Hobbyist 1st period
stage performance
- Collaboration vzw Wolvin+ vzw Rosas
With Dancing with the Sound Hobbyist, Zita Swoon once more explored a new path. Together with dancer and choreographer Simon Mayer and coach Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker of dance ensemble Rosas, Stef Kamil Carlens created a performance that takes the audience on a trip through the world of Zita Swoon. Mayer effortlessly finds his place among the members of the band. Wayward instrumentals alternate with melancholy songs, stirring percussion and short intimate passages. Dancing with the Sound Hobbyist thus becomes a sophisticated dialogue between movement and sound, an adventurous dance trip through the cosmopolitan musical universe of Zita Swoon
Quotes:
“Dancer Simon Mayer from Rosas, accentuates the music more than he diverts the attention from it. And what Carlens announced as ‘experimental’ sounds surprisingly familiar, and among which some of the new songs belong to the best he’s ever written.”
Peter Bruyn for Brabants Dagblad 10/02/09
“The band is silent as dancer Simon Mayer is on his back, rolling around more and more uneasily, and creates the first sounds as he moves his squeaking hands forward over the stage – as if he were bracing himself for what’s to come. And that’s a lot. Wing, raw synthesizer sounds, a man-sized sheet of metal with gong potential, a plastic rattle snake to throw around, bass, guitars, effect pedals. Amel Serra Garcia, a percussionist with Cuban background, proceeds to set the tone with rhythms that float and continuously and unexpectedly tap the ground with their toes. Stef kamil Carlens sings how the helmets were pulled on and how it’ll be when the war is over Beautiful)- a little hoarse, the way he sounds when grand tales are told.”
Hans Nauta for Trouw 18/02/09
“It isn’t a performance with a big ‘message’. It is, however, a concert that exudes what Stef Kamil Carlens has stood for the past 15 years: partly melancholic, but also an optimistic view of life with its small, close answers to large questions- let us please be a little kind and social to each other, don’t let war and doom push love away.”
Peter Bruyn for het Parool 11/0002/09
In Dancing with the Sound Hobbyist doesn’t have a story line.’ The title refers to the hobby we still have aside from our job: making music’ laughs Stef Kamil. ‘I want a performance with beautiful music, that is also physically interesting and looks pretty. I didn’t look for a way to work theatrically with dance. Some songs tell a story, but the rest is just good audio with visual’
Gunter Jacobs for GVA 23/01/09
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