Sleeping Beauties—Dancing & Multimedia Workshop Demonstration

A global art and media project

based on the Global Seed Vault of Svalbard

Research Workshop and Showcase in Drum Tower West Theatre on 6th, March 2016

 

The seed is a source of life, the beginning of everything, and the Vault (also known as the “Doomsday Vault”) represents the need to protect it at all costs. As long as there are seeds, there is hope; everything that die, could blossom once again. These “sleeping beauties”, resting in the depth of a mountain close to the North Pole, could one day save the world.

Inspired by the Seed Vault in Svalbard, the very North human settlement belonging to Norway, Inger Buresund, the artistic director of Ibsen International opened up a journey along with Norwegian choreographer Ina Christel Johannessen (Zerovisibility Corp.) and Chinese multimedia artists Feng Jiangzhou and Zhang Lin (Sifenlv Studio).

The first part of the production journey started from Beijing, with 5 day workshop held in Drum Tower West Theatre, and on the 6th day, we organized a free Showcase and Discussion event, during which 4 dancers from Zerovisibility lead by Ina Christel Johannessen presented 4 pieces of dancings achieved during the workshop, with the background of various and attractive multimedia projection images, including the most associative Beijing smog and heavy traffic on the highway.

Two families of artists tried hard to find the common language during this one week workshop, from the technical exploration till the practical consideration, from the micro expressions of the dancers/performers to the macro effects of the multimedia, from the intuitive and natural human physicality to the technically sophisticated projection and mapping skills, slowly opening up to comfortable discourses for both.

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