Hopes and Memories Project
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The first artistic residency of the Hopes and Memories project was designed to open 3 main topics - to have large team meeting on administrative, to make intensive workshops for students of Dramatic Arts at Durban University of Technology, and to enable artists to discover, feel and identify a specific South African context as much as possible.
That first Hopes and Memories artistic residency was also the opportunity for the artistic leading team and the administrative team to meet up and build a solid basis for the next two years of collaboration.
After the necessary organizational and budgeting issues, visual art team with the open minds went to explore and got the inspiration from the specificity of the African authenticity, realities and uniqueness.
Regarding the workshops leaded by our artistic team on 8 and 9 April 2013, the teaching process and multicultural discussions between students and lectors made strong sense experience, focusing on the important issue as barriers still are nowadays in South Africa.
The workshop program was divided into several subject fields as new media, scenic design, video and film, dance and choreography and physical theater. Under our leadership, together with the multi-talented African students were created a very brave and interesting works which will expand by other common projects in next year.
Visual artists during they stay for several days had an opportunity to discover and share African and European influences. They stopped in and paid a visit to many villages and townships, where they absorbed a local culture and traditions of Zulus. During a number of visits a KwaMashu township, artists were involved in the educational system in local areas, schools and courses of dance. Through the work of Gyula Berger, young Durban and Kwamashu dancers got a short daily dance training in physical theater and contemporary dance, which offered them a totally different approach to dancing.
And as a repay he learned from them some local dance motion and folklore steps which are usually performed in the rain boots.
That time what we had opportunity to spent there, full of local experiences and information gave us a concrete start to what the content of the future performance shall consist of, keeping in mind Meyerowitz´s opera The Barrier.
Those concepts and ideas shall then be experimented during the following residency of artistic creation in September 2013 in Prague, when the artistic team starts to create first collective artistic parts.
In Prague the artistic team built up the structure of piece 'Hopes&Memories' based on the original work of Meyerowitz, assembled the main characters and scene/backgound/interior: they plan to transpose the whole story into today's age...
The administrative staff sketched the full schedule and all the activities for the next period to fullfill the artistic goals.
At the same time visual artists of the group started to organize a sub-project supported by Visegrad Fund: they decided to create 'shadow of Meyerowitz' and take a walk with him in each 'project cities evocating ' potentional dictionary of 'The Barrier/Mulato'.
Third artistic research workshop, which was in Budapest, focused on movements, images and local stories.
Main leaders of the Hungarian residency, Gyula Berger, choreographer and Laurent Festas, director tried to find not really ways, symbols, fragments for the piece, but a common platform of co-thinking.
Practical base of this period was a daily 'dance' (movement) training for almost everybody who is around the project.
It means that Berger and Festas involved the whole company ZERO, invited independent Hungarian contemporary dancers (for eg. Valencia James, Csilla Nagy, Beatrix Simkó). Festas himself joined to the dancers and studied short choreographies of Berger and Vusi Makhanya.
Zulu dance workshop of Makhanya was a special experience and fun for the European group: they learned that body-mind of a European or an African performer might be totally different.
On the other hand our traditional roots -from tunes of lullaby to rythm of boot dance- sometimes seem to be closer...
Seminar, guided city tour, theatre event enriched the program.
The famous Hungarian fine artist, Róza El-Hassan gave a lecture about her doctoral research thesis entitled 'No Corruption Social Brand' focusing on traditional roma craftwork and its possibilities of integration to contemporary art, design or trade.
El-Hassan's project is not only about art but as a socially conscious human mission tries to ask questions to and about our society: do we know what is value, what not and why? How can we save it and do we do that?
Thanks to Beyond Budapest team residency participiants visited a special district of Budapest (VIIIth -"Nyócker") and got to know a more about Hungarian urban roma population.
They visited one of the most important Hungarian contemporary theatre initiative, Artus (founded in 1985) to watch last performance of Gábor Goda: Don Quixote Mausoleum which has connections to Cie. EuroCulture -two artists, Tamás Bakó and Kati Dombi appeared on the stage.
