Project "45+: lifelong practice" in Hammerfest.
As a short commentary to begin:
What is common in Scandinavian Airlines and in dance performances in Scandinavian region? Often in both of them people 45+ are active and present. In Baltics airline flight assistants and dancers are mostly in their early 20-ies. What an interesting thoughts it may give to us about whole society?
“45+” meeting No.6 took place in Hammerfest during “Barents Dance Festival”. It brought together 10 dance artist from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Norway for the period of November 7-12,2018
During these meetings we shared: how to be in the creative process as equal team member (even if each participator is choreographer with strong individual personal understanding and movement language); how to deal with fear and everyday thinking-cliches; how we see creative work and reflect it critically.
Creative workshop for making choreography by Anna Grete Eriksen was titled as “objects as source for dance creation”. It reminded us how to trust bodily -wisdom to listen what is going on in one`s body and how to connect it with personal memory, feelings, thoughts. Also we worked with how to merge movement and memory and project it as a text or context.
In the meeting with Sami singer Marit Øverlid Hætta we got to know about Sami-peoples history, how it has designed todays culture and how they feel life, tightly connected with their singing. Singing is treatment, getting over their sorrow. We learned how to Joik – how to use voice and what actually Joik is. So we made our own Joik and dedicated it to our norwegian host Solveig. Thank you, Marit, for this Joik!
We had long discussions about life as a teacher and artist in Nordic countries and in Baltics. In Baltic countries similar processes and tendencies are visible– traditional and entertaining dance forms as a way of social communication are still very popular among the large amount of people (national dance, show dance), but dance as artistic form of expression and artistic approach to interpret various ways of thinking through art of movement are not very popular and visible, also not relevant among many people in power and state theatre authorities. We discussed how to try to connect those two areas if dance-life generally seems to have lot of potential inside.
"45+" performed with project "Rympeldance" as-well at Hammerfest Dance Festival. This performance should act as a reminder of this to our beloved audience and pays tribute to the many dedicated dancers and choreographers all over the world who are not only creating pieces for theatre stages, but are in fact sometimes stuck with this kind of "Rumpeldance (everyday choreography)“.
Travel was supported by: Nordic Culture Point
