BOOKS ONCE READ MAKE A GOOD BULLET PROOFING by SANJA MITROVIC

"Books once read make a good bullet proofing" explores our ideals and beliefs, with all their inherent contradictions and paradoxes. It is inspired by the butt-end of the protest movements of the mid ‘70s, in particular the kidnapping of Patty Hearst by the radical political organization the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA).

The performance brings together pre–recorded video material and live action. By reproducing the original statements of the revolutionary group and its victim, the performance takes the shape of a peculiar “terrorist karaoke.”

While a group of thirteen year olds act out elements of the Patty Hearst story, adults recorded on video seem to be attempting to learn their “roles.” The combination of the children’s unaffected performances and the political statements they are re–enacting brings about an uneasy tension through which our own preconceptions are questioned.

concept, direction Sanja Mitrovic
dramaturgy Desiree Delauney
sound designer Vlada Rakic
performers Kiefer Brink, Carlotte Dessauvagie, Charlie de Graaf, Christel Havers, Dolf van Langelaar, Petra van Leeuwen, Annick van Oosten, Emily Yakobi, Sanja Mitrovic

Gasthuis production, 2007.

For more information visit: http://www.theatergasthuis.nl/default.asp?path=y42o62eo&pc=0607_BOOKS

SENSATION IS REAL by NICOLE BEUTLER

The Book: The Sensation is Real

Parallel to the making of the performance Enter Ghost Nicole Beutler published the book The Sensation is Real. As independent artwork it was developed in close collaboration with typographer Connie Nijman. Connecting disciplines such as literature, philosophy, photography, theology and alchemy, it proposes a poetic journey through a personal archive of ghostly potential. Countless historical references to séances, spiritism and fairies stand alongside with thoughts on Noh theatre, as well as the Shakespearean proposals of the supernatural. On invitation of De Appel, Amsterdam, Nicole Beutler developed a hypnotic tour as an informal and performative presentation of the ideas that surround the book. This performance was adapted to the old office building of the Festival KAMMERmachen in Chemnitz and performed again with special guest DJ Alec Smart.

Concept/Choreography Nicole Beutler
With Hester van Hasselt, Sanja Mitrovic, Esther Snelder
Music Gary Shepherd

de Apple, Amsterdam, 2006.

For more information visit: http://www.associationlisa.com/hester/works/enter-ghost-nicole-beutler/

SHAME by SANJA MITROVIC

photo: Annette Kamerich www.eyes2.nl


photo: Annette Kamerich www.eyes2.nl


Since I was studying Japanese literature and language and Mime, I was always puzzled by the idea of how to combine these two disciplines. In the research project „Shame“ I initiated an encounter with young Japanese dancer Yurie Umamoto whom I invited by internet to participate in the project. Material for the performance appeared through the persistent repetition of our first encounter which happened on theatre stage. During this process it has been transformed into the theatrical act. How does intimacy, discomfort, fascination, shame in front of the „other“ (as a private emotions during this encounter) changes into theatrical language? The direct communication between two of us is played in Japanese. Third female performer is voice over for our dialogue, playing it in English. Ritual gesture of giving the present (book of Roland Barthes „The Empire of the Signs“) becomes the vehicle for the interaction where the verbal formulations become gestures, movements, physical actions. – Sanja Mitrovic

While repeating the first meeting which happened in the theatre space (first rehearsal) during the period of the research, the author questions the basic problem of repetition which brought as the end result the essence of the meeting -the reality in-between.
In the research project „Shame“ she investigates the phenomenon of the meeting. The author meets the Japanese dancer. She articulates her fascination about the Japanese culture into a position where she tries to be surrounded by Japanese signs and codes of behaviour. For that she chooses to talk in Japanese. This position slowly transforms through her abstract understanding of „the other” in the confrontation/ meeting with that „other“. The beginning statement becomes new structure of meaning which is different not only in a discursive sense (it means something else) but in the formal sense as well (it is not constituted only of verbal formulations, but it becomes performative trace of the interaction where the statements become gestures, movements, physical situations).

Concept/direction: Sanja Mitrovic
Performers: Yurie Umamoto, Sanja Mitrovic
Dramaturgy: Igor Dobricic
Photos by: Annette Kamerich

Gasthuis production, 2006.

For more information visit: www.theatergasthuis.nl/media/gasthuis_jaarverslag_06.pdf

ENTER GHOST by NICOLE BEUTLER

The stage direction ‘Enter Ghost’ from Shakespeare’s Hamlet is the point of departure for this project. The instruction is paradoxical: how can we make a ghost – an invisible and undeterminable force – appear on stage? And what is a ghost? Sight has become the privileged sense for our empirical interpretation of the world. According to the logic of our ‘scientific eye’, that which is not directly or indirectly ‘visible’ does not exist. What if we included ghosts in our perceived material reality? What if we no longer assigned ghosts a place in our fictional fantasy world, but rather saw them as a concrete, material and sociological force? How real is our imagination? In Enter Ghost Nicole Beutler aims to create space for the unnameable, the poetic and the inexplicable.

premiere: Frascati, 2006.

Concept/Choreography Nicole Beutler
with Hester van Hasselt, Esther Snelder, Sanja Mitrovic
Music Gary Shepherd
Dramaturgy Igor Dobricic
Light/Stage Minna Tiikkainen
Clothes Jessica Helbach
Book Nicole Beutler and Connie Nijman (Typography)
Contributions André Lepecki, Bob Bishop, Laurens van der Heijden, Mark Poysden, Igor Dobricic
Production Klaartje Wouters
PR-photography Anja Beutler
Management Inge Koks
Produced by LISA
Co-produced by wpZimmer, Antwerpen and PACTZollverein, Essen
Supported by Fonds voor Amateurkunst en Podiumkunsten, Den Haag and Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst

For more information check: http://www.associationlisa.com/nicole/works/enterghost/

Dhanu

The graduate performance "Dhanu" (2005) is solo inspired by women who blew herself up at an election rally in Sriperumbuduru, Shri Lanka in 1991, Dhanu. The attack killed 70 people and the Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. The performance doesn’t represent her spectacular suicide attack. It focuses instead on the issues of training and preparation, the very process in which an artist/terrorist attempts to abandon all interests of her own, leaving behind her affairs, her feelings, attachments, belongings, even her own name. For that reason, I decide to depersonalize the movement and to create an imaginary “terrorist” training: I randomly choose dance sequences from works created and performed by female artist in different contexts whose energy of the performing could be an energy of the potentional “women-bomb”. What’s the most potent performer’s weapon? Is it the body or the brain, or – eventually “the heart”?

The performance is the combination of video and live action. The projected text "Woman bomb" interprets/narrativizes/deconstructs and manipulates dance samples. The audio recording of Helicopter String Quartet by Karlheinz Stockhauzen is being used as a soundscape.

Place/venue: Hetveem theatre, ITs Festival
Date:jun, 2005.