links
Spinner (2019- 2022)
Spinner centres around the idea that the artistic environment has a subjectivity, needs and expressions on its own terms. Shaped by transactional factors, such as time, research space and financial support, the practice has built different milestones to become its own landscape.
Oscillating around the notion of what meaning can be, the work creates vibrating forms and absurd approaches, where it is possible to give and receive meaningful information. Meaning is approached as always communicative and therefore always affective. As a result of collaboration, the space in between is highlighted and consequently materialised; electrically charged with movement, attraction, repulsion, fascination, dreams, desires, misunderstanding and the never ending duty of attending the other. In this electric field lies the quality and aesthetic of a meeting, that expands into the sphere of where the spectator can meet themselves through joining the material with imagination.
Sigrid Stigsdatter and Toni Steffens started their collaboration in 2017 when studying at the School for New Dance Development, in Amsterdam. Throughout the years, they have been created a body of work that researches and deals with the politics of collaboration as a shared encounter. Their choreographic practice tries to evoke a space that can communicate, negotiate and alternate its needs like a self expressing environment. Agency occurs by relating to the other and the environment as a sensitive stranger that has to be re-encountered, memorised or yet to be found out. Topics and questions that materialise out of their universe touch upon themes like synchronicity, friendship, practicing female witness-ship, intimacy, sensuality, memories and nomadism.
Credits:Choreography and performance: Toni Steffens, Sigrid Stigsdatter
Advise: Maciej Sado
Light design: Paulina Prokop
Costume: Ginta Tinte
Set design: Toni Steffens, Sigrid Stigsdatter
Co-produced and supported through Afk Amsterdam, Dansmakers Amsterdam, Bologna C.C.,
8-Athens, critical laboratory for Arts and politics, Veem House for Performance,
New Fears Gallery for dance and performance, Flam festival Amsterdam, Batard Festival Brussels
Booking info:
Length: 40 minutes
Technical info: We are presenting this piece together with out light designer Paulina Prokop. It includes a simple Set Design, that can be transported in a Van. The set up is discussible and adaptive to the conditions of the venue.
Reviews and reflections, documentation:
There are more than 50 subspecies of the Australian jumping spider. Each one of them has their own unique dance routing, performed by the male spider under the judgmental eyes of its female chosen one. The female assesses the dancer and chooses to be either mounted, simply walks away with disinterest, or kills and eats the male dancing lover. At times, she even chooses for a combination of those scenarios. It is assumed that the dancing behaviour is genetically hardwired, rather than “learned”, making the jumping spider a natural born dancer. Certain studies show that female spiders of the jumping spider species Portia however also dance. They do so not in order to seduce their potential mates, but instead mimic the males dancing routine, to protect their nest or wear off other spiders. So while the male spider pursues dancing as a flamboyant act of seduction, with the hope to inseminate the female at the risk of life, the female spider learns, masters and even perfects the males dance routines, using improvisation and trick movements, like unexpected pauses in the routine to ensure her peace of mind, her own life and/or that of her offspring. Wether for war fare or intercourse, dancing comes into play as a decisive moment in a spiders life. A tool, a weapon, a communicator, a trickery and a mastery. While the male spider dancing its courtship dance has been plentiful documented, the female spiders dancing behaviour and how it came to do so is still subject to debate. May it be perhaps, that the female spider is the ultimate dancer in disguise? Is it not her who has the final saying over the life and death performance of her potential lover? And isn’t it though her perfecting the choreographic steps, enabling her to protect her own offspring, that she is elevated into being ultimate judge over wether his hardwired dance that she’s ought to pass on to the following generation, is even worthy enough of her own craftsmanship, and the way how she reverse engineered his dance moves to turn them from a flirt into a fight?
.png)
.png)
.png)
