Lithuanian DanceScene 2012 Birutė Banevičiūtė Puzzle 5 Amos Ben-Tal Kill the Victor 5 Rūta Butkus Lost Eyes 7 5g of Hope 7 Loreta Juodkaitė Mirage 9 Inga Kuznecova & Petras Lisauskas And Everything Went Very Well 9 Birutė Letukaitė The Sea 11 Sonus.Lux.Unum 11 Petras Lisauskas YOUME 13 Jérôme Meyer & Isabelle Chaffaud 3 W(o)men 13 s t n Krzysztof Pastor e t n o Tristan and Isolde 15 C Agnija Šeiko No Space at the Parking Lot 15 Juliets 17 Marija Simona Šimulynaitė Sunstroke 17 Brigita Urbietytė Tango Salon 19 Austėja Vilkaitytė Dear Lithuania 19 Festivals & Projects 20 Organizations & Companies 24 Contacts 30 PUZZLE © DIMITRIJ MATVEJEV Puzzle Kill the Victor DANSEMA DANCE THEATRE, Vilnius AURA DANCE THEATRE, Kaunas KORZO PRODUCTIONS, The Hague Choreography Birutė Banevičiūtė | Dance Giedrė Subotinaitė, Indrė Bacevičiūtė, Choreography, music & text Amos Ben-Tal | Mantas Stabačinskas | Music Rasa Dikčienė | Dance Gotautė Kalmatavičiūtė, Marius Pinigis, Light design Aurelijus Davidavičius | Lana Coporda (Ema Nedobežkina, understudy) | Consultation Ingrida Gerbutavičiūtė Costumes Amos Ben-Tal | Light design Amos Ben-Tal, Peter Lemmens Duration 35' | Première 2012 Duration 15' | Première 2012 Puzzle is the first contemporary dance per- formance in Lithuania for 0-3 years old chil- 64 square-meters, a box in a box, dren. Knowing that children can concen- 2 females, 1 male, glistening skin, shiny ė t trate their attention just for few minutes, metal, a pulse, a voice, a word. Now what? ū i č there is alternated watching to the action i v e and movement during the performance. An AURA Dance Theatre commissioned the Is- n A B especially composed music offers simple raeli choreographer Amos Ben-Tal to create ė t u and high sound combinations suitable for a short piece for the company. In Kill the r i B children in this age group. As small chil- Victor the choreographer explores the dren start to know world around them by l paradox of achieving freedom by creating A t recognizing a variety of geometric shapes - rules. He encourages improvising and add- n e B and colours, the dancers lay them out like ing ones personal creativity within a dense s a puzzle to travel through different stages o web of choreographic structures and strict m of child development during the perfor- A rules of engagement. mance. So how does the surrounding world look like for a small child? Amos Ben-Tal came to the Netherlands in 1997. Shortly after he joined the Ned- A choreographer, educator and a doctor erlands Dans Theater and kept perform- of Social Sciences (dance education), ing with this company until 2006. After Birutė Banevičiūtė has created contem- his dancing career with NDT, Ben-Tal made porary dance performances as well as a number of successful productions with choreography for theatre performances Korzo. From an early age Ben-Tal has been and operas since 1993. Besides, she has a involved in music. He makes use of this wide experience in working with children in his work, as a composer, producer, and and young people of various age groups a singer / guitarist with his alternative teaching dance and creating choreog- rock band Noblesse. raphies. This experience led her to start creating professional contemporary dance performance for children and young audi- ence. In 2007, Benevičiūtė became head of the Contemporary Dance Association, and since 2008, she organizes the Inter- national Contemporary Dance Festival for Children and Youth – Dansema. LOST EYES © SVETLANA BATURA Lost Eyes 5g of Hope ARTS PRINTING HOUSE, Vilnius Idea, choreography Rūta Butkus | Performance ARTISTS GROUP ‘FISH EYE’, Klaipėda Rūta Butkus, Urtė Laukaitytė | Piano Joris KORZO PRODUCTIONS, The Hague Sodeika | Music Sergei Rachmaninoff, Dmitri Shostakovich, Vasily Agapk | Text Daniil Kharms | Choreography Rūta Butkus | Dance Irena Misirlić Costumes Elvita Brazdylytė | Instalation Sigita & Konrad Szymański | Music Robert Semaškevič | Šimkūnaitė | Light design Vilius Vilutis Costumes Rūta Butkus | Set design Sigita Šimkūnaitė | Light design Vilius Vilutis & Bas Duration 50' | Première 2012 Vissers | Consultation Ingrida Gerbutavičiūtė Duration 30' | Première 2012 5g of Hope is a dance theatre performance about absurd, irrational, ironic longing The Lithuanian choreographer and ac- for hope that logic cannot explain. There tress Rūta Butkus and the dramaturge happens an interesting collision and mis- Ingrida Gerbutavičiūtė worked together match – the Trinity, the Hope, is at the s u during their stay in The Hague with the same time a part of you, but it is also sepa- tk u Croatian dancer Irena Misirlić and Konrad rate from you, as if it comes from nowhere, B A Szymański from Poland. The dance perfor- thus it becomes disgusting for itself. t ū r mance Lost Eyes is about the inner wander- ings of a human being. It gives an ironic s view of our daily lives in a stimulating man- u k t u B ner. Here, the human being nestles in his A t own little world, full of standards of hones- ū r ty, duty, and kindness, though