dance

Autonomous Avatar

Rehearsing for AUTONOMOUS AVATAR  by Tobias Staab, a rather complex dance / AI project. A little overwhelming but certainly inspiring to animate butoh-inspired digital avatars on Nadja Sophie Eller’s stage. I am looking much forward to be performing with Corey Scot Gilbert in the full dome Planetarium Bochum.

avatar (/ˈavətɑː/)
noun

1. Hinduism: a manifestation of a deity or released soul in bodily form on earth; an incarnate divine teacher.

2. an icon or figure representing a particular person in a video game, internet forum, etc.

Machines learn to walk, dance … think. Who can still distinguish whether a human or a computer is speaking or writing? In times of Deep Fake, can images still be trusted? Power relations are becoming relative. We have known for a long time that everything we read also reads us. But how intelligent is “artificial intelligence”?
AUTONOMOUS AVATAR poses questions about subjectivity and autonomy, control and subjugation in the context of an immersive dance performance. Live dancers encounter their human and their digital bodies.
The interdisciplinary project tries to make the relationship between human and technology sensually tangible and to connect it for the first time with the recently gained possibilities of a dialogue with an Artificial Intelligence.

press-link: junge-buehne.de

Direction, Text, Concept: Tobias Staab
The choreography was developed in close collaboration between Tobias Staab and the dancers Dasnyia Sommer and Corey Scott-Gilbert.
Performers: Corey Scott-Gilbert & Dasniya Sommer
Voice: Sandra Hüller
3D-Design: Luis August Krawen
Music: Beni Brachtel
Stage Design & Concept: Nadja Sofie Eller
Costume Design: Annika Lu Hermann
Motion Capturing: Warja Rybakova
Light Design: Matthias Singer
Fulldome Expert: Tobias Wiethoff

Funded by: Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien / NEUSTART KULTUR, Dachverband Tanz Deutschland / Tanz:digital
Produced with support by: DOCKdigitalLab, Planetarium Bochum

Fleetstreet Residenz

Very lucky to start working with Michael Schumacher/Meine Damen und Herren Ensemble on Glutamat 2.
It has been a long way to make this collaboration happen. Our research is based on combining Michaels text performance and his auratic presence when he speaks with different movement approaches. We developed a way to dance and rope-tie together, and some dramatic scenes with somewhat absurd poetry. There have been scenic ideas for a Care-Pas de Deux, plenty of sculpturous moments, and a wellness noodle bath.
We continue working on the material all through the year for a show in 2023.

Many thanks to Meine Damen und Herren, especially to Christoph Grothaus and Simone Burkhardt. And to Mark and Sina Schröppel.

Supported by Fleetstreet Theatre Hamburg, the Hamburgische Kulturstiftung, Kulturbehörde Hamburg and the Rudolf Augstein Stiftung .

Thank You For Your Effort..

Preparing ropes for the overture of Liz Rosenfeld’s and Rodrigo Garcia Alves’ current project at Sophiensaele.

DANCE/PERFORMANCE
This hospice is a dune, a neighborhood, an ocean, a meal, a club, an orgy, a cinema, a cruising ground, a long flight, and a lifelong embrace. This hospice is us, them, ours, no ones and yours. This hospice is unknown, and will continue to change.

In their first duet for the stage, Rodrigo Garcia Alves and Liz Rosenfeld explore their desire to understand and create their future hospice together. For this, they drag objects, stories, projections, fantasies, and experiments crafting future worlds for each other through experimental dance, text and video practices. Hailing from Brazil and the United States, Rodrigo Garcia Alves and Liz Rosenfeld met in Berlin almost a decade ago, and began to collaborate in their desires, experiences and stories connected to a queer position on death, dying, end-of-life care. What are the possibilities during this period of life regarding support for queer kin and families who are not related? How do we want to be seen and perceived in this vulnerable phase of life?
Together, they expanded these questions and met with different kinds of artistic practitioners who work with death in both pragmatic and creative ways: a palliative doctor, a death doula, a choir director, a bondage expert and a tattoo healer, among others. From these conversations Rodrigo Garcia Alves und Liz Rosenfeld have built their current hospice, this duet for the present.

PERFORMERS, CONCEPT AND DIRECTION Liz Rosenfeld & Rodrigo Garcia Alves ORIGINAL MUSIC Colin Self LIGHT DESIGN Catalina Fernández COSTUMES AND SET DESIGN Cardo Matos DRAMATURGY Season Butler ARTISTIC ADVISORY Valerie Renay PROP-MAKING Clarisse Canela SEAMSTRESS Dores Maués ARTISTIC ASSISTANCE An*dre Neely BONDAGE EXPERT Dasniya Sommer ARTISTIC SUPPORT/ HOSPICE DOCTOR Christian Küllmei ARTISTIC SUPPORT/PRODUCTION Maicyra Leão VIDEOGRAPHERS TINT Collective PRODUCER Joseph Wegmann

Intuitive Session July

Dasniya-Sommer-choreography-objects-movement-exploration- with Gestalta-distanzen-solo-Berlin

Stills aus der Bewegungsrecherche im Rahmen des Dis-Tanzen-Solo Programms. Herzlichen Dank an den Dachverband Tanz Deutschland e.V. für den Support meiner choreografischen Recherche.

Im Juli mit Gestalta-Hannah Judd, Seilen, Steinen und Semi-suspension.
Live podcast: Mittwoch 7. 7. 2021, 16 Uhr, IG: @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.“

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.“

 

Intuitive Session May

Movement research for Dis-Tanzen-Solo,. With Tara Samaya and Yui Kawaguchi at my Uferhallen atelier in May.

„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.“

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.

March: Backyard Ballet

Choreographing ‘Slow-ballet’ for my instagram podcast as part of the program Dis-Tanzen-Solo.

Early spring my practice went outdoors. Developing choreographic material at Humboldthain and on the Uferhallen compound. Part of it is to apply authentic movement principles to classical vocabulary. Reducing perfection to marking level (15%) and strip tension plus the classical attitude. Searching a quotidian mode as if walking in the streets.
Unlike often in ballet this quality allows my breathing to switch to an aerobic use of oxygen. The low-fy approach leaves also capacity to watch, hear and react with the environment. In the park when dogs and families walk by there are split second eye contacts which are actually interpersonal.
All in all I am currently searching for a mind state while dancing which can stick to a routine, yet perceives what is going on around and is less busy with ‘showing’.

Later I taught the sequence to Yui and here we are just spacing it together in her backyard. Feels familiar dancing with her since we often trained together in class. There is an underlying beat to the material but it’s intuitive. We need to see each other in the periphery and there is an attempt for synchronicity though I like the slight off-ness between us.

Thanks to the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland e.V. für supporting my choreografic research,
and to Yui Kawaguchi for the video.

„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.“