Europe

2017-2019

From the beginning of 2017, Forge Collective started to focus on the question how to create a space/place we can associate with as ‘home’ in a world full of dualities: religious, age, and political differences, ethnic diversity and the different mindset and cultural habits that come with it. The movement research and performance staged in the Netherlands focussing on this theme has been Muscari Armeniacum

The second work made in the Netherlands was staged in the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing, as part of the “Cold Nights” exhibition has been Deep Fall Puppet Inspired by the book ‘Cold Nights’ of Ba Jin and ‘Buy Me The Sky’of Xinran, two dancers explore the dual relationship and commonalities between conservatism and modernism, between East and West; where do the narratives of these dualities meet? The deeper laying question asked and researched is how to create a space/place that is like ‘home’ including multiple generations.

In 2018, we organized Dance x Calligraphy Beyond Dots, an exhibition and dance program in which Deep Fall Puppet was developed further and re-staged. In the exhibition  traditional Chinese Calligraphy and painting were displayed side by side Western Modern Abstract art. As part of the exhibition, two nights of dance were curated and programmed,  to bring the philosophy and stories behind the Chinese paintings and calligraphy to life. The performances showed a multiplicity of responses to CHANGE, and questioned if we are willing and capable to explore what lays beyond, the metaphorical ‘dot’, the ending of something? East and West, modernism vs conservatism, change vs continuity.

In 2018/2019 the focus of the work in the Netherlands will be:

• Generations
  The quest and opportunities of ‘reinventing home’ including multiple generations
• Diversity and ethnic segregation
  Hong Kong and the bigger cities of the Netherlands have a big ethnic minority community. If we envision our cities in the future how do we address ethnic segregation, white privilege, and instead include and embrace the diversity of ethnic diversity present?

2014-2016

INSTINCT

In the first year of Forge Collective we develoed a collaboration with Dutch choreographer Iris van Peppen. After the HKNLversations dance artistic director Marloes van Houten, and HK choreographer David Leung visited the Netherlands to teach several workshops and master classes in October 2014 and January 2015, Iris got inspired and continued to develop movement research under the title ‘Instinct’. This with the idea that for transformation to happen, its first step is deconstruction of old patterns that limit us to act and move according to our authentic nature, by going back to our instinctual behaviour and releasing the head/neck (cognitive, thinking, controlling side), activating the arterial flow (blood-pump) in order to awake our instinct and enter another (sub)consciousness.

Iris dance project ‘Instinct’ researches the human instinct to move, inviting surprises to come to new ways of moving and being. A first preview of ‘Instinct’ was staged in May 2015 in a prison in Utrecht, the Netherlands, as part of the UTRECHT DOWN UNDER cultural program: vimeo.com/190990673 The movement research developed into a dance film shown at various festivals globally, and a full length dance theatre production premiered in the Netherlands in December 2016. See here for a trailer of the production. Iris also came to Hong Kong in 2016 to share of her movement research, show the INSTINCT dance film and give a performative showing.