LT Artists in Europe – Gretė Šmitaitė, Dovydas Strimaitis and Lukas Karvelis
CRACKS
Grėtė Šmitaitė
Lithuania
Duration: 20 min.
Cracks starts from the dystopia caused by being alone. Yet, the person cannot manage to stay ‘one’. Being cracked and multiple, the person hides one’s complexity and so violates oneself. Scratching one’s robustness, one meets oneself striving to relate.
The person lays down on the ground. The rain is falling on one’s cheeks. The wind is in the branches above one’s head. One starts to feel an overwhelming desire to relate with oneself and other living and dead humans, places, animals, plants and seasons.
Grėtė Šmitaitė is a dancer and choreographer working and living in Switzerland, Germany and Lithuania. She graduated from dance and choreography studies at Berlin University of Arts and has worked with choreographers such as Doris Uhlich, Min Tanaka, Anna Aristarkhova. Since 2014 she has been a practitioner of the Body Weather technique. Since 2021 she studies clowning and creativity with Ira Seidenstein. Šmitaitė’s pieces were presented at Uferstudios Berlin, Amsterdam Het Veem, Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava Tallinn and Arts Printing House Vilnius.
Mentor: Ira Seidenstein
Light: Monika Šerstabojevaitė
Photo: Philipp Weinrich
HAIRY 2.0
Dovydas Strimaitis
Lithuania
Duration: 20 min.
Hairy 2.0 is a choreographic piece for a dancer and his hair. Hair is one of the few parts of the human body that one cannot move voluntarily and directly. Choreography and dance, on the other hand, can be seen as an art of physical (self-)control. Choreographing hair, thus, carries in itself a dramatic tension – how to control the uncontrollable. This tension is the starting point of Hairy 2.0. Because of its uncontrollable nature, hair can be seen as an entity separate from our body, yet dependent on it. Hair is a boundary, limit both separating us from and connecting us to what is physically outside of us, what is not us. A choreography made for hair thus raises ontological questions related to our identity, our body and its autonomy. Loose long hair has very strong symbolic meaning in the Western society. It invokes freedom, romanticism, naturalness, and liberation from tradition or oppression. Strimaitis uses all these symbols as a formalist tool in order to develop counterpoints not only in timing and space, but also in meaning.
Concept, choreography, dance: Dovydas Strimaitis
Music: Julijona Biveinytė, Johann Sebastian Bach (interpreted by Yo-Yo Ma)
Lighting design: Lisa M. Barry
Hairy 2.0 by Dovydas Strimaitis was made possible and originally produced by Conny Janssen Danst and Dansateliers (Rotterdam, The Netherlands).
INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO FALL
A. Crespo Barba and Lukas Karvelis
Spain, Lithuania
Duration: 35 min.
Stage performance project created by A. Crespo Barba and Lukas Karvelis, where performance art, flamenco, electronic music, and dance come together to bring forward an artistic whole. The project’s conceptualization can be divided in two main research areas: to rethink flamenco through a theatrical scope, and to dig deeper into the physical phenomenon of free falling.
With regard to the flamenco topic, it is structured around two questions: what would happen if we reinterpret all the early flamenco material according to our current musical situation – videoclip revolution, Instagram era, electronic music festivals…? And in doing so can we rethink the role of flamenco singers and dancers from a more radical point of view, using their theatricality and their interaction with their environment? In other words, can a cantaor flamenco continue being so without singing? Can a bailaor flamenco continue being so without dancing? Flamenco was born as a radical art form and, if we go to its developmental stage, we can find a place where almost everything was uncodified and, therefore, extremely open to experimentation. This idea has been haunting us since we started to work on this path. The intention behind this proposal is to bring all the theatricality, viscerality and impurities of flamenco performers to the forefront, focusing on elements such as the expressive movements of the hands, the way they interact with the elements on stage or their relation with the music that surrounds them. The biggest accomplishment would be to create a ritualistic experience, where the audience join the performers in their journey to the deepest layers of flamenco.
As mentioned earlier, the other research area is physicality and free falling. The fight/flight response starts as a chemical reaction in the brain, activating the sympathetic nervous system. Once the body realizes the threat of fall, the brain reacts to give a boost of energy to the human system, mainly appeared in the forms of strength and speediness. The hormone epinephrine (adrenaline) facilitates this physical response. We see a huge potential in connecting this idea to our flamenco pretensions, as this fall into the abyss could lead us to the deepest layers of flamenco music. In order to explore free fall motion, we will use each other’s bodies and principles of contact improvisation.
In Instructions on How to Fall, the sound will consist on the reinvention of protoflamenco music manifestations through electronic music approaches: the sine waves manipulation as if they were flamenco singers (placing a speaker in Crespo’s mouth) and their confrontation with white noise; the creation of impulses through stochastic processes that evoke flamenco rhythmic patterns;
The relationship cantaor-bailaor is a relation of power, where one always tries to stand on top of the other. But what if we erase those hierarchies? What if the singer doesn’t sing anymore? What if the dancer is able to purge all the flamenco elements in order to create a new gestural language? This is where the Lithuanian dancer and choreographer Lukas Karvelis comes in. Karvelis and Crespo Barba have been collaborating with each other in several projects during the last three years, and in doing so, developing a very particular language in the crossover between flamenco experimentation and physicality, and exploring endless possibilities of free falling, a relevant theme for Karvelis.
Born in Madrid (1995), A. Crespo Barba is a Spanish artist and composer. He graduated with honors in Contemporary Music Composition at Escuela TAI (Madrid), where he was awarded with the Beca al talento scholarship. He also studied his Master of Composition at Codarts (Rotterdam), having graduated Cum Laude.
His music is a mix of many influences that goes from Radiohead to classical music or the oldest flamenco forms, the latter being the main topic of his most recent works. In addition, his way of thinking about art establishes ideas in common with artists from other disciplines, as he had worked with experimental choreographers, visual artists or fashion designers such as Mateja Drev, MAISON the FAUX, Boris Edrosa, LITTLE WOTAN or Lukas Karvelis. He has participated in different festivals in The Netherlands, like Flamenco Biënnale Nederland, Red Sofa!, Grachtenfestival, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, November Music, O-Festival and New Music Conference (where he was awarded with the Best New Composer Pitch Prize); and abroad, having premiered pieces in other European festivals and events such as Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in England, New Baltic Festival in Lithuania, or Musika-Música in Spain. Since 2019, he is also member of the AMEE (Asociación de Música Electroacústica de España).
Born in Vilnius (1997), Lukas Karvelis is a dancer and choreographer. He studied at M. K. Čiurlionis School of Arts and later got his BA degree at Codarts Rotterdam University for the Arts. Today L. Karvelis has already worked with well-known choreographers such as Anouk Van Dijk, Marina Mascarell, Dunja Jocic and Falk Richter. Lukas Karvelis creative work as a choreographer mirrors the processes of addiction and attachment, whether to something or to someone. He has been touring in the Netherlands, Israel, Germany, Italy, Canada, France, Brazil, Germany, Turkey. L. Karvelis won 2nd place for the choreography and 1st place in the video category for his solo performance Blank Spots in 2018 at the Solo-Tanz competition in Stuttgart. In 2019, this work won 2nd place at Jerusalem Dance Week. In 2020, Lukas Karvelis was nominated as the best dancer in the young artist awards Piket Kunst Prijs in the Netherlands.
Photo: Mateja Drev
