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Shiraz
Recording: 2024-03-02 , Tanzfabrik Berlin / Uferstudios (Video © Bickmann & Kolde GbR)

Armin Hokmi

Shiraz

Fold – Far, Far Away | Tanzfabrik Berlin / Wedding

Production Details / Press Releases

«Shiraz» is a choreography for six dancers, weaving together a fabric of movements and gestures. Their insistent energy, moments of convergence and their passage through a sphere of expressions and coordinates are what takes center stage in this performance. A pulsating dance imbued with a sense of enchantment and longing.

The starting point for this piece is the Shiraz Arts Festival. A festival for live arts that took place between 1967 and 1977 in south of Iran and radically rethought the relationship to the audience and modalities of framing art works. Armin Hokmi, together with the team, places it into our present day in the form of a revival, by giving it a new appearance through a dance performance.

«Shiraz» is both an homage and a fictional setting. It seeks to reimagine the ambitions of the festival and its love for the live arts, their autonomy as art forms and their common roots across geographical borders.

Armin Hokmi is an artist working with live performance between theater and dance. He began his artistic works since 2009 as a performer with independent theater in Rasht, Iran. He later continued to work and study abroad toward experiences with multiple performative practices, mediums and expressions. He holds a B.A. in acting from Norwegian Theatre Academy (2015-2018) and has received his M.A. in Solo/Dance/Authorship at HZT Berlin (2019-2021). Working through text, dances and choreographies, recent works include «Passages» (2019), «Public Dance», «Permutable Stage» (2021) und «International Dance» (2022) which premiered at Uferstudios in Berlin. As a dancer and performer he has worked with artists such as Mette Ingvartsen, Kasper Ravnhøj, Hooman Sharifi and Phillip Zarrilli among others. He currently lives and works in Berlin.
arminhokmi.com

Aleksandra Petrushevska is a dancer and choreographer from North Macedonia, based in Berlin. She began her artistic work as a dancer, choreographer and contemporary dance educator in North Macedonia with Skopje Dance Theater. She is a graduate of the BA program at HZT Berlin. She has been realizing projects in collaboration with Lokomotiva – New Initiative for Arts and Culture from North Macedonia. Currently she is engaged as a dancer for the new production of INSEL by the artistic duo Enrico Ticconi and Ginevra Panzetti.

Luisa Fernanda Alfonso is a Colombian dancer based in Germany. She studied dance at the Folkwang University in Essen and the M.A. Solo/Dance/Authorship at HZT in Berlin. Her work Masterpiece was part of Les Urbaines Festival, Tanz NRW Festival, The Carrier Bag Festival and the performance series Park at Kunstverein München. She collaborated with artists such as Leila Hekmat, caner teker, Roman Pfeifer, Sanna Helena Berger, The Düsseldorf Düsterboys, Xenia Koghilaki, Ben J. Riepe, among others.

Daniel Sarr began his studies at the Norwegian National Academy of the Arts at the age of 16, and graduated in 2012 with a Bachelor in Jazz. He specializes in Hip Hop and Jazz, and has training in various other styles. Daniel has worked with companies & choreographers including: Oslo Danse Ensemble, Subjazz, Jo Strømgren, Fredrik Benke Rydman (Sweden), Ole Martin Meland, Lise Tiller & Nakul Dev Mahajan (US/India).

Johanna Ryynänen (she/they) is a Berlin based dancer, performer and choreographer from Finland, who graduated from the BA program “Tanz, Kontext, Choreographie” at HZT Berlin in 2022 and with a “Diploma in Bühnentanz” from Tanzakademie Balance 1 in 2018. They are curious about challenging western ideas of individuality without erasing personal histories and perspectives on societal matters.

Born in Kefalonia in 1992, Efthimios Moschopoulos is a Greek dancer currently based in Athens. He is a graduate of the Greek National School of Dance (KSOT). As a performer and dancer he has collaborated, among others, with Ginevra Panzetti and Enrico Ticconi, Euripides Laskaridis, Romeo Castelllucci, Christos Papadopoulos, Sofia Mavragani, Pierre Bal-Blanc, Cally Spooner, Xenia Koghilaki, Andonis Foniadaki in productions presented both in Greece and abroad.

Xenia Koghilaki is active in the field of performing arts as a dancer and choreographer. She is a graduate of the Greek National School of Dance and the Department of Architecture at the University of Patras. Since 2019, she has lived and worked in Berlin, where she completed her postgraduate studies at the MA Solo/Dance/Authorship (SODA) program of the HZT. She created different collaborative works and as a dancer, she has worked with Kat Válastur, André Uerba, the Chto Delat collective, the Porson’s Khashoggi company, and the Hellenic Dance Company, among others.

Moriah Askenaizer (b. Los Angeles, CA) is a costume designer and painter working across the disciplines of dance and performance. Their costumes, research and paintings center ecology, contemporary mysticism and histories of the unseen. In 2018 they graduated with a Meisterschule degree from the Städelschule-Hochschule für bildende Künste in Frankfurt am Main, where they studied under the mentorship of Haegue Yang and Amy Sillman.

Emmi Venna works as a choreographer, dancer, writer and as a part of curatorial teams. Venna’s processes combine curiosity towards the experience of a lived body, researching dance and art histories, playing with fictional dimensions, and searching for the magical potential of the performance situation. Recent works include the performance series ”This world that we imagine in this room, might be used to gain access to other rooms, other worlds, previously unimaginable” (Kiasma Theatre, 2023), commissioned choreography ”CORE” for the TaDaC collective (Zodiak, 2021) and the solo work Fabulous Muscles (Mad House Helsinki, 2020).

[Source: tanzfabrik-berlin.de]

TFB Nr. 1860

Cast & Credits

Concept & Choreography: Armin Hokmi
Dance & Performance: Daniel Sarr, Luisa Fernanda Alfonso, Aleksandra Petrushevska, Efthimios Moschopoulos, Johanna Ryynänen, in alternation with Xenia Koghilaki and Charlotte Madeleine Utzig, Emmi Venna
Music: EHSXN, Reza R
Scenography & lights: Felipe Osorio Guzmán, Vito Walter
In conversation with: Emmi Venna
Costumes: Moriah Askenaizer
Consultation & archival study of the Shiraz Arts Festival (1966-1977): Vali Mahlouji
Thank you to: Rasmus Jensen, Diletta Sperman, Ellen Söderhult
A production of Armin Hokmi Kiasaraei
Co-production: Montpellier Danse, Rosendal Teater (Trondheim), Dansehallerne (Copenhagen), Black Box teater (Oslo), Tanzfabrik (Berlin).
Supported by: Arts Council Norway, Nordic Culture Fund, FFUK, Nordic Culture Point
Residency support: Montpellier Danse, Tanzfabrik (Berlin), Lake Studios (Berlin), Uferstudios (Berlin), DAVVI Center for Performing Arts Hammerfest
Research period supported by: Dis-Tanzen
Thank you to: Rasmus Jensen, Diletta Sperman, Ellen Söderhult, Theatre Haus Berlin

Tanzfabrik Berlin / Wedding

Uferstr. 23
13357 Berlin

tanzfabrik-berlin.de/
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Video Documentation

The video documentation is produced on behalf of the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion. The purpose of this contract is to document productions in the field of contemporary dance in Berlin. The master recordings are archived by the University Library of the Berlin University of Arts. Copies of the recordings on DVD are available for viewing exclusively in the reference collections of the following archives (at media desks in these institutions):

University Library of the Berlin University of Arts
Mediathek für Tanz und Theater des Internationalen Theaterinstituts / Mime Centrum Berlin
Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin (HZT)

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