Towards Dawn at Hollands Dance Festival

Komende donderdag barst de dertiende editie van het Holland Dance Festival los, met als thema Source of Inspiration. Het Korzo theater is een van de hoofdlocaties. Naast vele mooie voorstellingen van o.a. Bill T. Jones, Tim Persent, Samir Calixto en Emio Greco | PC zijn er masterclasses, feestjes en wordt de bar omgetoverd tot festivalcafé.

Gelukkig spreekt de Nederlandse – met flinke wortels in de Indiase cultuur – Kalpana Raghuraman goed Frans. Dat heeft ze zeker nodig voor de nieuwe voorstelling Towards Dawn waarbij ze samenwerkt met de dansers Adonis Nébié en Sayouba Sigué uit Burkina Faso. Afgelopen december is ze naar de hoofdstad Ouagadougou gevlogen om met hen te repeteren. Nu zijn de heren in Nederland voor de laatste fase van de repetities. Aanstaande donderdag gaat dit mooie project in première en is nog t/m zaterdag te zien tijdens het Holland Dance Festival.
www.korzo.nl

Adonis en Sayouba verblijven tot eind januari in de DCR Gueststudios.

Welcome Ado & Sigue!

Starting a fresh year with two new guests in Gueststudio 1 and 3:



Dancers Sayouba Sigue and Adonis Nebie are working on a new choreography made by Kalpana Raghuraman for the Holland Dance Festival 2012. The work Towards Dawn tackles fear and pain head on in the duet with the two dancers from Burkina Faso.



Kalpana Raghuraman has made a duet about the survival strategies of modern man. What do you do if you don’t belong? Or if you don’t feel safe or loved? We like to try to find connection and comfort through sex, food, drink and other addictions, but we also find it easy to build up a ‘social’ virtual life. Kalpana combines her Indian background with the movement material of the two dancers, and walks away from this escapist behavior in a raw and dynamic duet.

Rehearsal period January 9 until January 25, Premiere January 26, performances January 27 and 28 in Korzo.

Check out the Korzo website!

Hello – Goodbye

At the end of 2008 Janneke and I started the DCR Guest studios with a lot of enthousiasm, and in 2010 Caroline joined us.
We hosted more than 80 guests, national- and international artists, curators, dancers and offered a part of them a special programm.
We introduced them to the cultural and creative city of The Hague, and collaborated with many vivid and young arts-initiatives, settled in The Hague.
After this very interesting, but intensive period we want to thank all the guests for the inspiring times and we like to give it a follow-up and introduce hereby the new organization.
We wish Puck Verkade and her collegues a lot of succes!!

Tineke van Veen,
Caroline Grijsen,
Janneke Hendriks

Guest studio 3: Salifou Lindou (CM)

A short interview with Salifou about his residency:
What was the added value to stay in the city of The Hague?
The calmness and the beauty of the city helped me to start my work on site with a positive attitude.
The facilities in term of printmaking that were available in the city (the grafische werkplaats) helped to realise a dream that I brought along to discover and learn to master the dry needle technique amongst others.
I have learned the graphic techniques and it has been possible to be part of the development of Present Perfect! which will result in future works.
I hope to be able to transport an etching machine to Douala to be able to start a printworkshop myself so I can produce my own works and create an atelier for other artists to learn and use the technique.

Are there follow-ups concerning contacts; exchanges or cooparations with other institutes/artists from The Hague?
Yes, The project Present Perfect! will be presented at NEST in 2013. I will keep up the contact with the Grafische Werkplaats.
I made contact with the artist who is the director of Chiefs and Spirits which might result in a possible collaboration in the future.

Welcome lunch Ruth Belinga and Salifou Lindou (CM)

Guest studio 2 and 3: Ruth Belinga and Salifou Lindou (CM)

Ruth Afane Belinga is working as art historian (Institut de Beaux Arts, Foumban), curator and artist. Her phd project deals with the history of painting in 20th century Cameroon, a pioneer research in a country whose art history hasn’t been written. As curator of ArtBakery she’ll present an exhibition on Goddy Leye at the 2011 Bamako Biennale. Her painting and video practice draws upon myths and initiation rites to show childhood as a contested space in Africa.

