V45 Daglig träning/Daily training
CONTEMPORARY
Måndag-Torsdag: 12:00-13:30
FRÉDÉRIC GIES
Drawing from their former training in ballet, their encounters with specific trends of contemporary dance in at the beginning of the 90s, their dance floor experiences in techno clubs and raves and their studies of somatic practices, Frédéric Gies approaches form as possibilities rather than constraints. Their dances weld forms seemingly foreign to each other, recycle and pervert dance history and heritages. They playfully collapse the distinction and hierarchies between erudite and popular forms of dance. In their pieces, bodies as the instigators of movement don’t reinforce identities but excavate the complexity of their layers.
They started their career as a dancer in the beginning of the 90s in France, where they danced with choreographers such as Daniel Larrieu and Olivia Grandville. During their Berlin period, 2004-2013, they collaborated with other choreographers e.g., Alice Chauchat, Isabelle Schad and Manuel Pelmus. As they moved to Sweden in 2014, they initiated their work with techno music and started to developed and share their practice Technosomatics and also danced for Cristina Caprioli and Ania Nowak. They present their works nationally and internationally in various contexts, including dance venues and festivals, music festivals and museums. They are the artistic director of Dance is ancient. They teach internationally in various contexts, including at university level in BA and MA programmes.
Technical training: from anatomy to form and vice versa. In this class, we will apply embodied anatomical knowledge to forms and patterns of movement stemming from ballet, modern and postmodern dance. We will look into approaching these forms not through a process of mere reproduction, but through understanding the bodily mechanisms and relationships that underlie them. We will also work with using these known forms and patterns of movement for the sake of somatic explorations. In this class, my intention is not only to share knowledge stemming from the field of somatic practices but also from various dance techniques, including specific heritages from the French field of contemporary dance from the 90s. I will also incorporate specific aspects from Technosomatics, the dance and somatic practice I have created, which brings together an exploration of the endocrine system and the chakras by means of club dancing to techno with eyes closed.