by Redazione, published on 04/29/2024
Categories: Contemporary art / Disclaimer
On June 1 and 2, the Italian premiere of MIKE, a performance by Canadian artist and choreographer Dana Michael, dedicated to the theme of work and designed after a long experience in the company, and with office work, of the artist, will be held at MAMbo.
For the first time in Italy, MAMbo in Bologna presents, on Saturday, June 1 (from 7 to 10 pm) and Sunday, June 2 (from 5 to 8 pm), in collaboration with Xingthe durational performance entitled MIKEby Canadian artist Dana Michael.
MIKE is a performance that, through two sessions of three hours each, explores the concept of “work,” offering an experience intended to suggest a silent but patient rebellion. Indeed, with this work, Dana Michel wants to breach social conventions not so much to provoke as to investigate with curiosity. Gently, she brings supposed “marginal figures” to the center of the debate. The performer thus creates a series of situations that develop according to an internal logic, moving in a world of objects to which she attributes new meanings and functions, departing from binary and linear thinking. Between the lines, she reflects on her corporate experience and the office work she has done for years, while evoking a revolutionary and inclusive work future. With humor and sensitivity, he questions our own ways of existence. MIKE thus presents a time ecology related to the concept of slowing down, emerging from a landscape of objects and procedures stripped of any functional value. The approach to materials and temporal space is characterized by a horizontality that suggests non-hierarchical thinking.
For Dana Michel, ” MIKE ‘s creation and production are also an effort to highlight the idea that without trust in ourselves and others, it is impossible to live public lives that reflect our inner lives. We remain in a state of half-life and disharmony … trapped in the endless traffic of not knowing how to respect or even truly acknowledge each other. We need to believe in each other.”
“What I share with the audience,” the artist explains, “is an amalgam, a system of thoughts, sounds, silence and dissonance that has reached, over time, a density that I can explore in public. Minute details emerge in my kinetic vision making manifest small movements, resonances, colors, textures. I enter into great intimacy with it all and share it. I want to make the thought process visible. I use difficulty as a methodology of navigation, to push my performances into places of vulnerability and discovery. It is from here that I can listen from a closer distance and share with others. Thinking of beings as mathematical portals, consisting of billions of possibilities, deepens this listening. What I offer in performance is a repository of signs that remains open to interpretation, a vast space to encounter and expand one’s logic of seeing and experiencing. With MIKE I am interested in exploring how my own and the audience’s involvement changes. Already entering a building that is not a theater space causes subtle changes. I know the concept of trust is there, flowing and leading to the choices I make. I really feel the need to explore this topic and I don’t think I’m the only one. So I trust that it can resonate with those who are there. As with all my work, I am not trying to illustrate any particular subject. What I am primarily interested in is creating more space for a diversity of perspectives and ways of being and living. It seems clear that our societies have been built on the basis of models of personal effectiveness. My work aims to loosen the reins of our social behaviors and generate more space in the process. It seems to me that this is the only way we can evolve together: by creating more space for everyone. This is perhaps an idealistic proposal, and at the same time it is not idealistic at all.”
There are three points that clarify the cores around which Dana Michael envisioned his performance: the first is the confidence that we cannot continue to work healthily and consistently with modes and environments that were not designed for a diversity of minds and hope to thrive or even survive. The second is confidence that ‘the arts’ are where a large percentage of human beings with very different minds land to take a respite, seeking a flourish. Artists, audiences and cultural workers seek a place where they can construct other possibilities for existence in the world, and we could all, according to the artist, benefit greatly from moving to a mode that reflects a greater recognition of this diversity of minds in our daily work practices. Finally, the third is trusting and believing in one’s inner experiences in order to defend them and build sustainable and possibly useful futures for others.
Dana Michel is an artist, choreographer and performer based in Montreal, Canada. Prior to earning a degree in Contemporary Dance from Concordia University, she had heterogeneous experiences including being an executive in marketing, being a competitive runner and being involved in football. Michel explores identity as a messy multiplicity, adopting an “expanded” practice that feeds on choreography, improvisation, intuitive gesture, performing arts, film, hip-hop, techno, poetry, psychology, dub and social reflection.
On stage, she appropriates objects and reworks her personal history, future desires and current concerns from the concepts of performative alchemy and post-cultural bricolage. This process creates an empathic centrifuge between her and her audience. Since 2012, she has produced solo performance works, including “Yellow Towel,” “Palna Easy Francis,” “Mercurial George,” “Cutlass Spring,” and “MIKE.”
In 2014, she received the Impulstanz Award in Vienna and was recognized as one of the most influential choreographers of the year by the New York Times. In 2017, she was awarded the Silver Lion for Innovation at the Venice Dance Biennale. In 2018, she was the first dance artist-in-residence at the National Arts Center in Ottawa, Canada. In 2019, she received the International ANTI Festival for Live Art Award in Kuopio, Finland.
Xing is a cultural organization based in Bologna, Italy, engaged in the design, curation and organization of events, productions and publications that are distinguished by an interdisciplinary look at issues of contemporary culture. Its work is characterized by a focus on generational trends and new artistic languages.
Pictured is a moment from MIKE.
| Bologna, at MAMbo the Italian premiere of MIKE, a performance by Dana Michael on the theme of work |
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