The project
Living in the space between is a multidisciplinary and participative project (dance, theater, video, scenography, performance) in 3 steps :
1. Creating links : collecting artistic interventions filmed by artists from our surroundings, from France and elsewhere
2. Making visible : creating a website with an imaginary map presenting all the artistic interventions, to allow artists to meet and share their work and practices via a common virtual space Documenting the creative process with a collection of photo and video archives
3. Creation of a scenic object : choreographic & theatrical performance & scenographic, video and sound installation around the theme “Living in the space between”
The approach
We have been working together on various projects since September 2019. The themes that run through our work and allowed us to meet and collaborate are around the question of the woman artist and her place in society, as well as the relationship between art and everyday life, or the way creativity can bridge our life experiences, through transdisciplinary forms, and the creation of a hybrid material, between choreographic writing, performance, video and sound material.
When the second lockdown arrived, we both felt the need and the urgency to create a space that would allow us to continue to create together, relying on what was available to us, at home: our interior spaces, our gardens, our objects and our cameras/smartphones.
How to make this constraint “Stay at home” the starting point of an artistic research work? We asked ourselves what definitions and symbolism we attributed to the term dwell. From our questions (and attempts at answers) was born the project Living in the space between.
The body in the house, the house in the body, which paths connect us ? The space of everyday life becomes a performance space for the artist, thus re-interrogating the stage space through its existence in virtual form, via the prism of relational art as defined by Nicolas Bourriaud : as a state of encounter, which provokes the experience of proximity. Living the space between is both an empirical writing and research process, which allows to test and extend these questions in a universal way, leading to meetings, debates, possibilities of transmission and sharing with different audiences, and favouring mutual aid and the creation of new bonds between the participating artists.
With the project’s growth, we also welcomed Morgane Eydmann as an interpreter in our team.
This project is supported and carried by the Watkaz collective for the live performance part and SLYKS for the audiovisual production part.
We are part of several structures and companies with which we collaborate: the Watkaz collective, the LAP (Laboratoire des Arts de la Performance), in particular within the framework of workshops, as well as for performances mixing dance, video and sound work.
Project design / artistic director & choreographer : Emily Holmes
Interpreted by Emily Holmes & Morgane Eydmann
Video direction / Graphic design : Victoria Donnet
“They decided to build a city as in their dream.”
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Emily Holmes
Alongside a master’s degree in Theatre Studies where I learn to lead artistic projects, and a training in contemporary dance at the RIDC, I take two university degrees : one in contemporary dance and somatic practices, and the other in arts and therapeutic mediation.
Since 2019, I have been working in institutions in the framework of regular workshops, or more occasionally in the framework of artistic workshops, particularly with people with physical and psychological disabilities : the link to the other, the pathways that lead into a collective movement, with a focus on encounters and sharing, with a particular focus on people who are far from or excluded from culture or society, occupy a predominant place in my work.
Movement is the gateway to my approach, and the body becomes the space of expression of all possibilities, sometimes even of the unspeakable. The writing of a performance and a project is always accompanied by reading and iconographic research. I like to mix worlds, in a perpetual dialogue, hybridisations between academic references and unconventional forms.
The social fabric is a very important part of my artistic life. I create connections with artists that I meet wherever I go, every week, I also enjoy serving as a link, putting them in touch, I like to share deep conversations with people of all artistic practices.
I have always enjoyed welcoming the telling of life stories, the discourse that emerges around experiences, relationships to the world and the connections that are created between our perceptions.
My research on the female body is the common thread in all my solo creations: Manifestes en Mouvement. Among my influences, I would like to mention the techniques of automatic writing, and in dance/performance, the practice of instantant composition and improvisation in public spaces. And in particular, contemporary artists and teachers whose approach has particularly resonated with my values, both aesthetically and philosophically : Katie Duck, Joanne Leighton, Volmir Cordeiro and Maya Carroll.
Victoria Donnet
My path is drawn between dance and cinema, in a dialogue that has never stopped developing.
After an aborted contemporary dance career due to injury and a training in film school (ESRA, Paris) where I never stopped looking for dance, I discovered the Life Art Process®. The meeting with Anna Halprin during the training at the Tamalpa Institute (California) marked a turning point in my conception of what dance and creativity in the broadest sense are. It refocuses my artistic approach around the individual in his or her capacity to transform, connect and dialogue with personal and sensitive themes through intuitive creativity.
Today I propose a sensitive work around movement in all its dimensions, in relation with the nature that surrounds me.
My films are part of the hybrid genre of videodance or cine-dance and explore choreographic spaces in relation to the being. What emerges tends to be close to the integral film in the sense developed by Germaine Dulac. She defined it as follows:
“The integral film that we all dream of composing is a visual symphony made up of rhythmic images that only the sensation of an artist coordinates and throws onto the screen.
I am committed to transmitting this passion for images and bodies in movement through videodance workshops (ACTS Paris, University of Lille) and performance laboratories (micadanses, online during the first confinement).
Morgane Eydmann
As an actress and dancer, I am particularly interested in the voice and the relationship between the actor’s body and the spoken word.
In parallel to my degree in Theatre Studies, where I met Emily in 2014, I trained in dramatic arts with Pascal Parsat at the Georges Bizet Municipal Conservatory. Passionate about dance, I obtained my DU Certificate of Body Studies in Sports and Dance in 2017. I lead many projects in the fields of dance, theatre and modelling.
I never stop training by discovering new dances, by exploring new relationships between the voice and the body. I also teach yoga and dance classes for actors.
A parallel work experience, as a real estate agent, naturally nourishes my imagination and enriches my work as a performer in all its singularity, within the project Living the space between.