Mirta demare

In August/September 2015 i had the opportunity again to work with Reál Dance Company (Thomas Körtvélyessy) in conjunction with his solo presentation of his choreographic work at Mirta Demare International Visual Arts http://mirtademare.nl of Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

The main presentation was a several hour long loop edited by Körtvélyessy from raw video footage taken by me during his Emily Harvey Foundation residency in Venice Italy during the Spring of 2014. http://emilyharveyfoundation.org The videos record and archive various dance works initiated by Reál Dance Company and re-staged (The city of Venice itself being the stage) as a small retrospective of his public dance projects, notably sokrates and walking con.sen.sus skytime.

The former is a solo-work in which his body and carefully improvised movements function as a catalyst for dance by strangers, the latter is a company piece with a choreographic formulation typical of his conceptual dance practice brought to life with local collaborative dancers associated with a dance collective http://mariannaandrigo.it in nearby Mestre. More details regarding these works may be seen on his websites http://con-sens-us.net and http://realdancecompany.org/sokrates.html

A third element was displayed, a collaborative effort by Thomas Körtvélyessy and myself with the signature of KörDés entitled Dr. Love and modeled after the stock character Il Dottore della Peste and his long beaked mask of the famed venetian commedia dell'arte.

The presentation, a choreographer/dancer in an established Rotterdam gallery had a special twist of interest, guests could make an appointment with the choreographer dubbed as Tea with Thomas for a close one on one conversation about the trajectories of his work and its influence from the conceptual dance movements that emerged from the Judson Church in New York City by such figures as Trisha Brown, Merce Cunningham, Meredith Monk and Körtvélyessy's dance mentor the late Elaine Summers.

Our previous professional engagement together was when i functioned dramaturgically on Körtvélyessy's seductively novel re-framing of Debussy's opera as a solo dance work entitled Pelleas Material. Some of our mutual efforts and visual insights have been fruitful and as serendipity would have it, a chance photo-op captured in one of my favorite venetian museums (Fondazione Querini Stampalia with the noted architect Carlo Scarpa) would be used to feature Körtvélyessy in Conde Nast's Traveler magazine in June of this year. Congratulations to Thomas for much of this years many achievements.