Art

Performance: flux nX cusp

By Gestalta and Dasniya Sommer

Opening night: IN EXCESS

“In Excess” understands itself as a mental image, a template for interpreting connection, exploring power relations and the sensory experience of our present through BDSM. Curated by Creamcake and happening as part of the seventh 3hd edition, called “Power Play”, the group exhibition features nine artists, collectives and collaborations who negotiate convention through the consensual practice of sadomasochism and play. Running at Park Center Treptow from October 2 to 31, it fearlessly embraces taboos in sexuality, sharing a fascination with authority and the desire for transgression and contradiction, as well as a longing for a loss or conscious relinquishment of control. More

Opening of 3hd 2021 Festival on October 2nd, 2021
Activations by participants:
Gestalta & Dasniya Sommer: flux nX cusp
Federica Dauri & Hermes Pittakos in collaboration with Peaches

Venue:
Park Center Treptow
Am Treptower Park 14
12435 Berlin

Many thanks to the funding support program Neustart Kultur /GVL-Stipendienprogramm for providing the material frame for this research.

‘Creamcake’ is coming up

Looking much forward to start rehearsing with Gestalta for a show at Creamcake’s 3HD Festival.

Neoliberal digital society is permeated by power and violence. These structures and dynamics required to survive in capital-oriented societies can be counter-read in abstract form with sadomasochistic practices. Now in it’s seventh edition, Creamcake’s 3hd Festival approaches the transgressive phenomenon of contemporary BDSM, kink and its varieties of exercises in force and control through art, music, performance and film. This year’s “Power Play”—running from October 2 to 10, and happening at various venues across Berlin and on the internet—considers the perception of a sexuality that defines itself as ‘play’. That is specifically in relation to notions of dominance and submission as socially-negotiable within sadomasochistic cultural techniques.

INTUITIVE SESSION JUNE

Movement exploration for my instagram podcast as part of the program Dis-Tanzen-Solo. Thanks to the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland e.V. für supporting this choreografic research.

Live Podcast: Wednesday June 29th, 5pm, IG: @Dasniya_Sommer

It’s a daily routine in itself to figure out each morning practice. Ranging from micro-movement exploration to narrative detail and context on a sensory level more than on a conceptual. Some material slips out spontaneously. Coming from a fraction of a memory, teeny gestures, a dream still hovering between the cells.
As I move figuring how spontaneous thought streams like to be expressed. Which parts like to be left in silence? Or more general, how finding the groove of the day? Quickly checking in mood(y)-wise, relating to the environment, the room, here a friends apartment I housesat last week. Plus for example changing forth and back my camera relation-dynamic, from an imagined observer thingy to being a comfortable partner. Inevitably working with lens proximity indoors which allows bodily perception to rest closer, within 1,50 meter. Also mime-wise there is something extra invasive communicating in this private circumference with an anonymous lens.
Often physical wear and tear play a role in discovering new and more counterintuitive coordination, because new patterns lie outside of the years of training routines. So I am navigating along the threshold of anatomical restrictions and habits and gradually transforming them into repeatable principles. Much enjoy grinding neuro-motor-pathways and thereby sort of reclaiming vocabulary which has been executed endlessly as pure movement and can grow more selfhood if wanted. That’s a difference I am choreographically curious about, balancing between dance-dance and performative-dance qualities.
Another question is about the the old good creative way…Considering semi-pleasurable/ tragic experiences, stories as nourishing sources. I like drama and pathos but equally want to find other logics, pleasure, lightness for making.

The score for this session was dancing a dream inside a dream.

Podcast on Instagram: June Tuesday 29th at 4pm @Dasniya_Sommer

„Gefördert durch die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien im Programm NEUSTART KULTUR, [Hilfsprogramm DIS-TANZEN/ tanz:digital/ DIS-TANZ-START] des Dachverband Tanz Deutschland.“

 

Shibari Classes

Dear Shibari- and rope friends!
Currently there are still no group classes taking place in my studio.
I can offer private classes for people who are vaccinated and can come with a partner. If you are interested, please email me for more details at workshops(at)dasniyasommer.de.

