Just for One Day
Just For One Day was the title of a collaboration project between Yo! Opera and Springdance, an Utrecht-based institution responsible for the organisation of an annual international dance festival. Yo! Opera had always had the desire to combine its own discipline with other artistic disciplines, in order to be inspired and to inspire others. Such combination would enable it to find and explore differences and similarities. Apart from that, Yo! Opera was also just curious, and convinced that art essentially is one discipline with many different forms of expression.
By Just For One Day, Springdance and Yo! Opera brought three choreographers and three composers into contact. They were asked to combine their disciplines and - in a collective creative process - to explore the boundaries of each other's work. Singing and dancing are the two most ancient human forms of expression. The simultaneous development of the ideas from its makers and the importance of finding a common language were seen as interesting experiments by both Yo! Opera and Springdance. The connecting thread between the disciplines and the three duos, each working separately, was the theme 'the young hero'.
The three duos working on this assignment were Nora Heilmann/Paul Oomen, Inari Salmivaara/Thomas Myrmel and Andre Gingras/Zbigniew Wolny. They brought together a cast of several singers and dancers and started a brief but very intense working process. Although what they worked on was in fact a research project, they were expressly asked to present the result - three presentations of fifteen minutes each - in front of an audience.
Choreographer Nora Heilmann and composer Paul Oomen departed from a technical and physical theme: a research into movement based on breathing, which raised a strong but complex issue closely related to the origins of both song and movement.
Inara Salmivaara and Thomas Myrmel prepared a presentation more directly connected with the theme of the young hero. Starting from the assumption that a hero can be a hero only when his social environment gives him this status, they created a both lightfooted and striking work, in which a singer and dancer challenge each others skills, deconstruct these skills and subsequently succeed in creating a joint 'heroship'. The interspace between the disciplines of song and dance, voice and movement, was explored in a naive and at the same time catching way. It resulted in a presentation which could not differ more from the one prepared by their colleagues.
The approach of André Gingras and Zbigniew Wolny was more downtoearth, and they had focused more at creating a plot, expressed in two combined disciplines. It dealt with the influence of context on a hero's status. Who decides this status, and what are situations in which someone can be a hero? And how 'real' is a hero? Of the three presentations, this final one came closest to a 'performance' in the traditional sense of the word.
The three presentations were integrated in Springdance 2006 and the Kameropera Festival [Chamber Opera Festival] in Zwolle of that season. The presentation by Inaari Salmivaara and Thomas Myrmel was repeated at the Yo! Opera Festival in 2007. To all those involved, their research was a true confrontation with views outside their own artistic discipline, but at the same time it yielded several valuable insights into their own métier.
By Just For One Day, Springdance and Yo! Opera brought three choreographers and three composers into contact. They were asked to combine their disciplines and - in a collective creative process - to explore the boundaries of each other's work. Singing and dancing are the two most ancient human forms of expression. The simultaneous development of the ideas from its makers and the importance of finding a common language were seen as interesting experiments by both Yo! Opera and Springdance. The connecting thread between the disciplines and the three duos, each working separately, was the theme 'the young hero'.
The three duos working on this assignment were Nora Heilmann/Paul Oomen, Inari Salmivaara/Thomas Myrmel and Andre Gingras/Zbigniew Wolny. They brought together a cast of several singers and dancers and started a brief but very intense working process. Although what they worked on was in fact a research project, they were expressly asked to present the result - three presentations of fifteen minutes each - in front of an audience.
Choreographer Nora Heilmann and composer Paul Oomen departed from a technical and physical theme: a research into movement based on breathing, which raised a strong but complex issue closely related to the origins of both song and movement.
Inara Salmivaara and Thomas Myrmel prepared a presentation more directly connected with the theme of the young hero. Starting from the assumption that a hero can be a hero only when his social environment gives him this status, they created a both lightfooted and striking work, in which a singer and dancer challenge each others skills, deconstruct these skills and subsequently succeed in creating a joint 'heroship'. The interspace between the disciplines of song and dance, voice and movement, was explored in a naive and at the same time catching way. It resulted in a presentation which could not differ more from the one prepared by their colleagues.
The approach of André Gingras and Zbigniew Wolny was more downtoearth, and they had focused more at creating a plot, expressed in two combined disciplines. It dealt with the influence of context on a hero's status. Who decides this status, and what are situations in which someone can be a hero? And how 'real' is a hero? Of the three presentations, this final one came closest to a 'performance' in the traditional sense of the word.
The three presentations were integrated in Springdance 2006 and the Kameropera Festival [Chamber Opera Festival] in Zwolle of that season. The presentation by Inaari Salmivaara and Thomas Myrmel was repeated at the Yo! Opera Festival in 2007. To all those involved, their research was a true confrontation with views outside their own artistic discipline, but at the same time it yielded several valuable insights into their own métier.
