From the history to the future - Dance with Intermedia and Kinetic Awareness

2-day weekend-workshop at Dock11 in Berlin, intermedia/dance-artists Kiori Kawai (Japan/U.A.E) and Thomas Körtvélyessy (Rotterdam, NL) will share their works based upon their experience with Elaine Summers, pioneer of Intermedia in the 1960’s U.S. postmodern era. Translations to German available by request. 

Elaine Summers (1925-2014) was a pioneer of exploring the endless possibilities of dance, intermedia, somatic practice, and site-specific performance. As early as 1962 she created a moment of merging film-projection and live-dance in the very first Concert of Dance at Judson Memorial Church in New York. She got up and danced in the chance-film Ouverture which was the first event of the now legendary concert. The moment was so unexpected and new at the time that no one else noticed it.

In this workshop, Kiori and Thomas - both members of the last generation of dancers who worked closely and over a longer time with Elaine Summers- will explore this extraordinary legacy further: When does a moment become intermedia? What makes Inter-media to Interactive-media? How do our bodies change when we start to sense the movements more carefully? Does technology help us to become more aware?

*in 2021 they began this exploration with an improvisation during the annual POOL filmdance festival, at the Zionskirche Berlin. You can see more here.

The workshops will explore Kinetic Awareness®, a specific somatic practice by Elaine Summers that addresses the individual body-mind and is characterized by slow, gentle movements with the optional help of rubber balls. Because of the slow and self-directed nature of the work, Kinetic Awareness® can be done even if you are recovering from an injury (Please bring 2 large blankets for yourself). We will explore how this awareness can help for interacting in the here & now with film and other visual projections, highlighting special aspects of how Elaine Summers used (multiple) film projection and merged it with dance, to create intermedia. 

On Sunday morning Thomas will demonstrate in his introduction to bridging technique and how Kinetic Awareness® can be translated all the way to dance related to European ballet, (post)modern dance and beyond. Kiori Kawai will share her approach towards improvisational movement within interactive visuals. We’ll extend our sensorial body-mind awareness to the technology, as a way of creating choreographic structure, then integrate into improvisational dance score.
On Saturday evening, they will both give a lecture-demonstration with examples of Elaine Summers' work and their own further developments. 

Facilitators


  • Kiori Kawai (Japanese, b. 1978) is a dance performer/choreographer, interactive installation artist and an educator. She worked closely with Elaine Summers from 2004 until the end of Elaine’s life.

    As a dance performance artist/choreographer, Kiori started her career in New York, she has worked with Elaine Summers Dance and Film, Carman Moore/Skymusic Inc., Lincoln Center, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Brooklyn Museum, Serralves Foundation Contemporary Art Museum (Portugal), Mesa Arts Center (AZ), Transformation Festival (Denmark/U.S), Megaron (Athens, Greece), Sharjah Biennial (U.A.E), New York University Abu Dhabi Arts Center (U.A.E), touring nationally and internationally. Sheʼs built up her own improvisatory movement vocabulary based on the techniques of meditation, Kinetic Awareness, Contact Improv, yoga, and various dance/movement training. This led her to designing interactive installations that include human body movement within kinetic sculptures. https://www.kiorikawai.com/


  • Thomas Körtvélyessy (1972, HU/DE/NL) is a dance artist developing dance into the challenges of the 21st century. He was a close associate with Elaine Summers and studied her work intensively since 1993. He is a Certified Teacher of her somatic practice Kinetic Awareness® which he most recently taught in Berlin at BodyIQ 2021 with Veronika Sifter (Budapest), and as a workshop at the filmdance festival POOL2021 by Dock11.

    In his practice, Kinetic Awareness® is a fulfillment of the search for individual movement by European modernists such as Laban or Eshkol. As a member of the Kinetic Awareness® Center, he works on maintaining the legacy of Elaine Summers, next to developing his own choreographic work and training syllabus called •bridging technique• He is affiliated as an external teacher at ArtEZ University of Arts and performed as Thomas Körtvélyessy / Reàl Dance Company in numerous on- and off-stage productions in the Netherlands since 1996, as well as in Venice (Italy) New York (Turtle Island/US) Budapest (Hungary) Bucharest (Romania) Odessa (Ukraine) and Seoul (South Korea) https://realdancecompany.org

schedule:

May 13 (Sat)
10 am - 1pm     Kinetic Awareness® (by Thomas)
2:30 pm - 5:30 pm     Intermedia: dance within film/projection (by Kiori)
8pm - 10pm     Lecture demonstration about Elaine Summers - Dance Intermedia & Kinetic Awareness - (by Thomas & Kiori)

May 14 (Sun)
10 am - 1pm     An introduction to bridging technique (by Thomas)
2:30 pm - 5:30 pm     Dance & Interactive Media (by Kiori)

Venue: 

Dock11 - Saal 2
Kastanienallee 79 10435 Berlin

Cost:

Full workshop (2 days - 4 classes + lecture) - 125 Euro
1 class - 35 Euro
2 classes - 65 Euro
Lecture only - 15 Euro
***Lecture is free for participants of workshop/classes