finally, Tanya let’s chat more this week. And don’t forget to plan your arrival in Bucharest on October 12 and the departure on November 10. Please, let us know from where you will be travelling (Hammerfest, Oslo, Russia) so we can start to look on the plane ticket.
Thank you all.

Wish you all a lovely summer,
Cosmin

bye, bye Riga ! see you in October

After two very intensive weeks, today I our last day. Everybody is very tired especially because of the final presentations.
Some questions to be answered today:
1. What was the strongest moment/experience in Riga (flat, street, studio)
2. What to take further in the working residence in October in Bucharest
3. Positive and negative aspects of the residence
4. Is the [Fragile] team ready to move on the next phase.
5. What kind of performance will be [Fragile]
We met in the afternoon in the the dance studio and we start our day of evaluation and reflections.

Unfortunately, Natalia will need to leave the team, I feel she is not ready for this project.

Our last hour, I go together with Giselda and Cristian to the lovely tea-spot in the garden of Riga. We speak and brainstorm about possibilities. Questions still…
How to dare more
How to push our/audience limits
How to get into people’s fragility and stories
What is the wild Cristian and Giselda
How to hijack the performance
What is our fragility
Who’s gonne me the third performer in the piece

Final photo in Riga. Bye bye Riga, we had a very rich time.
diary notes Riga

Giselda, Cristian and Cosmin

something to remember

Following the informal presentations in Riga, I received an email from Martin, a friendly guy who was a discreet audience our our dancing & walking improvisations into the street of Riga. he also showed up for the final sharing presentation and seems to me that it was his first contact with contemporary dance. when I asked during the performance what he things about what he is seeing, he said that doesn’t understand much but he liked very much, especially the naked moment 🙂 In the thankfully email were attached also more 30 amazing photos of Riga in different seasons, see bellow some of them.

“Dear Cosmin,

Thank’s for the presentation today, I really enjoyed it. Here’s a little something to remember Riga. Hope you get home well.

Best wishes, Martin Ligotnis”

Thank you Martin for your email and photos, it so nice to know that the performance touched your heart !

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Riga’s emotions

Hello again,

I’m still thinking about the workshop and the feelings it stirred up, so the overall experience was without a doubt lasting, positive and surprisingly pleasant. I think I applied in order to try and feel and maybe push my own boundaries, because even though, as somebody said at the workshop, people (myself included) lack and crave for touch in everyday life, I find it hard to ask for it and especially to give, as I’m not at one with my body. Even at the workshop where everybody was touching 1000x more intensively than is usual (at least here in Latvia), still I think the professional dancers see and treat a body different than other people, they don’t seem to have anything holding them back, it’s probably because that’s what your profession is, bodies are the instruments you work with, be they yours or other people’s. I really liked the first exercise where we gradually learnt each body, it was very liberating and joyful to just take each body as it is, to discover they could be touched the same way. Also, I was very glad to discover how simple and pleasant it was to receive the various touches…

So generally it was a great experience, helping me understand that we’re humans and we function pretty much the same way, but at the same time it was great to see how, for example, the heart dances of everyone were completely different, some much more expressive and faster than others, and some slow and flowing. Walking home I could still feel the touches of everyone on my body, and it was a most wonderful feeling. This workshop has given me more confidence to join similar workshops in the future and has also helped me remember how much I love dancing, so thanks once more for organizing this.

Very best wishes and see you tomorrow,

Annette

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process sharing in Riga

[ Fragile ] a fragrance by Alice inspired by Nietzche, Tihno Segal, Marina Abramovic, Carol Lewis and manny more

performed by Giselda Ranieri, Cristian Nanculescu, Natalia Wilk, Cosmin Manolescu

directed by Cosmin Manolescu

informal presentation of the two-weeks residency in Riga organised by The Association of Professional Dance Choreographers of Latvia in collaboration with Gabriela Tudor Foundation

14.00 – 18.00 – secret location (limited number of participants) *

20.00 – Latvian Academy of Culture, Zirgu Pasts

Please feel free to join us for the process sharing of the [Fragile] project. For the interested participants to attend the first performance in the secret location are invited to send a short text message to the number +40 722 322 366 with your name, age, sex and profession. after we will receive your message we gonna confirm the hour and the address of the performance. Thank you. For more information please email us at contact@e-motional.eu

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NATALIAAAAAAAA!

July 10

Today I’m Natalia and I have two tasks. Climb the stairs in the living room in different ways and sing the Polish anthems. And make a travelling map.

First, I’m kissing on a body scar. Than I’m entering in Natalia’s room and I found the book of Nietzche from the Chomsky’s bar. I start reading it…

“Saying yes to life even on its strangest and most painful episodes, the will of life rejoining in its own in exhausting vitality even as it witness the destruction of its greatest heroes – that’s why I called Dionisyan, that’s what I guessed to be the bridge to the psychology of the tragic poet” (Nietzche – The twilight of Idols)

Shortly we start to work. I decide to play the crazy Natalia, compusilve with lots of sexual desire. I remember her saying “I Can Manage Everything”. I can be Natalia. Funny enough the Natalia Cosmin is leading the rehearsal today.
I START MY NEW IDENTITY WITH A KISS ON THE SCAR.
I TAPE MY BODY AND PERFORM WITH THE SWIMING HAT.
I WANT TO BE PART OF CRISTIAN’S MASTERPIECE
I WANT TO KISS IN THE MASTERPIECE
I WAS 40 % Cosmin while I was performing and 60 % Natalia.

After the rehearsals I dress-up as Natalia for the dinner.
And after the dinner, shortly I come back alone, I fall asleep in her sofa (without even not opening it) while thinking to the day…I supposed it’s hard to be Natalia.

I wake-up in the morning and I found my shoes at the entrance of the room. I don’t understand whom I am Natalia or Cosmin ? I realised that today we need to run together today before changing back to our identity. And than shout out being naked for minute our passed identity. I start hearing in the others room Cristian and Giselda screaming. I start screaming NATALIAAAAAAAAAAA…I’m also documenting the scream. End of identity.

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i was 30 % smell

Giselda said that it was great to be Cristian.
There are many ways to show that I am feeling good and trapped in the same time.
It is not enough to be present. The gaze the awareness and the connections.
Fragility group.
Witch part of me do you want to see?
Fragile, Crazy, Shy, Serious and Honest can be a great combination of characteristics for a MASTERPIECE!
Smelling and hugging before the kiss it is very important.
I was 30% of your smell and your hug powered me with another 25%
A real switch to reality, clear and honest
Dance like it is your last chance to do it.
You can come with me and follow me on the street doing the same things.
Scream in the sky!!
After the ritual I can go extremely wild.
How the fuck are you and why I am so in love with you?
What do you think, It can be better than that? Did you notice the wild part of Giselda?
I really can’t see the border between imagination and reality but I am aware of that.
My diary and my writings are very important.”

(excerpts from Cristian’s diary)