Project Giessen 2011

Project Giessen 2011 

with Xavier Le Roy and Mårten Spångberg.

This workshop (18 Feb - 5 Mar 2011) involved a co-operation between the MA Choreography and Performance (CUP), Institute for Applied Theatre Studies, Geissen University and Motion Bank. It took as its starting place Le Roy's Project 2003 -- using and transforming the procedures, operations, methods, issues and challenges that were at stake in that work.
MACUP students 'Hat Game' Project Giessen 2011. Photo: Jessica Schäfer

One of the original games, the '3 Games Game', developed during the working process for Project 2003 and three different scores from Project 2003 are published in Everybodys Performance Scores (2010) pp. 102-115. But rather than redoing Project 2003, Le Roy and Spångberg took this as a research opportunity for themselves to "learn more about it and to share and develop understandings about what choreography can be and can do."
Xavier Le Roy & Mårten Spångberg (white hat)- Photo: Jessica Schäfer

For the working process, they set up practices with the MACUP students that continuously questioned relationships between processes, products and their reception. Some of the questions the students were asked to consider included: How, when and what games/rules are perceived as choreographies and/or vice versa? How, when and what link specific movement productions, choreographies, and mode of performance?
MACUP students perhaps in 'Rugby'. Photo: Jessica Schäfer

Eventually a new score for Project Giessen was created that included over 20 different sections with titles such as Mirroring Moving On Eye Contact, Choreography On The Music, Hat Game + Comments <Sports Like>, Rugby + Interview As Comment and Brennnball #10 With Music. This is the score that would guide the performance to be presented on the final day of the workshop. 
MACUP students 'Brennball...'. Photo: Jessica Schäfer

The presentation of Project Giessen 2011 took place where they had been working for the week in the studio of The Forsythe Company. The event included a talk with the audience at the end facilitated by MACUP course leader Gerald Siegmund and Scott deLahunta. By embracing artistic research that draws on and make use of scores or 'score-like things', this co-operation laid the ground for the Motion Bank Workshop Series which would begin in April 2011.
Final presentation of Project Giessen with audience. Photo: Jessica Schäfer

Workshop Documentation Pages:

http://motionbank.org/en/content/workshops

http://motionbank.org/en/event/project-giessen-2011

http://motionbank.org/en/event/motion-bank-workshop-no1

http://motionbank.org/en/event/motion-bank-workshop-no-2

http://motionbank.org/en/event/motion-bank-workshop-no-3

http://motionbank.org/en/event/motion-bank-workshop-no-4

http://motionbank.org/en/event/motion-bank-workshop-no-5

http://motionbank.org/en/event/motion-bank-laboratory

http://motionbank.org/en/event/choreographic-coding-lab-motion-bank-report