LEIF FIRNHABER
Born in Paraguay, grew up between Chile, Germany and Spain, where he started break-dancing on the streets of the Canary Islands. Passing through Madrid between 2005-2007, then Brussels-based since 2008.
His career as a performer, dancer, teacher, choreographer, art director as-sistant and photographer, along his personal research on the heretic sciences of water, plants, electromagnetic fields and therapeutic applications.
He has worked and collaborated in various ways with many companies, insti-tutions and artists in the field of contemporary art and dance: Eastman [Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui] in “Puzzle” & “Babel”, Damien Jalet [“Médusés” Louvre Mu-seum Paris], David Zambrano, Michelle Anne de Mey [Charleroi-Danses], Vlaamse Opera House [Antwerp & Ghent], Cie. Jozef Trefeli “UP” [Switzer-land], Cie HelKa with „LORE“ [Belgium], Cie. La Flux – Juha Marsalo & Caro-line Savi [Paris], Carmelo Fernández “International Film Festival GC” [Spain], Natalia Medina “Tag” & “Masdanza” [Spain].
Workshop
A Bastardised Technique: Research and Performative Training
To bastardise: to change something in a way that .makes it fail to represent the values and qualities that it is intended to represent.
Bastardised Techniques are the result of an interdisciplinary research and practical experience gathered over the last 22 years. From the auto-didactical, circular and energetic nature of break dance & acrobatics into contemporary dance through composition and improvisation, with nuggets of martial arts. The physical aspect of this work is Playful, sweat-inclusive, unpredictable, and deprogramming.
While the mental activity works on structuring, intuition needs to guide and the heart needs to feel. We (also dancers) are strongly conditioned to compartmentalise these aspects: When I talk I don’t listen, when I think I don’t move, when I feel I don’t think, when I sense myself I don’t connect to the surrounding environment.
A Bastardised Technique stimulates the capacity for simultaneous thinking, sensing and feeling within the movement. Composition is part of improvisation, the individual part of the group and the collective does not standard-ise the individual, but gives it a safe context to explore him/herself instead. For this, both action (proposition) and receptivity (active observation) need to be practised. Sensory perception is questioned physically, rhythms and patterns are liste-ned to in motion. We will dive into spiral motions, square isotopes, forces in opposition, partnering and work hand in hand with our creative and imagina-tive skills to fertilise our foundations.
