Remix Dance Project

Last updated

The Remix Dance Project (also known as Remix Dance Company) is a South African contemporary dance company that "brings together performers with physical disabilities and performers without". [1]

South Africa Republic in the southernmost part of Africa

South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by 2,798 kilometres (1,739 mi) of coastline of Southern Africa stretching along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe; and to the east and northeast by Mozambique and Eswatini (Swaziland); and it surrounds the enclaved country of Lesotho. South Africa is the largest country in Southern Africa and the 25th-largest country in the world by land area and, with over 57 million people, is the world's 24th-most populous nation. It is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Old World or the Eastern Hemisphere. About 80 percent of South Africans are of Bantu ancestry, divided among a variety of ethnic groups speaking different African languages, nine of which have official status. The remaining population consists of Africa's largest communities of Whites, Asian (Indian), and multiracial (Coloured) ancestry.

Contemporary dance form of dance that developed in the mid twentieth century

Contemporary dance is a genre of dance performance that developed during the mid twentieth century and has since grown to become one of the dominant genres for formally trained dancers throughout the world, with particularly strong popularity in the U.S. and Europe. Although originally informed by and borrowing from classical, modern, and jazz styles, it has since come to incorporate elements from many styles of dance. Due to its technical similarities, it is often perceived to be closely related to modern dance, ballet, and other classical concert dance styles.

The company is South Africa’s first physically integrated dance company and grew out of the British Council’s Tshwaragano in Touch Integrated Dance Project in Johannesburg in 2000. This was led by choreographer and teacher Adam Benjamin who has subsequently worked with Remix on several productions. [2]

The physically integrated dance movement is part of the disability culture movement, which recognizes and celebrates the first-person experience of disability, not as a medical model construct but as a social phenomenon, through artistic, literary, and other creative means.

Remix was founded and directed in 2000 by Nicola Visser and was formalised as a Trust and Non-Profit Organisation in 2001 with Malcolm Black. [1] [3] In 2005 it became a full-time professional company [1] and is a resident company at the Baxter Theatre Centre in Cape Town since 2010. [1] [2]

Baxter Theatre Centre performing arts centre in Cape Town, South Africa

The Baxter Theatre Centre is a performing arts complex in Rondebosch, a suburb of Cape Town, South Africa. The Baxter, as it is often known, is part of the University of Cape Town; it is also the second largest performing arts complex in Cape Town, after the Artscape Theatre Centre.

Cape Town Capital city of the Western Cape province and legislative capital of South Africa

Cape Town is the oldest city in South Africa, colloquially named the Mother City. It is the legislative capital of South Africa and primate city of the Western Cape province. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality.

Remix concentrates on the contemporary dance genre drawing on release technique and contact improvisation as its primary discipline in training, [1] with its activities focused on education for children, adults and teachers of integrated dance and the creation of "performances that are intriguing and intelligent". [1]

In dance, release technique is any of various dance techniques that focus on breathing, muscle relaxation, anatomical considerations, and the use of gravity and momentum to facilitate efficient movement. It can be found in modern and postmodern dance, and has been influenced by the work of modern dance pioneers, therapeutic movement techniques such as Feldenkrais and Alexander Technique, and yoga and martial arts.

Contact improvisation

Contact improvisation is a form of improvised dancing that has been developing internationally since 1972. It involves the exploration of one's body in relationship to others by using the fundamentals of sharing weight, touch, and movement awareness.

The company won the Arts and Culture Trust Award for the Cultural Development Project of the Year in 2002 for its work in education and performance and the Western Cape Cultural Commission Award for Outstanding Contribution to Disability and the Arts in 2006. [3]

Related Research Articles

Willie Bester is a South African artist known for his installations made of found objects.

Dulcie Howes was a South African ballet dancer, teacher, choreographer, and company director. During her performing career, she was considered the prima ballerina assoluta of South African ballet. In 1934, she established the company that evolved into today's Cape Town City Ballet.

AXIS Dance Company other organization in Oakland, United States

AXIS Dance Company is a professional physically integrated contemporary dance company and dance education organization founded in 1987 and based in Oakland, California. It is one of the first contemporary dance companies in the world to consciously develop choreography that integrates dancers with and without physical disabilities. Their work has received nine Isadora Duncan Dance Awards and nine additional nominations for both their artistry and production values.

Asian American Arts Centre

The Asian American Arts Centre (AAAC) is a non-profit organization located in Chinatown in New York City. Founded in 1974, it is one of the earliest Asian American community organizations in the United States. The Arts Centre presents the ongoing developments between contemporary Asian & Asian American art forms and Western art forms through the presentation of performance, exhibitions, and public education. AAAC's permanent collection, which it has accumulated since 1989, contains hundreds of contemporary Asian American art works and traditional/folk art pieces. The organization also has an Artists Archive which documents, preserves, and promotes the presence of Asian American visual culture in the United States since 1945. This includes the East Coast, especially the greater New York area; the West Coast; and some artists in Canada, Hawaii, and overseas. The artists include Asian Americans producing art, Asian artists who are active in the United States, and other Americans who are significantly influenced by Asia. Pan-Asian in outlook, the Arts Centre's understanding of ‘Asia’ encompasses traditions and influences with sources ranging from Afghanistan to Hawaii.

Expressions Dance Company is an Australian contemporary dance company based in the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, in Fortitude Valley. It was founded in 1984 by Maggi Sietsma, artistic director and Abel Valls, general manager. Natalie Weir took over as Artistic Director in January 2009.

