Thomas Hauert Residency No. 1

Thomas Hauert

Residency No.1 / 3-8 September 2012

The first Thomas Hauert TWO project residency with the ACCAD, Dance Department score team, involved Hauert and two of the ZOO company dancers Sara Ludi and Samantha van Wissen. The company performs improvised works motivated by Hauert’s “desire to maximize the creative possibilities of the body in motion and to go beyond the habits inscribed in it…”.
Thomas Hauert & Chrysa Parkinson. "Parallellemade" Photo: Bart Grietens

ZOO’s performances privilege emergent structures and events that evolve in collective and individual impulse and invention. This involves rigorous, long-term practice and cultivation of the mind/body connection and patterns of decision-making, perception, and action. For more than a decade, Hauert has honed this craft and developed training methodologies with his company. The TWO creative team set out to study these methodologies Hauert employs, focusing specifically on his body-level techniques and small group movement strategies. (see Norah Zuniga Shaw's TWO blog entry)
Accords (2008). Photo: Filip Vanzielegehm (link to 'Accords' on vimeo)

The residency began with a movement session observed by the creative team followed by discussion with Hauert and the dancers describing the strategies and systems they work with with names like 'resistance trios', 'loose impulse' and 'careful scientist'. The establishment of a common vocabulary for multidisciplinary collaboration is essential and names like these play an important role in this, but as Maria Palazzi writes (see TWO blog entry) the shared vocabulary needs to eventually work at three levels, for the originators (insiders), the project team level and for the intended audience.

The residency continued on day two with more movement sessions and a presentation to related work done previously at ACCAD.
Hauert and Ludi "Resistance" duet. Photo: Ann Sofie Clemmensen

Days three and four involved a video shoot with a professional cinematographer followed by recording in ACCAD's optical Motion Capture Lab. The combining of cinematographic techniques for 'zooming in' on specific body level phenomenon with computer graphics based on high fidelity 3D motion capture data is a key aspect of the TWO creative team's approach. Following this residency, they are analyzing, cataloging, and clarifying the strategies being focused on in Hauert’s work using the video and motion capture data gathered.
Motion capture session. Photo: ACCAD/ The Ohio State University

TWO: Bebe Miller/ Thomas Hauert Process Documentation Pages:

Motion Bank OSU Process Blog

http://motionbank.org/en/event/bebe-miller-residency-no-1

http://motionbank.org/en/event/bebe-miller-guest-performances

http://motionbank.org/en/event/thomas-hauert-residency-no-1

http://motionbank.org/en/event/bebe-miller-thomas-hauert-residency-no-2-final-filming

http://motionbank.org/en/event/thomas-hauert-guest-performances

http://motionbank.org/en/event/live-online-2013-report