IntiTheatre ...

This French spoken play is based on several poems

Created and performed by Inti Theatre, a Brussels based Children Theatre Company

3 songs of 1' ...

Recorded at Acoustic Recording Service (Beigem, Belgium) in 2010

Musicians:

Nicolas Kummert (sax)

Yannick Willox (piano & recording)

Sigrid Keunen (viola & klockenspiel)

Company IntiTheater (percussion)

POWERNAPSONGS

… are to empower a moment

A moment at will

A moment in one’s head

A moment that cuts off one from the previous

A moment that goes straight to the heart

A moment to stop half-hearted thoughts, idea’s, understandings

A moment to end concepts, conceptions, convictions, considerations

A moment to fade away a mental picture

A moment to fade away the mental picture

A moment to fade away that

Words are taking a little time off

Words that speak in the head, are starting to dance

Words can dance!!

They shake

They quake

They wave from side to side

They shuffle

They swing

They roll… & they rock

Jiggle / Joggle / wiggle / waggle / Jiggle / Joggle / wiggle / waggle / Jiggle / Joggle / wiggle / waggle / Jiggle / Joggle / wiggle / waggle … wobble

The PowerNap Songs

… are a little smile

They wink

They blink

They glitter

They flicker

They flash

They smile, smile, smile…

They instant

Yes, and from today on an instant becomes a verb. An invisible active verb.

The songs instant the speed of the heart

The PowerNap Songs…

They point in time

They take time

They express time

They catch time

They vibrate time

They touch time

Voila:

17 video's you can find on:

SIGRID KEUNEN on VIMEO

CIRCLE-S or my cycle of words-mix

SIGRID KEUNEN on MEDIUM

Here I share with you contemplations and musings about my reflections on the notion of a circle.

Yeah!

Let it start somewhere.

Let it reveal itself like a cutaway diagram of my perceptions where perspectives appear.

Let it reveal an arranged sequence of points where they form — to your own liking — an imperfect or perfect circumference.

Can one cut through a vicious circle by just cutting corners?

Oh dear, just cut it …

I’m writing at a somewhat circular table, they have cut off 1/8 of the table to match two tables together so it looks like a big 8.

You name it: it’s two to tango, it’s at least three to circle dance, four places in the cabin of a Ferris wheel and eventually hey five!

SIGI'S BOAT / SIGI'S BOOT

... is a thematic anchor for the imagination as well as an art educational course for children between 4 and 12 years old.

SIGI'S BOAT is a Meccano-style wooden boat with a size of 140cm x 350cm with which we can express an idiosyncratic story by improvising, rhythmic instruments, movement and different characters.

All the pillars of musical education are discussed. And once we are away from the shores, in the wide waters of the imaginary, SIGI'S BOAT becomes the floating nutshell where trust, togetherness and fantasy move freely. SIGI'S BOAT invites the children to move towards and explore to the scaffolding of the familiar, the narrative imagination.

Travel Theme:

New program:

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... in het Nederlands klinkt het zo:

SIGI’S BOOT is een inspirerende creatieve muzikale en plastische tool. Een eenvoudig gestileerde houten boot is het spelmateriaal dat aanzet tot brede associaties. Aan boord wordt verbeelding gecreëerd, fantasie geëxploreerd en wordt er via improvisatie verteld, gespeeld en gemusiceerd.

Het stimuleren van de creativiteit opent de ogen en SIGI'S BOOT ondersteunt hiermee het 'zijn' in het dagdagelijks leven van kinderen van 4 t.e.m. 12 jaar.

SIGI’S BOOT is een verhalenboot. Een heel speciale. Een muzikale. Waar Noach dieren meenam op zijn ark, zijn het aan boord van SIGI’S BOOT klanken, ritmes en gezang waarmee de grote exploratietocht wordt aangegaan. Onderweg en vanuit de fantasie, scheppen wij een eigen muzikale en emotionele wereld. Wie instapt, vertrekt op creatieve zelfontdekking.

Thema Reizen:

Nieuw programma:

... is gebaseerd op de artistieke filosofie van SIGI'S BOOT en stimuleert zelfexpressie met taal, klank, spel en muziek, vanuit de eigen verbeeldingswereld van het kind. Dit educatief aanbod ligt geheel in het verlengde van mijn artistieke lijn en methodiek als transdisciplinair kunstenaar.

