Memento (August 2021)
Interdisciplinary Performance Praxis, Masters by Coursework, Rhodes University Drama Department.
↓ About the work
Created by Julia Ruzyczka de Rosenwerth
Filmed and edited by Evaan Jason Ferreira
Memento arises through an extensive period of being in the company of objects. Through this communion, which surfaces the simultaneous potential of objects to become relics of remembrance, and things in and of themselves, Memento asks how objects may affect our being in the world, and how we may affect theirs? An autopoietic performance emerges that questions the apparent boundaries between subjects and objects, the animate and inanimate, and things and tools. Memento shares an intimate series of processes of assemblage and disassemblage between bodies and things, providing openings to submerge oneself in a sensorially rich environment.
Academic Supervision: Dr Alan Parker
Concept, Choreography and Performance: Julia Ruzyczka de Rosenwerth
Sound: Julia Ruzyczka de Rosenwerth, with assistance by Josman P#
Lighting: Tersia du Plessis
Design: Julia Ruzyczka de Rosenwerth, with assistance by Illka Louw and Shiba Sopotela
Stage Management: Khanya Ngcuka
Technical Operation: Sonwabo Maqanda
Theatre Administration: Gary Kitching
With special thanks to Gavin Krastin, Adriana Jamisse, Alessandra Griffin and Meghan Harris for your generous input of various kinds.
Rein (2018, 2017)
↓ About the work
Performed in 2018 as part of Curated Consciousness: I call you dance at Theatre Arts Admin Collective in Cape Town, South Africa. Programme curated by Julia de Rosenwerth. Lighting by Frans Mandilakhe Zunguze. Photos by Lindsey Appolis.
Performed in 2017 as part of New Dance Lab at Theatre Arts Admin Collective in Cape Town, South Africa. Programme Curated by Thalia Laric and Kristina Johnstone. Lighting by Frans Mandilakhe Zunguze. Photography by Lindsey Appolis.
Rein was initially conceived as an investigation of the energetic dynamics particular to flamenco performance. I wanted to find ways to perform a contemporary work with the kind of energetic ebbs and flows that I experience in flamenco . Yet, because flamenco is so musically oriented, my work developed to include a sonic exploration of the relationship between sound, voice and movement. In both iterations Rein was performed through improvisation.
The first iteration of Rein was performed with Che Adams. She accompanied me with palmas (hand clapping). The second iteration was performed solo with a looping machine and microphone. In the process I tried to find ways to create feedback loops in my body that could keep spurring on my performance. I asked myself questions like ‘how can my voice affect my movement?’, ‘how can my movement affect my voice?’ and ‘how can I sustain both the movement and sound at the same time?’etc. I wanted to know whether it was possible for a sonic world and a movement world to emerge simultaneously, from one body.
Part of the reason why I was asking these questions was because I was beginning to re-consider my understanding of the relationship between music and dance in performance, and was also trying to connect my voice to my movement, because before then, these two aspects had been very dissociated in my body.
Split (2017, 2016)
↓ About the work
Originally created in artistic residence at the Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative in Mpumalanga, South Africa in 2016.
Performed in 2017 as part of Cape Town Fringe Festival at the Theatre Arts Admin Collective in Cape Town, South Africa. Direction & Dramaturgy by Adriana Jamisse. Photography by Oscar O’Ryan.
Performed in 2016 as an independent production titled ‘SPLIT SIGNS’, created with Adriana Jamisse at the Theatre Arts Admin Collective in Cape Town, South Africa. Direction & Dramaturgy by Adriana Jamisse. Lighting by Andi Colombo. Photography by Alessandra Griffin.
A clear question developed through the process of creating Split: What happens to the social, political and gendered readings of the body when you begin to actively deform, disorient, obscure and invert it? I thought about this both in relation to my performing self and in relation to the audience viewing the work. At the time of creating Split, I had a strong need de-emphasise or confuse the form of my body because the experience of it allowed me to process some of my past trauma. This was the starting point of the work, yet some very interesting questions and discoveries developed as a result, which carried my interest for the next two years.
