Hiatus - Daniel Linehan - Vita Activa
During this residency Daniel Linehan, Michael Helland and Anneleen Keppens prepare Vita Activa, an interactive workshop about 'time' and 'work', a new edition of which takes place in STUK from 22 to 26 April 2024.
Imagine that something you love to do is valuable for someone else, and that you get something in return that is important to you. Imagine that the other is a stranger that strikes up a conversation, and you end up teaching how to make lasagne in exchange for a lindy hop lesson.
In Vita Activa a group works together for a week, playing with concepts of work and time. The workshop is an artistic project that turns the dance studio into a free space for people, with or without artistic background, who have never worked together before.
The participants investigate the role of work in society. They are given tools to look at their skills and knowledge in a new way and to search for possibilities to share them. The process is a creative game full of interactions. A different experience of valuing work arises, blurring the borders between types of work. The aim is to grow into a temporary community with an alternative economy.
Hiatus is a Brussels-based contemporary dance company led by choreographer Daniel Linehan. Hiatus creates dance productions and workshops. They want to create space for exchange and connections in the here and now, focusing on our physical, social and ecological surroundings, in a theatre, a studio or beyond. Hiatus actively poses questions, listens and reacts, with an emphasis on the value of creative processes and public experiences.
With his choreographies, Daniel Linehan walks the thin line between dance and everything else. He makes performances from the point of view of a curious amateur, tests interactions between dance and non-dance, looking for unusual combinations, oppositions and parallels. Linehan studied dance in Seattle and New York. In 2008 he moved to Brussels, where he concluded the Research Cycle at P.A.R.T.S., and founded his company Hiatus in 2018. He has created 19 dance performances, written a book and given a lot of workshops.