&

voor de Brusselse scholen ontvangt SIGI'S BOOT steun van VGC Onderwijs: 

A STORYTELLING CONCERT

concept & storytelling: Sigrid Keunen

of 3 stories by H.C. Andersen:

The flowers of little Ida, The ugly duckling & The princess and the pea

Those stories are alternated by

A gesture poem of a clown

Prelude from the First Cello Suites of J.S. Bach

A public conversation about a special journey to a skyscraper

Trailer:

Video by a Belgium Local TV channel on 16/12/2016

AND IT SOUNDS AS / Dutch performance ..

The Princess & the Pea:

As part of the film: SchaerbeeKWA (directed & written by Nejm Halla)

IN THIS CASE

CONCEPT

A little red box with white performers in a white box and a white decor

The idea of the music box is used as the starting point for a wordless performance for two musicians. The sheer fact of opening a music box brings about certain thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Likewise, the two musicians in the box try to bring about certain emotions and feelings, with music and movement.

This performance is a 'junction' between classical music and performance, a 'junction' between life and fantasy.

How does a little girl feel, opening such a box for the first time? What about a woman who spots a box in an antique shop? What's going through one's mind on the eve of a marriage? And what about the melancholy of a grandmother reminiscing about the past?

PERFORMANCE

Junction Art Festival Toronto 09/2008

Performance Mix Festival, Joyce Theatre Soho, New York 03/2009 

Julie Haas: concept & violin

Sigrid Keunen: concept, décor, viola & music composition

The Dutch written words in the title: ZEEMEERMIN means literal

SEA MORE LESS and is a Dutch translation for MERMAID.

But we simply tell a love story:

A BALLAD FOR YOU

Fragments out of an 8' performance: A BALLAD ...

Dirk Hendrikx: concept, choreography & costumes

Sigrid Keunen: movement, music composition & viola

DUPLEX GAME

The starting point for our composition is a quote from On Grief And Reason: Essays by Joseph Brodsky: “Life is a game with many rules but no referee. One learns how to play it more by watching it than by consulting any book, including the Holy Book. Small wonder, then, that so many play dirty, that so few win, that so many lose.”

Then we build.

DUPLEX GAME is about everything you observe and the meaning attached to it, the perception. And thus what happens when one looks the same but experience a different side. One sees something, but it also has another side: a hand is a hand but someone sees the top and the other palm.

DUPLEX GAME explains why different definitions of "his" side by side and examine the pros and cons of all observations.

In DUPLEX GAME we analyze the word 'GAME', the possible elements, the rules and it’s PLAY- time. We look at how a ‘GAME’ has an influence on the course of events.

Can the 'GAME' ultimately influence our perception, forms and / or enrichment? DUPLEX GAME wants to juxtapose and investigate the different ways of perceiving

A quote that recapitulates it properly:

“What we do see depends mainly on what we look for. ... In the same field the farmer will notice the crop, the geologists the fossils, botanists the flowers, artists the coloring, sportsmen the cover for the game. Though we may all look at the same things, it does not all follow that we should see them.” from John Lubbock -The Beauties of Nature and the Wonders of the World We Live in-

Cilla Berg graduated in 2013 at the Chelsea College of Art and Design, London.

Sigrid is a musician (viola), composer and performer. Her compositions and education programs are a crossover and a synergy of music, dance and theatre. As a freelance viola player, she works in Belgium and as a freelance guide in the Opera house of Brussels, de Munt/ La Monnaie.

Cilla and Sigrid come from different artistic backgrounds, but they have a tangent point in which they want to investigate and to explore.

As we share the same vision: art is a trigger and serves as a stimulus to the imagination of the public. Our compositions and performances have not the goal to lead them to that answer or tell them exactly what to think / feel / experience.

We offer elements to make one’s own story.

From here we recognize and acknowledge each other's aesthetics and this in relation to our own work and thus to each particular collaboration.

And then just step aside:

As Alice Liu (organizer Listhus Artspace, Iceland) during a creation session nicely summarized: "Cilla works with a rather static backdrop, Sigrid’s work content liveliness with lots of movement. This cooperation seems quite obvious and has a very dynamic outcome."

