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From May 10th – 18th the Contemporary Dance Practices graduate students present two original dance pieces; IN THE END by Inga Huld Hákonardottir and DON’T LET ME DOWN by Shannon Gillen & Jason Cianciulli.
Dear guests
A dancer’s graduation performance is a rite of passage, concluding the time together as students while entering the professional community as dance artists.
In this double-bill performance, we follow ten graduating students of Contemporary Dance Practices as they grapple with endings and beginnings, challenging the here and now, rising and falling to the beat with their hearts in hand.
They invite us to witness apocalyptic, intricate landscapes with their raw and energetic movement material, as rebels, poets, occultists, fighters, wanderers.
During their three-year BA education at the Iceland University of the Arts, these emerging artists have shown bravery, dedication and resilience. I welcome you to celebrate their unique artistry and dedication to their craft as they dance – igniting a fire within their hearts and ours.
Katrín Gunnarsdóttir
Associate Professor and Programme Director
Graduating students:
Alice Romberg
Christa Ropponen
Cristina Ísabel Agueda
Juulius Vaiksoo
Lea Alexandra Gunnarsdóttir
Leevi Matias Rauhalahti
Olga Maggý Winther
Olivia Teresa Due Pyszko
Sara Lind Guðnadóttir
Vigdís Birna Grétarsdóttir
DON’T LET ME DOWN
Our origins start before we can remember, so inevitably we have to take someone’s word for how things began. And though we prize a sense of choice and causality, we are actually untethered, flailing around in space. Pushing against nothing, just to feel our bodies burn. And so we are drifting along in the current of something we don’t understand (and the truth is we don’t need to understand anything to appreciate life)… a bit of joy, some pain, and the sheer fucking luck of being here at all.
Choreographers: VIM VIGOR / Shannon Gillen and Jason Cianciulli
Choreographic collaborator: Katherine Kiessling
Costume & set design: Guðný Hrund Sigurðardóttir
Light design: Ólafur Ágúst Stefánsson
Text: Shannon Gillen
Original Score: Marshall Chadbourne with excerpts from Orville Peck’s ‘Fancy’ and an interview of Ruby Baker, an eighty-six year old Appalachian woman from Harlan County, Kentucky from the documentary ‘Soft White Underbelly’.
VIM VIGOR is a physical dance theater company under the artistic direction of Shannon Gillen and co-choreographer Jason Cianciulli. Founded as a collaborative think tank, VIM brings together innovative and profoundly gifted artists from around the world to create original, cutting edge, dance theater. The company has performed and taught at renowned venues and festivals across the USA, Europe, Canada, Central America, and South America including b12 Festival and Dock 11 (Berlin, DE), Festival Prisma (Panama), Revuelo (Chile), DANCEworks (US), Gibney Presents (US), Perry Mansfield (US), Lewis Center for the Arts (US), Playwrights Horizons (US), Springboard Danse Festival (CA), Arts Umbrella in (CA), The Arthur Miller Theatre (US); and with de Danseurs in (NL). VIM VIGOR has created five evening length works, four half evening length works, and twenty short pieces that have been commissioned by notable companies including L.A. Dance Project, Hubbard Street 2, Gibney Dance Company, Boston Dance Theater, amongst others. In tandem with building new works, VIM established a contemporary dance theater education platform in 2015 dedicated to supporting the professional lives of artists with ongoing classes, workshops, and annual winter / summer intensives. VIM VIGOR is the company in residence at The University of Michigan where it is nurturing a midwestern hub in the USA for contemporary performance research.
IN THE END
In The End marks the end of the studies of the BA students of dance at LHÍ. In The End is a dance that reflects the transformative aspect of endings. What is born from the end of something? Is the end the same for me and you? This combination of dances — which represent endings in one way or another — are drawn from existing choreographic works as well as from the dance vocabulary of the graduates. Together they weave a series of different ending dances to create new compositions. This concurrence of dances affects the movement, but this impact doesn’t compromise the quality of the dances, but rather allows their transformation. The end result is a hybrid through which we see renewed physical constellations and configurations, a testament to the coexistence of multiple endings.
Coreographer: Inga Huld Hákonardóttir
Co-creaton & performance: 3rd year students
Set design: Guðný Hrund Sigurðardóttir
Costume design: Guðný Hrund Sigurðardóttir & Kristrún Rut Antonsdóttir
Live music & composition: Stirnir Kjartansson
Light design: Ólafur Ágúst Stefánsson
Artistic advice & dramaturgy: Védís Kjartansdóttir
The work of Inga Huld Hákonardóttir is situated in the field of performance and choreography and on occasion branches into music/ concert. Her work generally focuses on seeking friction between the symbolic and the sensorial. Inga graduated from the P.A.R.T.S, Brussels in 2014 and has been working in the field of performance, with a home base in Brussels since.
http://www.ingahakonardottir.com/
