Benjamin Kahn - Cri(s)...
Cri(s)…, is a new interdisciplinary stage work, investigating the scream and its materiality, through different forms of physical and performative approaches. The studio research draws from musical references such as experimental rap, opera or heavy metal, as well as political speeches and social manifestations - embodying and expanding existing ways of screaming and the echoes it produces. Cri(s)... attempts to explore the limits of trading vulnerabilities and the trend to commodify {almost} everything. Urgency tends to become the new currency of a contemporary society - disaster tourism is the new power of self capitalisation. Nevertheless can the scream fluctuate and flow between different states and associations, function as a tool to support or control. The residency connects to the previous development phase and forms the final studio research before starting the production of the piece. Currently we investigate mainly the materiality of the scream and how it can be activated and used as a choreographic instrument on stage and/or public space. Through the work with the dancers and the musician, we look what sort of physicality is produced through the act and sound and of screaming. What and how is the scream already present in our “daily” life as a channel of urgency and how is it performed - represented and even reproduced? How can this one act manifest and relate, to sometimes opposing experiences or meanings, inhabiting both, a primal, instinctive urge and a commodified instrumentalisation of fragility? In the studio we question somatic practices, as well as movement, both as a generator of sound but also their impact on the act of screaming. As a continuation of the different research strains, I want to examine further a radicalised practice, feeding off- and into an index of already existing codes, interpretations and uses of the scream. In the studio we want to delve further into models of how an expanded choreographic practice can render these questions into a spacial and corporeal matter.
TEAM
Benjamin Kahn (Choreographer)
Cherish Menzo (outside eye - choreography)
Theo Aucremanne (performer)
Sati Veyrunes (performer)
Julien Desprez (musical director)
Julia Reist/arp.works (artistic research assistant / Production)
Benjamin Kahn (Choreographer) is a dancer and choreographer. He studied dramaturgy and theater at the University of Aix en Provence and at the Rennes Conservatory, and is a graduate of the ESAC (Ecole Supérieure des Arts du Cirque) in Belgium. After his studies, he worked with choreographers such as Philippe Saire, Benjamin Vandewalles, Nicole Beutler, Ben Riepe, Frédéric Flamand, Maud Le Pladec, Egle Budvytyte, and Alessandro Sciaronni. He considers dance and choreography as powerful political tools and is particularly interested in the construction and deconstruction of the way we look at individual and collective bodies.
Cherish Menzo (performer, assistant Choreographer) graduated in 2013 from The Urban Contemporary (JMD) at the ‘Hogeschool voor de Kunsten’ in Amsterdam. After her graduation she has danced in several productions of various choreographers such as Eszter Salamon, Akram Khan, Leo Lerus, Hanzel Nezza, Olivier Dubois, Lisbeth Gruwez, Jan Martens and Nicole Beutler. Next to her work as a dancer and performer Cherish creates her own work. In 2016 she created the dance performance EFES in collaboration with Nicole Geertruida (Bronze award winner Amsterdam Fringe). This dance duet presents a hypnotic, rhythmical performance that totally absorbs the audience in a metronome-like universe of two people utterly absorbed and driven by the beat (Julian Caddy). Since 2018, Menzo performs the solo Sorry But I Feel Slightly Disidentified... by Benjamin Kahn. A portrait that aims to trigger the notion of stereotypes. This close collaboration has been initiated in 2017 in the frame of Fraslab (Frascati Productions). The project was quickly followed by LIVE (Veem House for Performance, 2018), a hybrid mix of dance performance and pop/ rock concert, made together with musician Müşfik Can Müftüoğlu. In 2019, Cherish presented JEZEBEL, which won an Amsterdam Fringe Award and an International Bursary Award. The production had its premiere on November 5th at Frascati (Amsterdam, NL) and has been nominated for the BNG Bank Theaterprijs 2020.
Theo Aucremanne (performer) starts dancing with classical and jazz in a village school.Then enters an association where he also started to work with contemporary dance. In parallel to his three dominant dances, he went to explore other dances such as American tap, break dance and flamenco. In 2017, he obtains the EAT (technical aptitude test) in contemporary and jazz. The same year, he enters the National Center for Contemporary Dance in Angers and graduates with a professional higher national diploma of dancer in July 2020. During his training, he was able to encounter a diversity of works from creators such as, Pina Bausch, Trisha Brown, Merce Cunningham, Odile Duboc. He was also able to work with choreographers such as Ambra Senatore, Alban Richard on creations as part of his professional training. Aucremanne had the opportunity to do workshops with companies such as François Chaignaud, Gisèle Vienne, Alban Richard and Maud Le Pladec. Still within the framework of his studies, he began to compose his own choreographic pieces.
Sati Veyrunes (performer) graduated from SEAD in 2019. She has worked with NeedCompany/ Jan Lauwers for the Salzburger Festspiele, the Icelandic choreographer Erna Ómarsdóttir for the transmission of her solo IBM 1401, A user's manual and with Oona Doherty for the revival of her solo Hope Hunt in 2021. Parallel to her experience as a dancer, she is a third-year student of history at the University Paris Nanterre. Through these various collaborations Sati is interested in the profound work that links the changes of opposing physical states in the same body, the exploration of the voice and the power of the underground forces that sustain the performer's performance.
Julien Desprez (musical director), is a musician and performer based in Paris. Jazz and rock were his early musical loves but they evolved rapidly to free forms where body and space find their places through sound. As his practice progressed, his conception and approach to his instrument as well, and music and space changed. He is now considering the guitar more like a battery, an organ, a modifiable instrument deployable at will.Through a mix of actions on the instrument and a play of foot on efect pedals, taking inspiration from the technique of Tap Dance, it completely opened the possibilities, sound and physical environment of the instrument. This results in a practice where body is engaged to its fullest.Now evolving between sound art, performance and contemporary improvisational music, his work today is centered around all the questions that exist within a stage space, through body, space, sight and light, but where the sound remains the central pillar. Julien is also a co-founder of the Collectif Coax, a music cooperative based in Paris and created in 2008, which was recently labeled "Compagnie Nationale" by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication.