The 16th International Solo-Dance-Theatre Festival was held last month over four days in Stuttgart, Germany. Eighteen works from around the world were preselected. The work I created for my partner, Cass Mortimer Eipper, BodySong, was among them. Six solos were performed each night, in the Robert Bosch Saal, Treffpunkt Rotebuehlplatz, a modern multi purpose complex sitting at a busy cross roads - a meeting of asphalt, concrete, brick and glass!
This year’s festival was particularly special, dedicated to the late Tanja Liedtke. Although we like to claim her as our own, Tania was born in Stuttgart before moving with her family to Spain, then England and finally Australia, where she took citizenship in 1996.
Having been informed of the event by WA Ballet director, Ivan Cavallari, Cass and I had thought about applying a couple of years ago. It was just by chance we happened to submit a piece to the 2012 festival, making it feel all the more special and pertinent when we were accepted.
Solo work is something both Cass and I became invested in after establishing ourselves on our own. It is a great medium as a choreographer and dancer for exploring your personal interests and building your own unique physical expression. In 2011, we both created pieces on ourselves which we took to Rome’s International Choreography Competition. This was a mixed affair. Solo works are very particular. How are they to be judged choreographically against groups, duos, trios and the like? How do you separate the performer/artist from the work itself? The Rome competition was, in theory, not to judge the performer but the piece in its own right. We cannot complain - we both had great successes, winning the third prize for my solo Crossing Satie and the Most Outstanding Performer Prize for Cass with his Solo 1.5.
The situation in Stuttgart is different. Here, it is uniquely the art of the solo dance performance being celebrated and judged. In this event, the work itself and the artist are seldom separate entities. It is understood that whether or not the piece has been created by the performer or for the performer, the performance and the artist are to an extent, inseparable. The one makes the other –a body in a space and a vehicle used to express an idea over a designated time. In the instance of the Stuttgart Festival, the time limit is between 9 and 12 minutes making the variety of choices people make on “filling” their fifth of an hour all the more interesting! To reward specific works, seven prizes are given by a jury of five. Three of these are weighted towards choreographic achievement and three weighted towards the performer and their interpretation. The seventh award is the public prize.
Cass and I decided to put forward a new work, BodySong, which was freshly in the making. For the first time, I was crafting a work for another body, my partner’s. In October last year we had put together about 6 minutes of the work and submitted the footage with a description of the piece and our biographies. In November we learned we were accepted. So, logistically, what next? We knew that the festival would provide accommodation and would help out in some way financially, but not nearly to the extent required for flights from Perth.
In the end we managed with an Artflight grant from the West Australian Department of Culture and the Arts and fundraising from showings at our studio.
The festival is a wonderful international platform for new solo work, dancers and creators. The eighteen works presented were drawn from 14 different nationalities. They all represented different, individual practices and disciplines from the diverse range of balletic and contemporary techniques to hip-hop, capoeira and circus. On top of this diversity was the fascinating array of themes, ideas and opinions being expressed through the chosen medium: some anchored in contemporary life, some culturally specific and others abstractly explorative in nature. Almost all the works presented were premiering at the festival although this is by no means imperative. The majority of the works were created by the performer him or herself, although there were a few, like BodySong, with a choreographer - dancer division.
The festival is the brain-child of artistic director, Marcelo Santos, with organisation handled by a highly proficient team under Gudrun Hähnel, the general manager. On the fourth night of the festival is a gala comprising of 6-8 works chosen by the jury which this year comprised: German choreographer and dancer, Christine Brunel; Brazilian choreographer, Cristina Castro; Australian dancer and dance pedagogue, Shane Carroll; German choreographer, Marco Goecke; and the Artistic Director of the Holland Dance Festival, Samuel Wuersten. The six jury prizes are awarded from the works in the gala and the prize winners are then contracted for a tour in Southern Germany and Brazil.
We came away with the third dance prize for Cass’s amazing performance of what was, I admit, a brutally difficult piece. Cass and BodySong will be touring Germany in November along with the five other prize winners from Chad, Canada, Israel, Portugal and Germany.
- EMMA SANDALL
Together, Emma and Cass make up the dance partnership, Ludwig. Follow their blog here