The sky, the sea, the earth, a swimming pool and the storm

In a creation with Jaime Martinez (Spain) 

Inspired by the 4 elements combined with the element of ether, this performance of live viola music and Butoh dance presents a laboratory of experimentation.

Through junction and improvisation in an elaborated structure our objective seeks to accomplish a tangible essence by awareness.

The audience enters a white space with the sound of running water in the background. They can see a musician lying on the ground, rotating axially while playing pizzicato.

After, the dancer comes by passing the audience. He drops stones, one by one, as if he reduces his memories and leaves knowledge behind. Totally liberated, he enters the scene and bodily expresses all elements, one by one. His dance exists of fiction & non-fiction.

The climax is expressed by the natural connection of an innocent child, (or someone else from the public) who will offer on a pre-prepared but unexpected moment the symbol of life and love: an apple.

Within this move, everything shifts: the light, the movements and the music.

While the dancer eats the apple, we enter different atmosphere. In other words: while we are merged with the challenge of his action, this gesture calls the hidden place in the heart of our being. This performance invites you to experience, to undergo that moment in which an inner voice can express its right heartbeat.

Biography:

Coming from different artistic backgrounds and countries, Sigrid and Jaime share their notions about honesty, strength, and beauty. Improvisation and serendipity were their motto in making this performance in July 2015 (Madrid).

THE FIREBIRD

THE FIREBIRD ...

OUVERTURE

This concept is inspired by my Art Education Project Sigi’s Boat, where children are invited to playfully create music and stories. Within a competent frame of a boat we set off from improvisation. By completion of several offered musical, theatrical and visual elements during the workshops, those self-created musical stories introduce a performance in a synergy with Total Art.

The FIREBIRD was executed on June 26 2016 during the Blue North Music Festival in Olafsjördür in the North of Iceland.

Preparatory workshops have been organized in May during school time in the 3 different schools of the 3 corresponding neighboring towns: Dalvik, Olafsjördür and Siglufjördür.

There I have spent 3 weeks with one hour a week in several classes. The sum of 100 students was between 4 and 13 years old. Those workshops, explanation of the storyboard and its global working process were to challenge the children so they could decide themselves during their holidays to take part in the Swimming Pool Play workshop week at the end of June.

Unfortunately, by the half of June only 9 kids signed up.

Those 9 children acted individually as well in group with lively embodiment and keen enthusiasm throughout the costume-making, dancing their choreography, exclaiming their text, creating music, designing and drawing the setup wall alternated -to relax- by running around their self- made edge of the imagined swimming pool in the sports hall.

I was mainly in charge with all the production issues therefore -when I look back now- I was triggered by how flexible one can be, how to stay solution focused during meetings, how to act compliant onwards the organization and just centre on being open-minded in relation to the children.

In conclusion and due to unforeseen, difficult and last-minute circumstances the kids brought it to a wonderful end: The FIREBIRD became free and all together they sang!

6 MAIN CHARACTERS:

The STORYTELLER / The KING / The ARCHER /The HORSE / The FIREBIRD / The PRINCESS

OTHER CHARACTERS:

Dancers in the swimming pool / Musicians near and on the edge of the swimming pool

LIBRETTO DESIGN

The kids are getting Key Phrases those idioms will help to express the personality and nature of their character. The rest of the sentence they have to adjust themselves in line with the storyboard,

e.g. the KING: I claim, I want to … the PRINCESS: I would like to…

The STORYTELLER has no Key Phrases but localizations; he or she can complete paragraphs with a concrete content besides the global line of Act 1: sky / horizon / castle of the king -Act 2: castle of the King / horizon / sky -Act 3: horizon / castle of the King / sky.

The following story is the starting point for the Swimming Pool Play, participating kids and artists can modify the libretto any convenient time.

And this story is based on Irina Zheleytova’s version of The Firebird and Princess Vassilissa.

ASSUMED OBJECTIVES:

Currently, content and material are appropriate, adequate and suitable to pursue a continuation and implementation of this community project into other places worldwide.

