She cries and cries. Geneviève gives voice to her writings and their poetry unfolds through slow and simple movements. We are transported on her somatic voyage of transformation towards emancipation. This intimate movement study dives deep into memory, fishing out fragments. These traces of the past materialized during the dancemaker’s reflective process about her tri-cultural heritage: Vietnamese, Argentinean, and Québécois. The work also springs from testimonials gathered in the field about the cultural amnesia and identity shock related to human migrations.
Choreography and performance Geneviève Duong
Creative writing mentorship Mélanie Rivet
Rehearsal direction Marie-Chantale Béland
In 2016 I completed a writing residence under the mentorship of Gatineau poet Mélanie Rivet. With the theme of collective memory, this performance solo was presented for the first time at the choreographic event La Petite Scène at the Cercle Lab vivant in Québec City in 2017. The scenic elements (a slide machine from the 1960s and a photo projection of my maternal grandparents); bodywork; voice; and shadow theatre are used to awaken the unconscious self in tangible ways.
Since her studies in nursing at McGill University and the completion of her diploma in contemporary dance, with distinction, from L’École de danse de Québec (2012), Geneviève Duong has worked as a performer, choreographer, and teacher. With a strong desire to anchor her work in a process of scientific reflection, she enrolled in a bachelor’s degree in Historical Sciences and Heritage Studies at Laval University (2017). Her creations reflect one of her most profound interests, the development of a body language that is active, conscious and humane through a spontaneous multidisciplinary creation process. She participated in a research residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts (2017) in order to study the multiple ways of using the body and voice in dialogue with music, and all within a performance context. In a desire to continually learn and develop she participated in Springboard (2016). She is an administrator with the RQD (2015-2018) as well as with L’Artère.
If we were to be given the possibility to create a new space based on everything that we know, what kind of space would it be? What value system would it hold? Onstage, two bodies are constructing and deconstructing a new piece of land with their bodies and for their bodies. Their journey is tough and demanding. The land is fake and unyielding, the sound threatens to flood it all, their energy and flesh is their only driving force. Together they will form a new skin. Not on This Earth is a physical and spiritual journey that seeks to bring the body back in time – to its primal roots, to its essential form: boundless and pure. It is a prayer for freedom from the social restrictions of gender, nationality, colour, and religion.
Concept and choreography Keren Rosenberg
Performance and collaboration Christian Guerematchi, Keren Rosenberg
Composition Raphael Vanoli
Lighting design Hugo Dalphond, Alexandre Marte
Coaching Suzy Blok
Production Dansmakers Amsterdam, House Of Victorious Humans
Publicity Dansmakers Amsterdam
Production management Charlot van der Meer, Evelien van de Sanden
Made with the support of Dansmakers Amsterdam, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, Fonds podiumkunsten
Our commonalities started from our body language, which has been refined, composed and settling in our genes for thousands of years. The imprints of heat, our proximity to the Mediterranean Sea, and our profound connection to the land carry a distinct rhythm and urgency. This translated into a raw physicality and influenced the energy of our presence and exchange in the space, making for a charged and at times confronting dialogue. Our process for this work has been nomadic, taking us through Denmark, Italy, Ireland, and Amsterdam. Each place brought different perspectives and confrontations with respect to our origins and what has been imprinted in our cells and memory. We are constantly exploring different ways of dealing with experiencing and having experienced very different realities within close geographic proximity. These realities were often met with inconsistencies, different reasons to be right or wrong, informing what is to become this work.
Keren Rosenberg is a Middle Eastern, Amsterdam-based performer, maker, and movement researcher. Through her work and artistic practice, she seeks to articulate a new physical and socio-political gaze on the body and its environment; to hunt for rituals and a physicality that can liquify boundaries between body and environment, between social skins and the primal body underneath; to question queer and socio-political contexts from a hetero-fluid perspective while creating multidisciplinary collaborations with artists working with photography, film, design, sound, and theory. As a movement researcher, Keren was invited in 2011 by Ohad Naharin to study the Gaga movement language and become a certified teacher. Since then she has been invited to teach Gaga and her own choreographic practice, Body-House, in professional institutions, dance companies, and festivals around Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, and Oceania. Keren is currently artist in residence at Dansmakers Amsterdam.
