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Simona grew up in Ērgļi, Latvia until she was about 6–7 years old, when her family moved to small village called Misa, Latvia. When she was 17, she moved to Riga and started her study at the Riga Applied College. From 1997 to 2000, she studied in the Environmental Design Department, specializing in Object Design. From 2000 to 2005, she completed both her bachelor's and master's degrees in arts at the Latvian Academy of Culture. She completed her second master's degree in Health Service and Art Therapist Professional Qualification with specialization in Dance Movement Therapy at the Riga Stradiņš University from 2006 to 2009.[1]
Butoh career
Simona had her first exposure to butoh inside a workshop with Sophie Cournede from Schloss Brölin Art Center, Germany in 2002, and she became active in butoh in 2005:[1]
2005 Anita Saij butoh method (Nordic School of Butoh, Denmark)
2007 Butoh dance masterclasses with Ken Mai, Yukio Waguri, Tsuruyama ZULU Kinya (in the frameworks of Nonverbal Arts festival „Vertical 2007: Buto Relations”, (Saint Petersburg, Russia)
2007 SU-EN Butoh Company workshop and participating in the international performance project „The Chicken Project – Romeo and Juliet” (Sweden, Uppsala, Shakespeare's Festival)
2007 Kitt Johnson workshop „Expressive Anatomy” (Denmark)
2010 Joao Roberto de Souza (butoh artist from Brazil, in a workshop of 2010 Nyoba Kan International Butoh Festival, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
2010 Toshiharu Kasai (stage name Itto Morita) (Japan), in a workshop
In 2008, she was involved in the International Arts Synergy Festival in Riga.[2] She made a multimedia performance butoh performance titled "Eyes Fluttering in My Knees."[3]
In 2010, she performed "The Sacred Dances of the Night" at the Happy Art Museum in Riga, Latvia on October 30, November 6, and November 27 with Modris Tenisons (artist, director), Artis Gulbis (performance & sound artist), Gita Straustina (video artist), Skaidra Jančaite (Lithuania, singer), Ken Mai (Japan, co-author, consultant of performance, Ērika Māldere (artistic lighting designer) and her companion Aigars Lenkēvičs (graphic designer) from Lamp Design Workshop.[4][5][permanent dead link][6]
Other dance performances
Apart from butoh performances, she was involved in a processional art performance, "Somebody who leads,"[7] and a performance in a photo exhibition, "On Haiku."[8] She also participated in an international video dance project (Latvia, England, Portugal, Spain, Chile, Hungary). The premiere was held on August 17, 2007, in the frameworks of the International Video Art Festival “Waterpieces 07”.[9]
Dance Movement Therapy
Simona is a private dance therapy or dance movement therapy practitioner under the supervision of Medicine Association "ARS".[10] She provides individual and group Dance Movement Therapy to children and adults.[11] Simona complements the individual dance movement therapy with the Champi ("filling with energy" in Sanskrit) massage, which is a type of Ayurvedic massage.[11]
She had two Dance Movement Therapy internships in Bristol, the United Kingdom in 2008: one in a dance movement therapy center called "Dance Voice" and one in a special school for autistic children called "St.Cristopher’s School”.[1]
As of 20 April 2009 she was employed as an art therapy specialist (Dance Movement therapist) in a children hospital, "Gailezers", and is working with children with psychiatric problems.[1]
She was also one of the founding members of Latvian Dance Movement Therapy Association. She was a member in the Board of Directors of the Association.[12]
Butoh is a form of Japanese dance theatre that encompasses a diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for dance, performance, or movement. Following World War II, butoh arose in 1959 through collaborations between its two key founders, Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno. The art form is known to "resist fixity" and is difficult to define; notably, founder Hijikata Tatsumi viewed the formalisation of butoh with "distress". Common features of the art form include playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, and extreme or absurd environments. It is traditionally performed in white body makeup with slow hyper-controlled motion. However, with time butoh groups are increasingly being formed around the world, with their various aesthetic ideals and intentions.
Tatsumi Hijikata was a Japanese choreographer, and the founder of a genre of dance performance art called Butoh. By the late 1960s, he had begun to develop this dance form, which is highly choreographed with stylized gestures drawn from his childhood memories of his northern Japan home. It is this style which is most often associated with Butoh by Westerners.
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Eiko Otake and Takashi Koma Otake, generally known as Eiko & Koma, are a Japanese performance duo. Since 1972, Eiko & Koma have worked as co-artistic directors, choreographers, and performers, creating a unique theater of movement out of stillness, shape, light, sound, and time. For most of their multi-disciplinary works, Eiko & Koma also create their own sets and costumes, and they are usually the sole performers in their work. Neither of them studied traditional Japanese dance or theater forms and prefer to choreograph and perform only their own works. They do not bill their work as Butoh though Eiko & Koma cite Kazuo Ohno as their main inspiration.
Vija Artmane was a Latvian theatre and cinema actress.
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Modris Tenisons was a mime artist in Lithuania and Latvia. He was especially well known in Lithuania. He was also a multidisciplinary artist: a theater director, stage designer and theater consultant.
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Sunara Begum is an English visual and performance artist, filmmaker, photographer and writer of Bangladeshi descent. She uses installation, film, photography, live performance, sonics and text. Begum is the founder and director of Chand Aftara, a creation centre. Begum is also the co-founder of Living Legacies, a traditional music archive in Gambia and New Horizons Africa, a music and arts festival in Lagos, Nigeria.
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