The concept on itself scopes a substantial motive to continue its realization and execution. Consequently I take into account the frame of my initiated concept, wherein a focus on the elaboration of several tasks is requested by the search of dividing the assignments along the collaborating artists and potential production partners.

This way of creating ensures the working process and by its presentation it will engender an equal, beautiful and meaningful outcome where its lively performance or a synergy within the Total Art will shine fully. 

HOCUS POCUS, ONCE UPON A TIME…

I'm Maggie, the market vendor.

During the performance, Maggie literally walks through the orchestra and figuratively through the music of Le Carnival des Animaux by Camille Saint-Saëns and L’Apprenti sorcier by Paul Dukas.

And she tells the story of the lovely little witch who wants to fly.

Hey!

But what do you think about flying with us?

To the air castle. To the universe.

To where you can conjure something?

Hocus Pocus ... Off we go!

And yeah, finally, we land in seventh heaven.     

DENTRO POR FUERA, FUERA POR DENTRO

How to (re)write through the eyes, body and spirit of the other.

Dentro por Fuera, Fuera por Dentro confronts the two dancer choreographers with in their different ways of working, thinking, constructing, moving, feeling, perceiving.

Gradually, they bring their expertise and their personal methods, they complement each other, they discover one another.

Or rather they help each other discover who they really are, using their own language, their culture, their own body.

Sigrid Keunen violinist accompanies their movements by his live performance and acoustics.

A common denominator, dance and even desire to encounter improbable.

A duo who kindly pulls us from the palm of our habits.

CHOREOGRAPHY AND INTERPRETATION

Bud Blumenthal et Manuela Nogales

MUSIC

Lehonidas Boskovec / Sigrid Keunen

LIGHTS

Florencio Ortiz

TECHNICAL DIRECTION

Fred Nicaise

COSTUMES

Heidi Ehrhart

CHOREOGRAPHY'S ASSISTANT

Inma Marin

PRODUCTION

El Mandaito Producciones & Cie Bud Blumenthal/Hybrid asbl

HEREBY

or just a scattering of the moment at the sea side

music, film & editing (2012)

VIA MUSICA

... a tour in which music takes on its own voice as you walk past places and structures
... a journey to the inner fantasy of every spectator

&

Nomination for the Social Art Award in Berlin (05/2017)

By the Institute for Art and Innovation www.art-innovation.org

Vernissage & Book Launch on 5/09/2017 @Whiteconcepts Gallery (Berlin)

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Image Design by @AdaDesign

SKIN RESISTANCE

Once upon a time, there was a marionette who moved between reality and the world.
Its acts - to move, shape, fold, bend, dodge, shove, sprint, spurt, slide, flog, turn, whip and confuse - are trapped to the crossbar hovering above.
And upon that time there was another figure, a visual and spatial antagonist. The marionette, carefully balanced with its counterpart, has a life of its own, but can’t undo its cords

Enjoy this performance & sentence in recorded Morse Signs:
I SPEAK SPANISH WITH GOD, ITALIAN TO WOMEN, FRENCH TO MEN & GERMAN WITH MY HORSE -Charles V-

CONCEPT

The skin is the outer or visible layer between inside and outside.

The skin is also a communicator, it tells the story of a marionette, or the puppet we are in the world and in our own being.
The other figure, dressed in white behind a white mask, represents a tangible relationship, emphasizing their mutual and reciprocal connection.

This performance serves as a magnifying glass, showing the interpretation of an existing resilience. It questions the available resilience of who we are deep inside and how we move in the world. How haughty can we be without fooling ourselves?

And what about freedom?
Free is a sober state of uninhibitedness from a presented, fixed frame. That frame is made by one's culture, habits or work; because we are part of a specific set, we have a choice how we behave and decide on and find our own way.
In the urge to determine one’s own autonomy: is the other a puppeteer? Or is it a dressed- up reflection? Who is the antagonist? And if there is no hierarchy, are they ambivalent in their interactions?
To become FREE is to confront surface and space.
This performance is a poetic search for freedom based on the following question:
How do we swing into the world like a marionette and how do we deal with ourselves without being a marionette?

The sentence of Charles V is a wink to the human condition, imagining the world we understand. It will be written on the stand holding the crossbar