Just a little update on our activities the last months and the ones to come.

We were travelling quite a bit and busy with investigating cities and environments from within, aside, above, below. We enjoyed to have questions as the answers and have still strange animals involved in our performances. We were surprised by daily routines and continue to be attracted by the invisible and its complex simpleness. Anything that would surprise us could be in you pocket now and we loved to talk to people. Many we met in the streets, shops and some in books.
Is it very exciting to be alive?

Naivity and joy and presence as means to transform serious matter and embrace suffering, was driving us to keep going in midst of this rough subtle beautiful planet, with people being tortured and killed and starving right at this moment.
At 10.31 gmt a Saturday morning in a kitchen in Copenhagen, the winter sun is painting some figures on the ceiling. If I would dare to say what I really feel right now, I'd say LOVE YOU.



What did we do?

We continued with works based on the concept "The Invisible Reality Show" by Vera Maeder. A variety of different shows has been produced in different countries, frames, and circumstances. Among other, the concept was presented at p@rts showcase in 2006, which made it travel another bit around the planet.

If you never heard about "The Invisible Reality Show" before, here a short summary:

“ The Invisible Reality Show” is a concept for creating site-specific performances, that focus on the experience of the audience and provide them with multiple frames to perceive their surroundings, situations and themselves from mixed stand points, altering angels and with new sensitivity.

Audience is sent individually on a prepared path through city or nature. With stimulations from sound, text, images and meetings with performers, a non-fictional play within reality starts to challenge surprise, mirrors each one’s perception and view on the world.

The remodelled fabric of perception leads to the open question of how reality is created and what reality is? And the embodied experience of the audience becomes the performance.

The concept showed to be hybrid in various ways. People from the different artistic fields such as dance, theater, visual art and sound found this work relevant for their working field as well as urban planers, sociologist, psychologists, antropologists, architects, journalists and media people. Because of that, we plan a more structured dialogue and research with people from different professional backgrounds.

But above all- we wish anyone to enjoy their tours!

see also www.invisiblerealityshow.com

Walking Poem Rio de Janeiro/Brazil

a project focusing on exploring the presence of the audience as the dance. Based on the concept "The Invisible Reality Show".

In a four weeks residency at Panorama Festival in Rio de Janeiro, we developed a site specific tour through the Rio district Lapa.

Yes, it happened! In midst of a place on this earth of which locals say: "what you cannot imagine, you will find it here", we created a site -specific walk together with 14 Brazilian artists from different backgrounds and different corners of Brazil! We laughed, cried, were surprised, astonished with each step in this crazy city, full of extreme contrasts on minimal space, full of rythm, Samba, poverty, laughing and loving people, movement, elegance, play . Dance today, and everything will be allright! Maybe that's how to care for tomorrow.

The outcome was a work in progress, presented on Panorama Festival November 2 and 3, and with an extra performance scheduled for the 5th due to the enthusiastic response and huge demand for tickets!
If you want to see below the surface of this project- there is a documentary/ video work coming, it is in the editing-process right now, made by Ana Paula Alba.

Other outputs- some theory will be written about the work by Fernanda Gomez in connection with her final master thesis. And people formed a group to continue to investigate work in this line in Rio.

We are invited again to Brazil in 2008, where the project will either continue in Rio and/or expand to festivals in Recife, Belo Horizonte or Fortaleza.

artists involved from DK: Vera Maeder, Jacob Langaa Sennek, Kristoffer Krarup and Marie Frederiksen(internship)

The project was supported by the Danish Art Council

Walking Poem Jordan / Amman

Walking Poem Jordan / Amman

We started our project in Amman/Jordan. Another site specific tour based on the concept “ The Invisible Reality Show” with a one week workshop and research in September. Theater and film directors, musicians, architects, multi media artists met to start the process of a site specific tour, that connects segregated areas of the city. The project will continue and be implemented in June 2008, with performances for Ammani people and tourists throughout the summer 08.

Our partneres in Amman:

Dina Abu Hamdan (Haya Cultural Center) and Sawzan Darwarzeh

The project is supported by the Danish Cultural Center for Development (CKU) and the Danish Arts Council

Research Mai 2008

-a further investegation.
We will work on a research project that builds on aspects of the concept
“ The Invisible Reality Show” and focuses on virtual and physical presence,
and sensitive shared space and meetings... This will lead up to our next bigger production: The overnight experience where we invite you to spend a night with us,
in in-between and dream states.
The production will be a cooperation with PLEX Theater Copenhagen.

The project is supported by the Danish Art Council

KITs Metropolis Biennale 2007

THE INVISIBE REALITY SHOW#4, 2nd edition
We produced The Invisible Reality Show #4, 2nd edition on Vesterbro/ Copenhagen, in collaboration with the METROPOLIS BIENNALE by Copenhagens International Theater KIT in August 2007. The audience, and we liked it and we enjoyed the dynamics and dialogue that this project brought about very much. Press baptized us as "superkompetente opkomlinge" which must be supercompetent sprouts in english? Did you know that this year, the number of people living in cities worlwide grew over 50 percent ?
see also: http://www.cph-metropolis.dk/
artists/performers involved: Jakob Brandt Pedersen, Kristoffer Krarup, Mireia Sierra, Hanne Pedersen, Niels Wamberg, Thomas Wiesner, Nanna Hviid, Cindy Rudel, Hagen Damwerth

What others wrote about it:
Press
“ As wandering “public” I get extremely aware of all the people around me, which are potential actors …The city turns truly into a living, unpredictable theater, where one becomes aware of ones own active role in the now.”
Theresa Bener, SvD

“…The concept should of interest for any city planner and urban social worker. Because in a specific way, there is created a meeting between the cities inhabitants which otherwise happen in best case in our fantasy…”
Malene Fosare, Kvällposten

“ ---never in any guided walk, the meeting and getting in touch with the real has been so precise, as in this performance , which makes one stop beeing an onlooker and return to oneself in the concrete environment ( of the city).”
Florian Gaber , theater critics , fluctuat.net

" ...UDflugt network, the supercompetent new sprouts within performance art..."
Monna Dithmer, Politiken

Our Children section UDspring

"MOMO- a scenic picture book" is in the making.
The production is based on the childrens book MOMO , by Michael Ende ,and will freely use this story to make a piece that deals with absence and presence, using visuals, movement intersecting with a moving "mecanical robotic turtle" that tells stories.
We started our rehearsals with a week of research in a Zen monastery in France. (Plumvillage, Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh. http://www.plumvillage.org/)
…and what better place to start the process for this piece.
A place where people dedicated their life to being present any instant of time.
It was fantastic and gave lots of impulses to the project, which we hope to share with you.
MOMO will have premiere April 4th 2008 in Copenhagen and thereafter tour in spring and autumn in Denmark.

actors: Nanna Hviid, Birger Bovin, Hanne Pedersen; direction: Vera Maeder; set design,light and music: Jacob Langaa-Sennek

The project is supported by the Danish Art Council, The Danish Actors Union's “Blankbåndsmedler”.



The Planet
A interactive installation and roleplay project in different schools will start in December 2007 in Copenhagen. Pursueing the question of what is happiness, and what do we need to be happy? We will create a planet in two weeks time. An utopia. A reality that we inhabit together with the kids or youngsters for 3 days or longer.
HGO School Copenhagen, Fri Skole Rørvig and Esrom Skole participate in the project.

artists involved: Hanne Pedersen, Vera Maeder and Stine Worm /Sigrid Bennike

The project is supported by the Danish Arts Council´s " Huskunsterordning"