Body Memory/Duo Movement Workshop with Dénes Döbrei and Heni Varga
August 20-24 @ The Ready, 4546 N. Western Ave, Chicago, IL 60625
10am - 2pm Mon - Fri
Limit 20 participants
$250, full participation only
Theatre Y is thrilled to invite Chicago's actors, movers, and dancers to participate in a week long movement and dance workshop this August with visiting international guest artists, Dénes Döbrei and Heni Varga.
Sessions will be co-taught by husband-and-wife choreographers and dancers Dénes Döbrei and Heni Varga--both Serbians of Hungarian descent. Each instructor has their own unique focus: Body Memory and Duo, respectively.
To apply, please email your head shot and resume to [email protected]-- we will send you a short questionnaire to be filled out and returned to us. Theatre Y encourages artists of color and of all levels of experience to apply---If the cost is prohibitive, please write to us to discuss the details.
Dénes and Heni run the Nyári Mozi Theater Community, founded in 1985 in order to unite multiethnic Yugoslavian artists in the Vojvodina region (now part of Serbia), and it has remained focused on bringing different cultures together.
They collaborated as choreographers with Theatre Y in 2013 on their first original work “The Binding”, and Artistic Director Melissa Lorraine has trained and performed with them in Europe on several occasions.
Dénes Döbrei
is a lecturer at the University of Novi Sad Theatre Academy (Serbia) and an instructor at the LEDA Theatre School (Toulouse, France) and Theatre de l’Acte (Toulouse, France). He has served as Artistic Director for the Nyari Mozi Theater Community since 1986. Denes continues to work as choreographer for several Serbian, Slovenian, Bosnian, Hungarian, and Romanian theatre directors, among which Emma, performed at the National Theatre of Subotica (Serbia) – written by Chat Geza and directed by Peter Fekete – won Sterija Prize for the best choreography in Novi Sad (Serbia).
Dénes describes his Body Memory work:
Our objective is to free and use our potentials through discovering/uncovering our body's map, and to develop new language though movement that can eventually become a dance--a preexisting dance from the depth of our cells. This workshop is about researching harmony within opposites. This dance can be full of energy or empty, fast or slow, harmonious or dissonant, etc. The unique qualities of a body's motion or stillness depends on its state while on stage. This state will be made visible as the body transforms the space it occupies, given movement's capacity to express both the past and the future of a given space through the dancer's body. We will focus on the physical state, relaxation and exercises to enhance imagination in the creative process.
We will employ:
- Individual exercises, to enable us to meet ourselves, integrate our experiences and receive the uniqueness of everyone else's body.
- Two person exercises: to help us know our partners (the experience of what the other body carries within), but also to find multiple modes of communication between two bodies, to exchange, share, receive...-
- In group: which will allow us to find our place with and amidst others.
Henrijeta Varga
graduated from Jacques Lecoq's International School in Paris and received her diploma for teaching dance in France. She has since trained in Japanese Nô Theatre, Mask and Dance Theatre from Bali, and Dance Theatre from South India (ARTA), Body Weather Work in the Netherlands, and most extensively with Min Tanaka in Japan.
Both Denes and Heni have most notably starred in the long-running critically acclaimed Woyzeck with Josef Nadj' Company in Rennes (France), touring internationally since 1993.
Heni describes her work with Duo:
The Duo, in a very large sense, is exploring one's relationship with "The Living" (our body, animal & plant kingdoms, elements of water, air, fire and earth) and "The Non-living" (objects, buildings, mineral world).
"The Hyphen" or the link between our emotions and our thought process, the expression of our personal feelings and analysis of our personal experiences, our situation in time, space and circumstances, our state of mind and our physical dimension...etc.
How do we connect with the OTHER?
Finding ways to MEET an OTHER by discovering, or inventing a language to COMMUNICATE with:
a PERSON, an ANIMAL, a PLANT or TREE, an ELEMENT (we explore on a ONE to ONE basis)
During the workshop we will use our senses in different ways, observing how our body-mind-spirit acts and reacts, observing and being conscious of how rich, diverse and emotionally deep we are.
Finding a way to show who and how we are and developing understanding and tolerance through acceptance and through open benevolent reactions to propositions.
Who is the one who initiates, triggers an action, the leader?
Who is the follower, the acolyte ?
Communication born within space and time, action, reaction, and emotions between two entities.
Communication here will put it's emphasis mostly on movement and sound as well as creative installations inspired by environment, emotions, our sense of space.
Photo Credit: Zsofi Szerda