THE
INSTIGATOR
Art & Culture magazine
NEWS
VIDEO / "Creativity, It's What Makes Us Together" by Max Cookward / Video © Courtesy of Max Cookward
MAX
COOKWARD
CREATIVITY
IT'S WHAT MAKES US
V&A
LONDON
CREATIVITY
IT'S WHAT MAKES US
A new artistic collaboration was created with
contemporary dancer Max Cookward, BBC Young Dancer Contemporary Finalist, and the V&A, titled Creativity. It’s What Makes Us.
The film takes us on a cinematic, whirlwind tour of the world’s largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts, and design. The South Kensington institution is transformed into a space of wonder and magic in the two-minute film.
“The director Georgia Hudson and myself were interested in bringing a wildness into the space that challenged the typical ways people move through galleries” Max Cookward.
The film opens with a shot of Cookward as a mannequin wearing Dilara Findikoglu’s tartan dress with silver charms and safety pins, and tells the story of a mannequin dancing through the galleries to a haunting soundtrack, encountering art, design and performance inside the museum. It is a boundless creativity within the museum walls that brings our hero to life, and with the other dancers together he steps into a genderless fantasy that connects back to childhood.
Hudson's filmmaking is known for interrogating themes of identity, self-expression and youth culture. For this production, she is joined by Oscar-nominated cinematographer Seamus McGarvey as Director of Photography. Original choreography by Max Cookward, assisted by Magnus Westwell. Dance by Tania Dimbelolo, Iona McGuire, Pierre-Antoine Bardot and Emma Belabed, and an original soundtrack by Fredwave.
“I imagined how embodied versions of the static artworks might move, bringing to life the sensuality of the Greek God-like sculptures” Max Cookward
With the V&A free general admission policy, art, design and the museum itself is open to everyone.
Max Cookward / V&A, London (UK)
28 April 2022
Creativity
It's what makes us
THE INSTIGATOR Milan Maurer
THE INSTIGATOR Milan Maurer
THE INSTIGATOR Milan Maurer
THE INSTIGATOR Milan Maurer
PHOTO / "The Hidden Man" and " Fiuk" by Milan Maurer / Photos © Courtesy of Bobal Photography
MILAN
MAURER
TRAFO
BUDAPEST
THE HIDDEN MAN
"Each animal has its own universe" Gilles Deleuze.
Freedom as a replacement for bondage. Content as opposed to form. Manifesting our innermost feelings.
In 2015, Hungarian-born Milan Maurer's first performance in contemporary dance was Birdie with Compagnie Pál Frenák. During his career, he has been awarded many times: won the Pro Talento Award, the Fülöp Viktor Scholarship and was chosen for the Best Young Talent of the Season in 2016, as well as the Best Performer in National and International Contemporary Comprehensive Arts Convention in 2019, and most importantly the Cross of Merit in 2022.
Beyond being a beautiful work about the masculine body, and the use of space as tools of a choreographic expression, the creation of choreographer Pál Frenák, The Hidden Men (Fiúk) is an immersion in the unconsciousness of boys and men. It holds up a mirror in front of audience, in which they will examine closely the archetypes of man, the "Macho”, the "Narcissus” and the "Hercules”.
Frenák alternately calls up male chauvinist violence, stupid pretentiousness and the balance of power that structures our interactions with others. He offers a radical vision, and probes male sexuality through its different aspects: its origins, as well as its unconscious sources.
The trio of ropes hanging down into the stage opens up a vertical dimension. The dancers free us from our earth-bound existence and show the way to an unattainable reality as they all desperately want to get to the top.
“The Hidden Man” (Fiúk) Milan Maurer / TRAFO, Budapest, (Hungary)
3 June 2023
“The Hidden Man” (Fiúk) Milan Maurer / TáncFest, Budapest, (Hungary)
18 May 2023
PHOTO / "Nelken" by Pina Bausch / Photo © Courtesy of Laszlo Szito
PINA BAUSCH
SADLER'S WELLS
LONDON
NELKEN
Nelken (Carnation) is a signature piece in Pina Bausch, Tanztheater Wuppertal’s repertoire. At Sadler’s Wells, London, with a field of over 8000 pink carnations on stage standing upright, Nelken conveys a tragic and cruel view on the world, that is unfortunately even more valid today than 40 years ago. It is also a tender piece, overflowing with humanity and emotions that have profoundly touched the audiences all over the world.
“I hate carnations. They stink!” shouts on of the dancers, but again, you should never expect a Bausch dancer to be voiceless.
The dancers, male or female, wear pastel coloured silk dresses, others strict black suites. Bausch’s women are always chic in high heels, like her men. The men, who caper in cocktail dresses are then ordered back into suits and ties again.
Bausch’s style is built on gestures, emotions, power, dependence, and repetition. It is not dance, nor theatre, and certainly not linear, coherent narrative. Maybe it is both in a complicated, chaotic nostalgia. The production is bursting with full of deep emotions, and loving. Pain ends with an ultimate hope, at least, with an illusion, to let us believe there is still hope in humanity.
"Nelken" Pina Bausch / Sadler's Wells, London (UK)
14 - 22 February 2024
PHOTO / "Figures in Extinction" by Nederlands Dans Theatre / Photo © Courtesy of Nederlands Dans Theatre
NEDERLANDS
DANS
THEATRE
SADLER'S WELLS
LONDON
FIGURES IN EXTINCTION
GODS AND DOGS
LA RUTA
A rare opportunity to see the Nederlands Dans Theater presenting a trio of works at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, spanning generations, continents and contemporary issues in a UK premiere of their mind-bending performance.
FIGURES IN EXTINCTION
We are living in an age of extinction: of animals, of languages, of our connection with nature and even people. What to think when we witness violence in which we are both perpetrators and victims?
Choreographer Crystal Pite and director Simon McBurney reflect on their fears and hopes for the age we live in. In a major new collaboration from Nederlands Dans Theater and Complicité these world-renowned artists work together, drawing on a rich array of materials such as the sound of icecaps melting, tree roots growing, and the protests of climate change deniers.
GODS AND DOGS
Gods and Dogs is the 100th choreography Jiří Kylián created for Nederlands Dans Theater. This mysterious piece by the master choreographer visualizes the fine line between normality and abnormality. As he puts it: “Surely no positive developments can ever be accomplished without the help of a healthy portion of madness.” Gods and Dogs is referring to Kylián’s fascination for the beauty of what is left incomplete in life.
LA RUTA
On a dark, fog-shrouded stage, a street is at once a motorway, a lonely village lane and a forest path. Space and time are suspended. Argentinian choreographer Gabriela Carrizo combines modern dance with acrobatics and slapstick in La Ruta.
With her unusual, experimental style, Carrizo takes us into a parallel dream world that you can interpret into your own never-ending story. Be warned: she doesn’t let you go easily.
Nederlands Dans Theater / Sadler's Wells, London (UK)
19 – 22 April 2023