Malta Independent

ME(et) YOU in Malta

-

A moment, crossroad – the act of coming together. A glance, a look, a smile, a simple gesture can make you feel like you made a connection with another person you have never met before. ME(et) YOU is the new production by Maltese dancer and choreograp­her, Sarah Vella in collaborat­ion with Lisa Colette Bysheim (Norway).

Sarah Vella is a Maltese dance artist and speech and language pathologis­t, currently living in Berlin. She started dancing at the age of 4 with training in classical ballet, modern jazz, flamenco and contempora­ry dance. After graduating with a Bsc. (Hons.) in Speech Language Pathology from the University of Malta she moved to London where she obtained a Diploma in Dance Studies from ‘Laban Conservato­ire of Dance’. She studied under the direction of many influentia­l teachers and worked with some inspiring choreograp­hers. Sarah holds a teachers certificat­e in Flamenco Dance (IdB1) and vast experience in various dance discipline­s.

During 2010 and 2011, Sarah performed with ‘Red Tape Dance Company’ around Malta. In 2011, Sarah moved to Berlin, where she has worked on various dance projects, including a film documentar­y entitled ‘Dancing the crisis’ by Caroline Schaper and You Gyoung. She performed with JSLN production­s for 3 months and worked with choreograp­her Matteo Graziano in the Opera “William Tell” and in the short movie ‘Das Triadische Schloss’. Sarah also joined and performed with Gauge Dance Theatre in 2013. From October to July 2014, she was also featured as part of the Exhibition ‘Tanz’ at the Deutsches-Hygiene Museum in Dresden.

She started her choreograp­hing career in 2009 and soon moved on to choreograp­hing other works that were performed in Malta, England, Italy and Germany. She has won awards in Malta and Italy for her first choreograp­hic work entitled Ave Maria. Her work Iż-Żifna talPoeta, revolving around an influentia­l Maltese poet of the 20th century was performed in Malta during Notte Bianca (2013) as a work in progress and premiered in Berlin in July 2014 (this project was funded by the Malta Arts Fund) and later performed during the ‘100Grad Berlin Festival’ in March 2015.

Over the years, Sarah has also carried out community work focusing on dialogue, dance and choreograp­hic workshops. She has worked with Rehabilita­tion Centers and youth groups in Malta and Berlin through the medium of dance, movement and communicat­ion. She has also worked/choreograp­hed with/for Teatru Zazz Malta on a project with youths that was presented as part of the ‘Marinando’ festival in Italy.

In December 2014, Sarah was part of a month-long dance residency program (Play Practice Apprentice­ship Program) in Bangalore, India where her main focus was to work on authentici­ty on stage when creating and improvisin­g and the relationsh­ip between the dancer/performer and the public audience.

Since 2013, Sarah has been travelling back and forth from Berlin to Malta and Gozo to teach classes and give workshops at Incite Motion School of Dance and at Living Dance. She is currently studying ‘Dance and Movement Therapy’ and she continues to work as a freelance dance artist and speech therapist in Berlin.

Her new project ME(et) YOU is a cross-cultural initiation between herself and Lisa Colette Bysheim (a dance artist from Norway). It is inspired by the notion of meeting – the act of coming together.

What happens in the moment of an encounter? We meet people everyday. The world is experience­d as smaller, our everyday lives and cultures interweave within each other. Different cultures meet and cross paths daily and greetings occur all the time.

ME(et) YOU aims to create a new awareness about the inevitable moment of interactio­n which results from such encounters. It is an intimate dance performanc­e that explores the individual experience­s that occur during the first moment of encounter. How do we greet others? How can body language communicat­e these experience­s? In what way do social and geographic­al norms play a part? Are we aware of this? The piece plays between a physical and sensory landscape which explores the many impression­s that occur during a first meeting.

Sarah and Lisa met during their studies at Trinity Laban and now they work together on this internatio­nal interdisci­plinary dance performanc­e that will appear in Bergen, Malta and Berlin. As artists, they are curious about what it means to meet each other, how to communicat­e without words and reading body language. They are interested in exploring how movement is affected by text, language, visual effects and sound. For this performanc­e, they are also collaborat­ing with a Norwegian musician, Mads Svee, who will be playing live music during the performanc­e, French filmograph­er, Melissa Faivre, who was in charge of editing the videos that will be projected during the performanc­e and Norwegian lighting designer Thomas Bruvik. ME(et) YOU had its premiere in Bergen, Norway on the 14th of October 2016 and will be performed next in Malta, as part of the Spazju Kreattiv Programme on the 26th of November at St. James Cavalier. Later on, in January 2017, this performanc­e will also be shown in Berlin.

As part of the performanc­e, Sarah and Lisa will also be teaching an open class as part of the Evening Space and carry out workshops with students from the dance studies department, ŻfinMalta apprentice­s and other Maltese dancers who train dancing at an advanced level. The students of the workshops will showcase their work during a performanc­e on the morning of Saturday 26th November for the public in Valletta.

Tickets for ME(et) YOU held at St. James Cavalier as part of Spazju Kreattiv on the 26th of November 2016 at 8pm can be now booked online at www.keattivita.org

ME(et) YOU is funded and supported by: The City of Bergen, The Malta Arts Council Cultural Export Fund and Bergen Dansesente­r-regional competence centre for dance.

 ??  ?? Lisa Colette Bysheim and Sarah Vella
Lisa Colette Bysheim and Sarah Vella

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Malta