MaterialBody
MaterialBody is a performative installation at the overlap of dance and textile art. After an initial research phase, in April 2024 Victoria performed a work-in-progress excerpt in TanzArt Kirschau, a former textile factory, now turned into art and dance studios as well as a gallery.
A moving dialogue for textiles and bodies, MaterialBody both a creative process and a performance which invites a shift our perception of self and the material objects we encounter everyday. Familiar and often literally hautnah (up close, near the skin), how much do we know about the textiles we use? Could the garments we wear become partners in movement? Can elements of sewing become an outline for creating dance?
This project arises from the urge to address textile waste (in relation to broader climate concerns) while working in interdisciplinary ways and the wish to investigate my own histories and responsibilities towards garments and sewing.
Kirschau 2024 - Photos Konrad Behr
UP NEXT:
Jan 6, 2025 - Feb 17, 2025 - “Animate Materials” Performance Project - Tanzfabrik Berlin
Monday / Wednesdays 20.00-22.00 / Showing Monday Feb 17 at 21.00
“Animate Materials” is a moving dialogue at the intersection of dance and textile arts. This performance project is an open level, 7 week process with an informal showing on the last evening.
In this project we will seek new partnerships with garments while questioning consumer culture. We will map relations between our bodies and fabric through somatic exercises, sewing tasks and contemporary improvisation, to create a performative structure and imagine a fashion world that cares for people as well as material. Victoria is a dance artist who performs, teaches and creates body-based, interdisciplinary art. Animate Objects is an extension of her current work, MaterialBody.
Guiding research questions include:
What new partnerships or duets arise when we explore the properties, both the limits and possibilities, of fabric through the material of our own skin, muscle, and bone? When does sewing become choreography? What tools does performance offer that invite participants to question habitual social behavior?
Photos from residency in Berlin, June 2023.
BodyMaterial - the first visual research