Chapter VI:
Dramatizing Relations and Positions:
We’s, I’s and You’s at Work, Inside Out
by Bojana Cvejić, with Roza Moshtaghi and Snelle Hall
16. + 17. November 2024
A fact, a necessity, a blindspot or a negotiation. Collaboration is a given in performance-making, and it develops in varying scales and degrees and with different ethos. In this chapter, I will address the dramaturgical interest in the social relations underlying the divisions of work, authority and authorship and the accompanying forms of life in contemporary dance, as I have observed it in Europe. Dramaturgy is implicated in the power structure of our work situations, in how capacities and competences, time, money, resources, attention, and visibility are deployed and arranged among collaborators. How do encounters – attractions and affinities – evolve into work agreements that don’t betray desire? Which tools can help distribute authorship – the making of a dance and the recognition of its makers – in a group? How are positions in a socio-political context shared inside out? When do they cause fault lines in a creation process outside in, from public or communitarian expectations and aspired sense of belonging and ownership?
Undoubtedly, these are vast questions if we attempt to answer them exhaustively, so we will limit this inquiry to contexts available to us. The seminar is structured in two parts. The first part in the morning includes a lecture and a shared conversation with Snelle Hall and Roza Moshtaghi. The second part, after lunch, is a workshop based on thought prompts with all participants from the point of view of their living practice.
Set-up:
DAY 1 – SEMINAR:
Lecture, conversations and workshop at Dansens Hus – 10:00-16:00
To register your participation – FOLLOW THIS LINK –
The invitation to take part in the seminar extends to all who are interested in exploring dramaturgy as it relates to their own work. The admission is free, but please, sign up for the program.
DAY 2 – PRACTICUM:
Studio visits with 3 dance artists
In the second part of each chapter, we offer anyone who is currently in the process of creation, or planning one, and would like to engage in a conversation with the dramaturg, to book a studio visit. The dramaturg will engage with the artist around a concrete piece of work, material or project that the artist is working on. The session will last around one hour, and will take place in the studio or in another space, depending on whether it is a rehearsal or a conversation. You can meet the dramaturge in a studio at Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO) if you do not have the opportunity or desire to be in your own studio. Please specify in the registration e-mail.
To book a visit from a dramaturg, send an e-mail to billettsalg@dansenshus.com. Mark the e-mail with:
Dramaturgy seminar PRACTICUM.
About the seminar:
Over the past two decades, various experimental practices in the field of theater, dance, performance art, and choreographic exhibition in a global context have converged on dramaturgy, an investigation of the interests and questions, capacities and working cultures and politics involved in the creation of a performance. This seminar will offer an encounter with an invited practicing dramaturg at work. Each part – or chapter – is comprised of two days: Day 1 is an open lecture at Dansens Hus, led by the invited speaker who, in dialogue with another dramaturg, will explore their current preoccupations in dramaturgy with regard to creation in dance and performance. Day 2 the invited speaker will visit dance artists currently working in Oslo and engages in a conversation around their work in a studio.
The seminar series is curated by Bojana Cvejić (SRB/BE/NO), freelance dramaturg and Professor of Dance Theory (KHiO), whose work also includes self-organizing collective platforms of self-education and experimental production. In addition to Cvejić, the series will feature as main speakers Deise Faria Nunes (BR/NO), researcher, writer and dramaturg, and Jeroen Peeters (BE), writer, dramaturge and performer active in the field of contemporary dance across Europe.
Snelle Ingrid Hall, dance artist, theater scholar, associate professor. Has worked as a dance artist for more than 30 years, primarily in the free dance field, and especially through the constellation Siri&Snelle. Has worked for many years as a teacher of dance composition and dance theory, also worked as a writer and dramaturg/eye from the outside. Currently dean of the Dance department, Oslo Academy of the Arts.
Roza Moshtaghi is an Iranian artist based in Oslo. Her creations often are situated within the performing arts field as a choreographer/dancer and performer. Her works deal with the unexplained narratives of desire generated in adapting or reacting to systems/structures. The ordinary, or rather what we have forced inside the uniform of the ordinary, is Roza's playground. She looks for possibilities to hypothesize "the hidden" by digging into the ordinary as a silent landscape. Roza presents her work internationally and continues developing projects with other artists as a collaborator and performer
The invitation to take part in the seminar extends to all who are interested in exploring dramaturgy as it relates to their own work. The admission is free, but please, sign up for the program.
