MALE DANCES
Robert Steijn & Ricardo Rubio/ Alberto Montes/ Fred LorcaPERFORMANCE/ CONCERT
Male Dances is an evening about masculinity,dance,movement and magic. The special guests are the artists Robert Stejin and Ricardo Rubio and their work Prelude on Love. As a starter we have the honour to present the work of sociologist and folk/contemporary dancer Alberto Montes on football and popular male dance practices in mexico for the first time in Europe.
‚Prelude on Love‘ by Robert Stejin and Ricardo Rubio
Robert Steijn and Mexican choreographer Ricardo Rubio started their working collaboration five years ago. Originally Robert went to Mexico to get in contact with Mexican healers to study the energy of the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl. Now he works there regurlarly and investigates the meaning of showing personal rituals in a colonized world together with Ricardo. “Prelude on Love” is their first duet, and is presented for the first time in Vienna. It is a duet about masculinity and tenderness, a theatrical and meditative study on the cultural differences of two bodies who want to become one in breathing and moving together.
‚How to tap a goal‘ by Alberto Montes
Football has been scorned by the arts because it is generally viewed in opposition to it. However, it is one of the most significant popular practices in the Mexican context. Either through family tradition, through ascription to the national or the simple liking of the game; which, one might say, is directly related to the construction of community. This practice mobilizes the body on different levels and one of them is the goal, the most fundamental characteristic of the game, which as Galeano enunciated is the orgasm of soccer. This work seeks to unravel those possibilities of fullness and orgasm produced by the scoring of a goal in the body, as this act, creates expansive vibrations capable of generating movement.
Fred Lorca (concert)
„Fred Lorca is one of the most interesting Latin American electronic music producers working today.He has shown over the past years that he is one of the most distinctive voices out there, and that he is not afraid to do things his own way“.SOUNDSandCOLORS https://fredlorca.bandcamp.com/
CV’s
Robert Steijn started with dancing on stage, when he was 43. In his solos he first positioned himself in the field as a deer dancer, but later he had a call to become a snake-dancer, which brought him to Brazil (Umbanda) and Mexico (the feathered serpent). Four years ago he started a collaboration with Ricardo Rubio, a choreographer from Mexico City resulting in their first duet „prelude on love“, exercises in male tenderness and intimacy. Their next project is called „loverhood“, based on personal healing rituals about desire and saliva. With the Berlin based choreographer Angela Schubot he created the duet „Brothers“, a meditative event in which differences between each other’s way of moving and being present in the body are respected. He asks himself how, by dancing, he can become a free spirit in a human body. He likes dancers who challenge themselves to become more and more themselves in what they do. Inspired by the work of shamans he structures his performances as rituals and lately he investigates performing as a way of public praying. Working as a nomad in the dance-field, he works and worked with a range of different choreographers and theatre-makers, like Frans Poelstra, with whom he founded the company United Sorry, Jessica Huber, Theater im Bahnhof, Maria Hassabi, Christine Gaigg, Latifa Labiissi, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. He also writes texts, creates drawings, and sometimes directs theatre-pieces.
Ricardo Rubio is a Mexican choreographer, poet, and performance artist. He is founder and current director of INTERflamenca [body expressions of movement which dialogue with electronic media: visual art-multimedia and sound art-electronic music]. His personal approach to creations is to dialogue with diverse disciplines like poetry, ethnography, performance and electronic media, to research the purpose of ancient rituals in Latin America and traditional dances in the contemporary world. His collaboration with Robert Steijn is based on the research of tenderness and intimacy as a political act and the healing power of ritual in the contemporary world. He is Beneficiary of the Program to Support Professional Artistic Groups of Performing Arts „Mexico on Stage“ by FONCA since 2015, Artistic Member of the National System of Art Creators by FONCA 2012-2014, in the category Choreography, Beneficiary of the Program to Foment Projects and Cultural Joint Ventures by FONCA 2012-2013, and chosen to receive the Benefit of Investment Projects for the Production of National Dance by CONACULTA and INBA 2012-2013. He has collaborated with artists such as Rosario Ancer (CA), Carola Zertuche (US), Mariana Collado (ES), currently with Robert Steijn (NL), Eva Milich (SE) and Kaśka Arbaczewska-Matys (PL). He has taught and performed in World Dance Company (SE), Russian State Institute of Performing Art in Saint Petersburg, among others.