Foto: Tryouts at Ballhaus Ost during TakeCareResidenzen

Parsifal

(Sadly) another project cancelled:
without the pandemic we would now be in Brussels for the ten year anniversary of Romeo Castellucci’s Parsifal, at De Munt/La Monnaie Opera. A mammut staging with  intricate mass scenes, the highest and greenest forrest in opera history and flying flowergirls in act II.
Reviving and choreographing ropes for such a special production, with a beloved bondage crew, would have been a fun challenge after ten years.

DE MUNT / LA MONNAIE

PARSIFAL Premiere: 27.01.2011
Direction musicale: Hartmut Haenchen
Mis en scne, Decor, DŽcors et Costumes / Kostuums, ƒclairages / Belichting: Romeo Castellucci
Video: Apparati Effimeri
Choreography: Cindy Van Acker
Shibari Art: Dasniya Sommer
Photo shows: To—mas T—omasson, Frances d’ Ath, Gala Moody, Dasniya Sommer

Research Routines – Talking Toes

Movement exploration for my instagram podcast as part of the program Dis-Tanzen-Solo. Many thanks to Dachverband Tanz Deutschland e.V. for the support.

Live session: Monday April, 26 at 4pm
www.instagram.com/dasniya_sommer/ 

Talking Toes‘ adds hip action to the previous shoulder exploration ⬇️ because foot habits usually start at the architecture of the pelvis and from there root downward. Activating individual muscles groups in the pelvic region takes a moment since it seems like one massive bone structure, sheltering and protecting our guts from external impact.
Staying on the level of movement research, I am again using PNF -proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation – a taktile sense ⬇️ to work out axes and patterns of the pelvic joint, and how it’s micro movement travel up the spine if wanted.
At first its not about moving the leg but finding the individual impulse of the right and left pelvic half. Later these impulses are extended into the periphery and shaped to classical forms but originating at the very core.

I am reading into stereometry in dance, or dynamic spatial geometry. Starting.
An arabesque cut in half brakes the idea of the infinite line, as well as the wrist rope. If there is the full circumference of movement, there also is the folded in or the restricted spacial imprint. With smaller reach, with the lower leg being visually deleted. But therefor more differentiation and attention towards surrounding and often neglected parts and their opportunities to move. Now, by immobilising the lower leg, this becomes obvious. The surrounding parts, like toe or sacrum articulation need to take over. Get creative. For a moment it’s a little brain fuck. Sensory unfamiliar. Staminawise harder, but I am after these alternative sources of movement. For now. Twitches in uncoordinated corners of the little toe, and some time later adding goofy fun stuff.
My (not so virgin) lower back also appreciates this routine. Intrinsic fibres between the vertebrae’s are waking up with deeper blood circulation, and if you do it for a while some blood will rush pleasantly across the pelvic floor.

„Gefördert durch die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien im Programm NEUSTART KULTUR, [Hilfsprogramm DIS-TANZEN/ tanz:digital/ DIS-TANZ-START] des Dachverband Tanz Deutschland.“

GLUTAMAT research

Im Rahmen von GLUTAMAT research stellt die Berliner Choreographin und Tänzerin Dasniya Sommer die Normierung von Körperbildern, Exotismen und Fast Food Konsum in einen irritierenden Zusammenhang. Als Analysetools dienen ihr dabei ein dekonstruierndes Verständnis von klassischem Ballett, die japanische Bondage Variante Shibari und eine originäre Pop Art Adaption.

Konzept, Choreografie, Set design, Kostüme, Tanz: Dasniya Sommer
Tanz und Co-Choreografie: Tara Jade Samaya und Yui Kawaguchi
Critical companion: Ursina Tossi
Kamera und Schnitt: Pippa Samaya

1000 Dank an Tina Pfurr und Anne Brammen für die zweimonatige Residenz! Sie ist Teil des Take Care Residenzen Programms, gefördert vom Ballhaus Ost, Flausen Netzwerk und Fonds Darstellende Künste.