Intimising Dance is a video programme selected by Ida Hiršenfelder in the framework of Videospotting series of video art programmes produced by SCCA-Ljubljana. It has been screened as a part of TransDance 13 Festival (from 21st till 30th October, 2013) organised by HaRaKa Center in their newly opened exhibition space ODA in the centre of Cairo, Egipt.
The festival annual topic was Oblivion and Resistance focused on the questions of performance and actions based on the use of the body, the creation of the rules of observation, presentation and mediation, archives and monopoly, the deletion of memory and lose.
[title] Intimising Dance
[curator] Ida Hiršenfelder
[production] SCCA-Ljubljana, 2013
[duration] 8 hours 40 minutes
[concept] The dance video as a genre of video art was very strongly present in Slovene cultural environment in the 90s when dancers e.g En-Knap and video artists e.g. Sašo Podgoršek or Ema Kugler had created some of the most known collaborations between performance and visual arts. In the 21. Century it seems that this collaborations had somewhat disappeared from video production. We have examined this assumption with an overview of video production of the past decade and found that dance video production of this period can be viewed with the following four very different approaches:
- Dance video that is made as an artistic (video) interpretation of an existing dance performance (Ana Čigon: Timelessness). It is also possible that such a performes would be specifically designed for video and not for the live audience (Apolonija Šušteršič: Entrance de Singel).
- Dance video would be the final product of the performance initiated by video artist him/herself. It could be a solo performance for one dancer (Maja Slavec: Revaluation; Evelin Stermitz: Inside the Outside) or a more ambitious dance project where the artist would play the role of a theatre director (Neven Korda: Echoes).
- Dance video in which the artist mixes found footages of a dance performance that are emphasised by the rhythm of music in connection to the rhythm of video picture (Maja Smrekar: Repeating Coincidence; Zemira Alajbegović: Vortex).
- Dance video where the video artist him/herself acts as an amateur dancer (Ana Čigon: One More Kick; Sašo Vrabič: Santa).
From the indicated four approaches we are able to conclude that in comparison to the video of the 90s with predominant large dance and video production we are speaking about gradual “intimising” of the dance video.
Ana Čigon, Timelessness, 20′
Ana Čigon, 2008
Apolonija Šušteršič, Kees van Zelst, Entrance de Singel, 5′ 50”
Apolonija Šušteršič, Kees van Zelst, 1997
Maja Slavec, Revaluation (short version), 5′
Maja Slavec, 2008
Evelin Stermitz, Inside the Outside, 5′ 33”
Evelin Stermitz, 2006
Neven Korda, Echoes, 5′
Aksioma – Zavod za sodobno umetnost, Ljubljana, 2009
Maja Smrekar, Repeating Coincidence, 3′ 42”
Maja Smrekar, 2009
Zemira Alajbegović, Vortex, 4′ 5”
TV Slovenija, 2000
Ana Čigon, One More Kick, 4′ 35”
Ana Čigon, 2009
Sašo Vrabič, Santa (short version), 3′ 32”
Sašo Vrabič, 2001
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HaRaKa is a leading research platform for performance and dance in Cairo, connecting research, production, publishing and education since 2006. Since 2009 HaRaKa is organising TransDance Festival in Cairo in order to develop and investigate interdisciplinary potential of video art in relation to performing practices.
SCCA-Ljubljana has thus far collaborated with HaRaKa Centre on several occasions. The first time, in 2008 TransDance Festival with video programme Videodance_6. Two years after, SCCA has contributed another video programme Dancemania for the Townhouse Gallery (Cairo) and an interdisciplinary workshop Open Studio, conducted by video artist Neven Korda at Studio Emad Eddin Foundation.