Violent/Break: Vol II – Cat Mahari (US)
The Table Turns – Karen Eide Bøen/Roar Sletteland (NO)
15. June @ 19.00
Welcome to the closing of the spring season with 2 shorter works:
The solo mixtape series Violent/Break: Vol II:
The solo mixtape series Violent/Break: Vol II is an interdisciplinary solo performance created and performed by Cat Mahari. Vol II explores violence as a relational process from which can arise material and transcendental frames of intuitive and strategic mitigation. The movement forms from which this empathic narrative journey begins are krump, hip-hop, and Chen tai chi chuan.
Credits: Sound composition, text, choreography, performance, and media design – Cat Mahari
Cat Mahari is a free style hip hop and house dancer, with training in krump, modern/contemporary, ballet, West African, Cuban Rumba and Salsa, and Chen Taiji. Currently focused on multi-layered art processes for the stage and multi-media installation, she remains committed to street dance culture, including entering and winning battles. She is a 2019 Propeller Fund Awardee for the upcoming project Loving Each Other, which focuses on Blackness and intimacy through revolutions of Chicago dance culture – stepping, house, footwork and hip-hop.
www.catmahari.com
The Table Turns is about freedom and power on the dance floor, conveyed through four turntables and one dancer. Club dancing as we know it springs from an upheaval in dance culture in the 1960s and 70s, especially in the USA.
The civilized and controlled couple dance was replaced by unbridled moves in disused industrial premises and old attics; orchestras were replaced by a DJ, swing rhythms by beats. Letting loose in the crowd on the dance floor became a way to demonstrate your freedom. Yet this freedom is limited. The dancers can only express themselves within the limits set by a mysterious DJ figure. Behind the spontaneous community is an individual that controls the evening’s rises and falls in speed and intensity – the entire dramaturgy of the dance floor. The Table Turns challenges this power dynamic. The dancer controls the rotation of the records and the position of the pin through movement sensors. Paradoxically enough, this control leads to a loss of freedom, a radical narrowing of the possibilities of movement. As the dancer relies on dancing forth the music, the dance and music are simultaneously created and oppose each other. By reversing the connection between sound and movement the performance questions the relationship between individual and community, the power dynamic between dance and music, and the tension between dance as an art form and dance as a social activity.
By: Karen Eide Bøen and Roar Sletteland
Scenography: Apichaya Wanthiang Light design: Leo Preston.
Co-production: BIT Teatergarasjen. Supported by: Norwegian Art Council.