Festina Lente – Make haste slowly
Performance
by
shifts – art in movement / David Brandstätter & Malgven Gerbes
In the frame of 8th Tanznacht Berlin 2014
Festina Lente, ‘make haste slowly’ in Latin, is an installation comprising five dancers whose movements are displaced by the audience. But who is the audience? Who is a performer? On this evening, the boundaries are fluid. The dancers take their impulses from the spectators – setting the dancers in movement. At first glance it is a simple game but during the course of the evening our handling of expectation and disappointment is revealed. With time and space. With a light touch, Festina Lente develops its dynamic from the moment. The audience conducts the rhythm and progress of what happens: sometimes movements effect an individual dancer, sometimes the whole group. Sometimes abstract dynamics are effected, sometimes the dramatic sequence of the whole piece. A choreography full of surprises in which the dancers are in the hands of the audience. Or are they pursuing a totally different goal?
Choreography & concept: Malgven Gerbes, David Brandstätter. Dance & choreographic collaboration: Vidal Bini, Caroline Allaire, I-Fen Lin, Sebastian Kurth, Malgven Gerbes. Composition: Ruth Wiesenfeld Lighting design: Bruno Pocheron. Text & dramaturgical advisor: David Williams.
Production: shifts art in movement Production management: Katja Kettner.
FESTINA LENTE is a shifts art in movement, CCN Le Havre and Fabrik Potsdam co-production. Supported by funds from the Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin, DRAG Haute Normandie and the Region Haute Normandie, Le conseil Général de Seine Maritime. With friendly cooperation of: La Compagnie Beau Geste, Le Rive Gauche – Scène Conventionnée de St Etienne du Rouvray, Le résau Labaye, Odia Normandie – Office de Diffusion et d’Information Artistique en Haute-Normandie.
shifts – art in movement / David Brandstätter & Malgven Gerbes
Malgven Gerbes is born in France. She studied architecture in Paris in the ENSAAMA (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et Métiers d’Arts), and worked two years as architect in Le Bon Marché Paris (Group LVMH). She graduated in choreography in ArtEZ Arnhem (former EDDC) in the Netherlands. Malgven Gerbes choreographed and performed for group collaborative projects in Tanzhaus NRW Düsseldorf, in the Forum Freies Theater in Düsseldorf, for the Miryang Summer Festival in Korea, the Seoul Performing Arts Festival DANCE 2010 Munich, les Hivernales d’Avignon, among others. She was guest professor for one semester in the choreographic department at the Korean National University of the Arts (KNUA) in autumn 2007, in the choreographic department of ArtEZ Arnhem in spring 2008, in Dartington College of arts (UK) in 2009. She regularly teaches for professional dancers in places such as Tanzfabrik Berlin, Labor Gras Berlin, Session House Tokyo.