Sheron Wray is a dancer, teacher, choreographer and theatre director. She studied under Jane Dudley at the London Contemporary Dance School, later performing with the London Contemporary Dance Theatre and the Rambert Dance Company, and forming her own company JazzXchange in 1992. She presently is associate professor of dance at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California, Irvine.

Theo Adams, is a performance artist and director of the contemporary theatrical performance group Theo Adams Company.

NewMusicSA is the South African section of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM). Its formation on 10 May 1999 heralded the return of South African representation at the ISCM after many decades.

Bates Dance Festival

The Bates Dance Festival is a dance festival held annually at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, United States. The program runs during the summer months and includes workshops and performances.

Rennie Harris American choreographer

Rennie Harris is a dancer, choreographer, artistic director and professor of hip-hop dance. Harris formed the first and longest running hip-hop dance touring company, Rennie Harris Puremovement in 1992. In 2007, he conceived another touring company, RHAW or Rennie Harris Awe-Inspiring Works.

Esther Mahlangu South African artist

Dr Esther Mahlangu is a South African artist from the Ndebele nation. She is known for her bold large-scale contemporary paintings that reference her Ndebele heritage. Dr Esther Mahlangu was conferred with an honourary doctorate by the University of Johannesburg, 9 April 2018.

Jazzart Dance Theatre is a leading contemporary dance company in South Africa. It is known not only for its combination of Western and African styles, but also for its focus on social justice and community improvement. Jazzart Dance Theatre aims to be a trransformative dance company that reflects the changing social environment of South Africa. Meanwhile, Jazzart's training programme provides dance theatre training and creative interventions to South African communities most in need of opportunities to express their artistic impulses.

Athi-Patra Ruga is a South African artist who uses performance, video, textiles, and printmaking to explore notions of utopia and dystopia, material and memory. His work explores the body in relation to sensuality, culture, and ideology, often creating cultural hybrids. Themes such as sexuality, HIV/AIDS, African culture, and the place of queerness within post-apartheid South Africa also permeate his work. Ruga was recently included in the Phaidon book Younger Than Jesus, a directory of over 500 of the world’s best artists under the age of 33. In 2014 he presented at Design Indaba Conference in Cape Town. Ruga's work has been purchased by numerous public and private collections, including the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa permanent collection, Iziko South African National Gallery, Museion – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, in Bolzano Italy, and the CAAC – Pigozzi Collection.

Mamela Nyamza is a dancer, teacher, choreographer, and activist in South Africa. She is trained in a variety of styles of dance including ballet, modern dance, African dance, the Horton technique, Spanish dance, jazz, movement and mime, flying low technique, release technique, gumboot dance and Butoh. Nyamza is known for blending styles in a way that challenges traditional standards. Nyamza has performed nationally and internationally and has choreographed autobiographical, political, and social pieces both on her own and in collaboration with other artists. She draws inspiration from her daily life and her identity as a young, black woman. Nyamza's abstract dance style allows her to use dance as a way to share both her own personal stories as well as African stories with the world. Additionally, she has created various community outreach projects that have helped to spread the positive influence of dance to different communities within South Africa, including the University of Stellenbosch's Project Move 1524, a group that works to educate on issues relating to HIV/AIDS, domestic violence and drug abuse, through dance movement therapy.

Dance United is a non-profit organisation with projects in Ethiopia, Central London, Wessex and Yorkshire. Youths marginalised in society participate in intensive contemporary dance training, which in turn offers them educational qualifications and useful life skills. Each Dance United location has a professional dance company made up of past academy members or local university dancers. The performance company has worked with choreographers such as Dam Van Huynh, Sara Dowling, Lizzie Kew Ross, Darren Ellis and John Ross. Performances have been held in well-known venues throughout England including Sadler's Wells, Two-Temple Place, The Place, Royal Festival Hall, Theatre Royal Winchester, Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Lawrence Batley Theatre. Over the years, Dance United has worked with a diverse range of beneficiaries, including Ethiopian street children, adult women prisoners and people from across the political divides in Berlin and Belfast.

Rashid Lombard is known as both a jazz photographer and political photojournalist. Lombard is the CEO of espAfrika, an events management company which he started in 1997. espAfrika is responsible for staging the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, formerly known as the North Sea Jazz Cape Town.

Magnet Theatre

Magnet Theatre is an independent physical theatre company based in Cape Town, South Africa. It was formed in 1987 by Mark Fleishman and Jennie Reznek who have since been the company's artistic directors. Besides creating original theatre productions, Magnet Theatre is actively engaged in youth development work in the Cape Town area as well as in the Cederberg Municipality.

Jan Van Dyke American modern dancer

Jan Van Dyke was an American dancer, choreographer, dance educator and scholar who was a pioneer of modern and contemporary dance.

Melanie Scholtz was born in Cape Town, South Africa. She is a vocalist. She sings operas, jazz, pop, r&b and classical music. She is a classically trained Opera singer, a songwriter, music teacher, composer, and a dancer. She attended the Opera School, in Cape Town, South Africa. She graduated Cum Laude in 2000. Her band is called 'Love Apples'. She performs in her country, South Africa, and she was performed in Czech Republic, Germany, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, France, Italy, Russia, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Slovakia, and the United States of America. Melanie incorporates her South African Folk music as well as her mother tongue 'Xhosa' language click sounds and rhythms.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "History". Remix Dance Project. Retrieved 9 October 2010.
  2. 1 2 "Remix: Leaders in integrated contemporary dance". Classicfeel Magazine. Randburg, SA: DeskLink. July 2010. Retrieved 9 October 2010.
  3. 1 2 "With Remix Dance Company at the Baxter, any body can dance". Cape Town: CapeInfo. 2010. Archived from the original on 25 November 2010. Retrieved 9 October 2010.


This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.