Heine Avdal & Yukiko Shinozaki / fieldworks - Assimilation (working title)

Assimilation consists of a series of solos, duets and trios, performed by Ingrid Haakstad, Tale Dolven, Krisjanis Sants, Ieva Gaurilcikaite, Yukiko Shinozaki, and Heine Avdal. In recent work, Avdal and Shinozaki used diverse media and tools (objects, sound, projection, text) to explore everyday spaces (hotels, supermarkets, offices, theatres) and how they and our conventional use of them shape our bodies and movements, actions, and gestures. In “Assimilations,” the choreographers pare down the choreographic material to the body, and nothing but the body. The performance is inspired by what Myriam Sas calls the weight and tactility of darkness. In the dark, only the body and its gestures will be made perceptible. This makes the space that immediately surrounds the body come into relief. How do we perceive this space? What is it? And how does it transform, and become tactile, or material? While focusing in detail on bodily movement and bodily movement alone, the dance will reveal the space this movement produces. How does the body connect with - or separate itself from - its surroundings, and others? What does this mean at the current moment, which is disorienting and forces us to interrogate our position in the world. While producing a sense of numbness, anxiety, and apathy (caused by a constant news and data overload, personal data and information manipulation, climate change, extremism and political inaction or unrest), the current situation also demands action, resistance, and protest. The demands of our times result in a need for simplification, focus, and abstraction, and for the power of the imagination to take center stage.

TEAM
Heine Avdal, Yukiko Shinozaki, Roeland Luyten, Fude Ryoya, Sara Jansen, Bob Van Langendonck

Avdal and Shinozaki together started their own company fieldworks (formally named 'deepblue').

Since 2000 more than 20 productions were created, which all have been touring internationally.

The various productions are concerned with “performativity” and allow for an open interpretation of movement as a heterogeneous combination of a variety of media. Consequently, the artists draw on a broad range of disciplines and expertise: performance, dance, visual arts, video, music, and technology.

Every performance plays on the tension and contrast between the body and objects, the body and the mind, fact and fiction/representation, the tangible and the invisible, the organic and the artificial, ... Recurrent themes in the productions include the relationship between performer and spectator, the non-hierarchical approach to the various elements of a performance, and the exploration of both theatrical and non-theatrical environments.

fieldworks productions are made for a wide variety of locations/settings, both public and private; for the theatre: you are here (2008), nothing's for something (2012), a supermarket: Borrowed Landscape (2013), a hotel room: Field Works-hotel (2011), an office: Field Works-office (2010), a concert hall: The Otheroom (2016 - a collaboration with contemporary music composer Rolf Wallin), or even a whole building and its surroundings: the site-specific project carry on (2015-2020). Avdal and Shinozaki's latest production unannounced (2017) is a performance on fragmentation of time and space that blurs the conventional distinctions between the ‘outside’ and the ‘inside’ of the aesthetic event. Currently they are working on a new production "Assimimation" (working title) inspired by the tactility of darkness, and to be premiered in 2021.