ever further removed from his own Nature (lust, life). Rūta Butkus has developed her own thea- tre esthetics. In her performances she employs irony and absurd in order to find existential truth both in human and nature lives. Butkus completed her studies of con- temporary dance at the Lithuanian Acad- emy of Music and Theatre (under the chore- ographer Aira Naginevičiūtė) in 2007. Latter on she was part of performances by Lithu- anian choreographers Aira Naginevičiūtė, Vytis Jankauskas, Vesta Grabštaitė, and Andrius Katinas. She has also participated in plays produced by Oskaras Koršunovas, Per Olav Sørensen, and Mariusz Treliński. MIRAGE © SVETLANA BATURA Mirage And Everything Went Very Well ARTS PRINTING HOUSE, Vilnius KORZO PRODUCTIONS, The Hague ARTISTS GROUP ‘FISH EYE’, Klaipėda Choreography Loreta Juodkaitė | Dance Loreta Choreography and dance Inga Kuznecova & Juodkaitė & Kenzo Kusuda | Music Deborah Petras Lisauskas | Music The Bad Plus, Thomas Lennie-Bisson, Patrice Grente, Tautvilas Newman, Bonobo | Video artist Julius Venskus Gurevičius | Light design Peter Lemmens Duration 45’ | Première 2012 Duration 20' | Première 2012 Mirage is a duet performance created in And Everything Went Very Well is a lyrical The Hague in collaboration between Loreta novel of familial love. It was inspired by the Juodkaitė and Kenzo Kusuda, a Japanese famous performance by John Lennon and choreographer and dancer. The difference Yoko Ono ‘Bed In’ (1969) and their personal ė t i between these two breathtaking perform- relationship. Therefore a living space was A k d ers could hardly be greater. Juodkaitė is selected instead of a theatrical one. It is o u J strong, fierce, and has an explosive en- full of reminder notes: from ‘buy cat food’ A t e ergy; Kusuda, is a master of subtle dance to ‘I love you’ or ‘fuck you’. The couple’s r o l poetry. Together they tell a story about the mutual entity is also full of these notes. gifts of life, which are there only for those How does one get away from the fuss of s A who open their eyes to see. k everyday memos, reminders and memories s u A preventing people from hearing and feel- s i l Loreta Juodkaitė is one of a few choreogra- ing each other? They have to open up and s A r phers in Lithuania who has made the leap t create themselves anew, so that the home e P to the international dance scene. Juodkaitė is no longer a battle field, but a space of & presents her own work abroad and is harmony. A v o C also a high-profile dancer with the French e n choreographer Rachid Ouramdane. Loreta z Inga Kuznecova and Petras Lisauskas are u k Juodkaitė received the Golden Stage Cross A two dancers and choreographers based g n for her performances ‘Here and Now’ and i in Klaipėda representing the Artists Group ‘Salamandra’s Dream. Picture’. She has ‘Fish Eye’. This year Inga Kuznecova has learned the basics of contemporary dance graduated from the Klaipėda Universi- at Vytis Jankauskas dance studio. In 2005 ty (mA in choreography), previously she she graduated from Salzburg Experimen- also studied in the Stockholm Dance Col- tal Academy of Dance (SEAD). Now she lege. Petras Lisauskas has graduated from is finishing her mA in theatre direction at The Lithuanian Theatre and Music Acad- University of Klaipėda. emy (BA in acting-contemporary dance, the course led by Aira Naginevičiūtė) in 2007 and has already been working with such great stage artists as Robert Wilson and Palle Granhøj. SONUS.LUX.UNUM © SVETLANA BATURA The Sea Sonus.Lux.Unum AURA DANCE THEATRE, Kaunas AURA DANCE THEATRE, Kaunas Idea, direction & choreography Birutė Choreography Birutė Letukaitė | Letukaitė | Music M. K. Čiurlionis | Lightning Sound Bionics | Video installation VJ Ramj | design Vladimiras Šerstobojevas | Video Dance AURA Dance Theatre Gintaras Laurušonis, Birutė Letukaitė, Paulina Duration 40' | Première 2012 Nešukaitytė | Costume design Solveiga Vasiliauskaitė, Paulina Nešukaitytė | Scenography Birutė Letukaitė, Paulina Nešukaitytė | Interpretation & performance Sonus.Lux.Unum is an audiovisual per- Liza Baliasnaja, Gotautė Kalmatavičiūtė, Ieva Navickaitė, Marius Pinigis, Indrė Puišytė, Andrius formance for which AURA Dance Thea- Stakelė, pupils of theatre studio and Kaunas tre meets young sound and video artists School of Dance Bionics and VJ Ramj. This experimental Duration 50' | Première 2012 collaboration aims to look for connec- ė t i tions between physical phenomena and A k u matter. What does the meeting of sound t e l The Sea is a symphonic poem by the fa- and light (sonus.lux) with a human be- ė t u mous Lithuanian composer M. K. Čiurlionis. ing (unum) give? What happens then? r i B It becomes a key metaphor for the chore- ographer Birutė Letukaikė to speak about A former dancer, now famous choreogra- ė t i shifted relations between man and nature A pher and dance teacher Birutė Letukaitė k u as well as the most sorrowful things in to- t is one of the founders of contemporary e l day’s Lithuania: the Baltic sea polluted by ė dance in Lithuania.