Metamotion for 270degrees

“Metamotion for 270degrees” loosely departs from the biblical story of Salome. The work approaches the young, dancing female body to touch upon myths around femininity in western art history, in conjunction with christianity and the implemented cancellation of that character. Hovering in and out of those images, the performer enters into dialogue with different objects, times, references and narratives and switches roles, being its facilitator, user, friend, sparring partner. At the same time being its subject, the performer is a labourer continuously constructing architectures of imaginations, made out of the physical and metaphysical aspects in the space. The work tries to understand the necessity of keeping a myth alive while at the same time trying to decompose it, such as the relevance of doing so in front of an audience gaze. During a journey of investigating those matters, the performer is entering realms of sensorial,material, emotional, animalistic, architectural and narrative conjunctions while experiencing its own twisted projections, as well.

The work features references of movement artist and actor Terry Notary ( “planet of the apes” and “the square”) such as performance artist Oleg Kulik, sounds by various artists from the archive freesound.org (listed below), Michelangelo, Rodin, the anamorphic skull in the painting “the ambassadors” by Hans Holbein the younger, such as the entrance sound of “the gate” by Björk, whom she is referring to in an interview as following: 

“Also, I used a vinyl album of Venezuelan music I had, [Heku- ra–Yanomamo Shamanism From Southern Venezuela], that was recorded in the ’70s—Venezuelan birds. The birds there sound completely different. They sound like R2-D2, or techno. There’s one beautiful sound that ended up in the beginning of ‘The Gate’, a recording of these birds that Venezuelans believe are the ghosts of fetuses. If they have stillborns or young children that die, they think they go into the jungle and make these sounds.” (Read more at http://www.nme.com/news/music/bjork-recorded-birds- sounded-like-r2-d2-new album-2160172#8a0Gf0mflvwzBesO.99) 

Credits: 

Choreography and performance: Toni Steffens
Set design: Toni Steffens, Frits van Diehl
Costume: Avoidstreet
Lights and technic: Martin Kaffarnik, Vincent Romijn
Sound edit: Toni Steffens 

Featured artists in order of appearance:
Björk (The gate), Jovica aka Jovica Storer (freesound.org) Akumasanti ( Little Dragon Pretty Girl xxx) Leosalom, Pan14, botha9johann, arseniiv, copyc4t, RebekahDay (freesound.org) 

Production: Stephanie Luehn, Charlot van der Meer, SNDO Amsterdam

Advice: Mehraneh Atashi, Katerina Bakatsaki 

Warm thanks to : Michael Scerbo, Ana Vujanociv, Andrea Zavala, Sigrid Stigsdatter, Michele Rizzo, Renee Copraij, Rodrigo Sobarzo, Stefa Govaart 

Reviews:

Theaterkrant 2018: https://www.theaterkrant.nl/nieuws/theatrale-performances-op-flam-2018/

Nellie de Boer, March 2018, Amsterdam



Speculative Empathy, SE
Speculative Empathy is a movement within applied, contemporary, continental-inspired  philosophy and performing arts, also, known as post-continental philosophy, that defines itself loosely in its stance of metaphysical empathy against its interpretation of the dominant  forms of “correlationism”.  The term tries to expand notions such as “speculative realism/ materialism” by repositioning the thinking, sensing and experiencing, thus, philosophising human subject with an interest of highlighting its ability to empathise with a thing x and through the strategic embracing of the unescapable condition of anthropomorphism. Rather than operating on planes, which are suggestive of a certain (or not so certain)  “realism”, SE actively makes use of the joint synergy of both speculative and empathic processes in order to generate tools to converse with (non-)human entities in collectively fictionalised meeting planes, in design specific to each encounter of materialities. Making use of the wide emotional spectrum human beings are equipped with, SE re-purposes the unavoidable miscommunications that are at play in the complex and layered encounter of multi-real and Interspecies planes of conversations. Practitioner of SE boldly accuse their environment of being telepathically interlinked with them and that based on this assumption, they share a common field, where they can exchange, support, understand and emotionally stabilise one another. SE practitioners are very open minded towards exploring and performing dynamic, absurd, sensual and unexplainably emotional labor for a various range of materials, things, other human beings and domestic and non-domestic subobjects.

UNder armour

♲ Line,losing line ♲

Weaving Passages for the momentous

An Attendee

Orange Rest/Sacrifice

Spinner

Hope, Test

Metamotion for 270degrees

Night Flying Project

Movement

delineations

Unfamiliarities

PAST-Present-future

JUNE 11-14 : PLANETARY POETICS / SANDBERG GRADUATION SHOW AT FRAMER FRAMED AMSTERDAM, HEART BREAK RADIO, 12TH OF JUNE, 5PM, 13TH OF JUNE 1;30PM, PERFORMANCE UNDER ARMOUR, 13TH OF JUNE 6PM, 14 OF JUNE 4PM
SEPTEMBER 14: In collaboration with TONI BRELL at Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen, Performance at 4:15pm, Finissage Toen de dieren nog spraken
SEPTEMBER 20: BROKEN HEART DANCES, WORKSHOP DURING RE-NATURE FESTIVAL/ GRIEF SPACES, 2PM, FULL INFO: https://re-nature.org/
September + October 2025 : teaching movement research at the university for applied sciences, Osnabrück, BA theatre pedagogy
NOVEMBER 2025 : TEACHING MOVEMENT RESEARCH AT SNDO AMSTERDAM, BA CHOREOGRAPHY
11 DECEMBER 2025 : D.R.E.D.G.E. - in collaboration with ELISA ZUPPINI, Soraya Lutangu Bonaventure ( Music composition) and 2nd and 3rd year students of SNDO, Jakoozi, Amsterdam
15 DECEMBER 2025 : D.R.E.D.G.E. - in collaboration with ELISA ZUPPINI, Soraya Lutangu Bonaventure ( Music composition) and 2nd and 3rd year students of SNDO, W139, Amsterdam January 2026 : "UNDER ARMOUR", JAKOOZI AMSTERDAM, DATE TBA, LIMITED CAPACITY
06 FEBRUARY 2026 : COLLABORATION WITH TONI BRELL, BORING FESTIVAL, HAARLEM

Orange