Salifou Lindou’s aesthetic research is inspired by the poetics of the everyday and of common materials. His public art project “Face à l’eau” (2010), shows his sensitivity for formal aesthetics and the politics of the locale: The paravent installation at the riverbank in his neighborhood in Douala is also protecting the men that come there for bathing from the glances of people enjoying the panaroma. Since 2000 he is regularily collaborating with Berlin-based artist and curator Christian Hanussek.

Notice: Unfortunately Achillekà Komguem could not come to The Netherlands.

Coming up: Present Perfect!

The residency of Ruth Afane Belinga, Achillekà Komguem and Salifou Lindou from Cameroon at DCR Gueststudios is opening the project „Present Perfect!“ initiated by Enough Room for Space

During their residency the guests will help to re-fashion the Cameroonian artist journal diARTgonale as a platform for a series of newly produced works on the relation of Europe and Cameroon. These works are realised collaboratively by European and Cameroonian artists and published in diArtgonale throughout 2012. In 2013 they will be presented in an exhibition at NEST, The Hague, together with other artists’ recent explorations of these intercontinental relations.

Opening Studio and Screening/Performance

DCR Guest Studio residents Douglas Morland and Christian Newby hosted an informal open studio screening and performance of a new work-in-progress. They screened a video with live musical accompaniment by Morland.




Papa Oom Mow Mow

Newby and Morland have spent the past month experimenting with video and sound as a way of interfacing their experiences and explorations of Den Haag into a kind of superimposed travelogue. Absurdity, disparity and incongruity form key elements of their approach, with the slippage and scrambling of cultural bodies of knowledge during this process of exchange and investigation, they interlace a broken narrative of both fact and fiction.

Guest studio 3: Christian Newby (UK)

In between: Newby marbling (huge!) for next exhibition (Transmission Gallery in Glasgow, gallery 2), with the help of his collegue-guests.

Guest studio 2&3: Douglas Morland and Christian Newby (UK)

Visiting artists seek collaborators…

Glasgow-based artists Douglas Morland and Christian Newby are undertaking a residency project in The Hague at DCR Gueststudio during August and are looking for artists, musicians and other creative people based in the city with whom to exchange ideas or collaborate.

As artists who also make music and whose practices draw heavily upon the lexicon of popular culture, its aesthetics, imagery and ephemera, Morland and Newby are interested in navigating The Hague via a kind of psychogeographic investigation of the city. This will take in an exploration of the local networks of underground musicians, visual artists, those involved in ‘DIY’ youth culture, past and present, and the points where these areas come together.

Alice Nikitinova (CZ) and Lucia Nimcova (SK) in Billytown

Invitation and

sneak preview (work in progress, Nikitinova).

Guest studio 1: Ville Raasakka (FI)

At the DCR I am working on a new composition for Piano Trio, that was commissioned from Denmark, and will be premiered in Copenhagen in 2012. The work will be in the genre of "Vanitas", originated in the 16th century still life painting of Flanders and the Netherlands.

Gueststudio 1: Izabela Oldak (PL)

Opening at of the mural project made during Izabelas stay at the DCR Guest Studios made possible by Steadion, Stroom and Gemeente Den Haag. It's around the corner, in the Newtonstraat 54/56, side of the Verademing park, Den Haag!
more pictures here >

Artbomb at DCR Gueststudios

This visual act is a sign of resistance against the growing disdain for the arts within societies and governments worldwide, and a sign of support for colleagues who face major cutbacks. An international tribute to art.
www.artbom.nl




read an article about the (political) developments in the Netherlands in Frieze magazine here>

Guest studio 3: James Geurts (AU)

Drawing: Amplitude I, kinetic light/sound installation by James Geurts, viewing on Summer Solstice (21st June, 10:00 - 11:00pm) from Theatre Zeebelt.
A site-specific light and sound installation in the glass bridge (TranSpan) between the EON power plant and the DCR building.
Sound support by Mike Rijnierse