If I Can’t Dance Tonight
New Performances Autumn/Winter 2009/2010
Ruth Buchanan, Yael Davids, Luca Frei, Aurélien Froment, Sung Hwan Kim & David Di Gregorio, Stefanie Seibold & Teresa Maria Diaz Nerio
Produced by If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution
Presented in Frascati Theatre Amsterdam, the Netherlands
If I Can’t Dance Tonight
This autumn and winter the curatorial platform If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution presents a series of new evening performances by Ruth Buchanan, Yael Davids, Luca Frei, Aurélien Froment and Sung Hwan Kim & David Di Gregorio, Stefanie Seibold & Teresa Maria Diaz Nerio in the frame of the current edition focusing on the notion of the masquerade.
Interested in visual art practices, If I Can’t Dance…’s main focus within the operational and ideological frame of performance is the potential of performativity and its diverse typologies. If I Can’t Dance… works along the systematics of collaboration with institutions and artists. Operating from its new research centre in Amsterdam, If I Can’t Dance… produces projects and programmes that have evolving manifestations in different, international institutions. The basic tone is set by the artists who are invited to develop new pieces, staged in repertory.
As a counterpoint to the edition’s long-term artists’ projects unfolding within an international geography, If I Can’t Dance… presents a programme of performances with a monthly rhythm in collaboration with Frascati Theatre in its hometown Amsterdam. This programme is titled If I Can’t Dance Tonight. The artists invited to participate in this programme are encouraged to reflect on, and to respond to, the current interest in the notion of the masquerade. Their singular perspectives punctuate the edition’s ‘ongoing story’.
Why Masquerade?
If we understand the cultural history of masquerading as an accessing of alterity in a situation of social conformity, then we think it is interesting to readdress this notion today precisely because there has never before been such an intense reinforcement of the cult of the individual. Despite years of serious questioning of the construction of subjectivity through feminism, post colonialism, post communism and other intellectual and activist strategies, we seem to have been over taken by events. Consumer culture strategically reinforces individualism – the channels of new media provide endless possibilities for intense selfarticulation and yet where does this bring us in relation to the complex understanding of the constructions of singularity and other emancipatory possibilities? Reading the mask right now and addressing a sense of alterity in a moment of unilateral governmentality or status quo seems prescient.
Programme
22 September 2009 Stefanie Seibold & Teresa Maria Diaz Nerio, THE JUNGLE IS A SKYSCRAPER
21 October 2009 Ruth Buchanan, CIRCULAR FACTS – LYING FREELY PART II
25 November 2009 Yael Davids, LEARNING TO IMITATE
15 December 2009 Aurélien Froment, PAR ORDRE D’APPARITION (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE)
16 February 2010 Luca Frei, THE SO-CALLED UTOPIA OF THE CENTRE BEAUBOURG – AN INTERPRETATION
23 March 2010 Sung Hwan Kim, title to be announced
Practical information
The performances take place in Frascati Theatre in Amsterdam, Nes 63. Bookings through: www.theaterfrascati.nl or + 31 (0)20 623 57 23. Tickets: 9 Euro. Reservation is strongly recommended, seats are limited. The performances start at 20.00 sharp.
Partners
The performance by Stefanie Seibold and Teresa Maria Diaz Nerio is coproduced with MuHKA, Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp. In the MuHKA the performance will take place on December 10, 2010 at 20.00 hrs.
The performance by Ruth Buchanan is coproduced with Casco Office for Art, Design and Theory in Utrecht, the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht and The Showroom in London.
The first manifestation of the performance by Yael Davids was staged in Objectif Exhibitions in Antwerp.
The performance by Aurélien Froment is coproduced with STUK Kunstencentrum in Leuven.
If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution
Postal address: P.O. Box 51144 NL – 1007 EC Amsterdam
Visiting address: Westerdok 606 NL – 1013 BV Amsterdam
+ 31 (0)20-3378711
Financial support
If I Can’ t Dance Tonight is financially supported by the Mondriaan Foundation, SNS Reaalfonds, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, Creative New Zealand. Special thanks to the Rijksakademie voor beeldende kunsten Amsterdam.
