Visiting Experts: Maria Metsalu
This public talk is part of the Visiting Experts lecture series.
In her upcoming presentation Maria Metsalu shares her performance and movement practice, sourced from Maria’s practice as a solo artist and her collective Young boy dancing group, in the form of a workshop. The workshop consists of group choreographic instructions with a clear and substantial goal: to dance together, to embody feelings, to explore a sense of safety in stillness with one another.
The presentation is offered to the participant as an intimate journey with a punk attitude towards dance and the possibility to allow ourselves to use vulnerability to dive deep into raw emotions.
Biography
Maria Metsalu (1990) is an Estonian choreographer and artist, who finished SNDO (School for New Dance Development) in Amsterdam in 2016. She is creating visual performative works that regardless of the chosen medium places her own body in the epicentre. She views performative experiences and performing deviance as possibilities through which one may reflect upon the state of things and become inspired to act, formats through which collective memory could be created. She is interested in an emancipated audience and ways this activation can be achieved, the ways the position of the spectator can be challenged, destabilised or abolished altogether. She views performance as a radical space, capable of creating new meanings, new ways of looking and seeing.
Metsalu treats her productions, and especially the most recent ones, rather as an intimate journey, in which her punk attitude towards dance is expressed, diving deep into raw emotions.
Besides her solo work she is one of the founding members of international performance collective Young boy dancing group.
Her solo work has been shown at kim? Riga, gallery Art In General during Performa17 in New York Kunstraum London, Baltoscandal in Rakvere, ICA Theater in London, deSingel in Antwerp, Tanzquartier in Vienna, Creamcake Berlin, Theater Nanterre-Amandier in Paris, Kiasma Theater in Helsinki, Alt_Cph18 in Copenhagen, FLAM Festival in Amsterdam, Les Urbaines festival in Lausanne, Impulstanz Festival in Vienna, Tallinn Art Hall in Tallinn, and Centre d’art contemporain- la synagogue de Delme to name a few.
With Young boy dancing group she has performed and had exhibitions at venues such as the Schinkel pavillon, Berlin; OCDChinatown, New York, O’flaherty’s Gallery New York, Nikolaj Kunsthal Copenhagen, Ceremonia festival, Toluca, Mexico; BOFFO Fire Island, NYC; Athens biennial; Baltic triennial, Tallinn, Estonia; ARSENIC, Lausanne, Switzerland; Creepy Teepee festival, Kutná Hora, Czech republic; Norberg festival, Sweden; Roskilde festival, Denmark; Chart Art Fair (Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen), NAVE, Santiago, Chile; Yvonne Lambert gallery, Berlin; Lithuanian pavilion, Venice biennale; Silencio, Paris to name a few.
The open lecture is part of the Visiting Experts series where international experts in the arts and sciences, invited by the Theatre Academy, share their knowledge.
In her upcoming presentation Maria Metsalu shares her performance and movement practice, sourced from Maria’s practice as a solo artist and her collective Young boy dancing group, in the form of a workshop. The workshop consists of group choreographic instructions with a clear and substantial goal: to dance together, to embody feelings, to explore a sense of safety in stillness with one another.
The presentation is offered to the participant as an intimate journey with a punk attitude towards dance and the possibility to allow ourselves to use vulnerability to dive deep into raw emotions.
Biography
Maria Metsalu (1990) is an Estonian choreographer and artist, who finished SNDO (School for New Dance Development) in Amsterdam in 2016. She is creating visual performative works that regardless of the chosen medium places her own body in the epicentre. She views performative experiences and performing deviance as possibilities through which one may reflect upon the state of things and become inspired to act, formats through which collective memory could be created. She is interested in an emancipated audience and ways this activation can be achieved, the ways the position of the spectator can be challenged, destabilised or abolished altogether. She views performance as a radical space, capable of creating new meanings, new ways of looking and seeing.
Metsalu treats her productions, and especially the most recent ones, rather as an intimate journey, in which her punk attitude towards dance is expressed, diving deep into raw emotions.
Besides her solo work she is one of the founding members of international performance collective Young boy dancing group.
Her solo work has been shown at kim? Riga, gallery Art In General during Performa17 in New York Kunstraum London, Baltoscandal in Rakvere, ICA Theater in London, deSingel in Antwerp, Tanzquartier in Vienna, Creamcake Berlin, Theater Nanterre-Amandier in Paris, Kiasma Theater in Helsinki, Alt_Cph18 in Copenhagen, FLAM Festival in Amsterdam, Les Urbaines festival in Lausanne, Impulstanz Festival in Vienna, Tallinn Art Hall in Tallinn, and Centre d’art contemporain- la synagogue de Delme to name a few.
With Young boy dancing group she has performed and had exhibitions at venues such as the Schinkel pavillon, Berlin; OCDChinatown, New York, O’flaherty’s Gallery New York, Nikolaj Kunsthal Copenhagen, Ceremonia festival, Toluca, Mexico; BOFFO Fire Island, NYC; Athens biennial; Baltic triennial, Tallinn, Estonia; ARSENIC, Lausanne, Switzerland; Creepy Teepee festival, Kutná Hora, Czech republic; Norberg festival, Sweden; Roskilde festival, Denmark; Chart Art Fair (Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen), NAVE, Santiago, Chile; Yvonne Lambert gallery, Berlin; Lithuanian pavilion, Venice biennale; Silencio, Paris to name a few.
The open lecture is part of the Visiting Experts series where international experts in the arts and sciences, invited by the Theatre Academy, share their knowledge.