Artistic Work
“If you engage in travel, you will arrive.”
Ibn Arabi (1165-1240)
Dance, Performance, Dance Film & Book
My creative projects include collaborations with artists from different disciplines, such as music, visual art, graphic design, film and theatre. Next to work for traditional theatre staging, the art projects can take place at sight-specific locations in nature or in urban environment.
Themes come from intrapersonal and interpersonal sources; influences of urban life on people, emotions such as rage and courage, rituals of mourning, coming-of-age themes (in my work for youngsters) and pure physical themes like finding balance or surrender to gravity. I like to present them in the most pure form, with attention to musicality, space and light.
Twisted doors – Dance Performance
A solo about fury – sexual, oedipal, magical and brutal; about the terrifying animal in us with its exalted, transcendent, self-destructive untrammeled and creative strength. The specific use of timing, space and strong theatrical images distinguishes this solo. A special dancer gives this solo a stubborn and dynamic character.
Choreography: Katharina Conradi
Dance: Mirte Courtens
Advice: Annelies Herfst
Horizon – Dance Film
is a short dance film about the impulsive search of a woman for the horizon that is no longer visible in the city. A confrontation between body and modern urban architecture.
HORIZON focuses on a dancer who uses her surroundings in a search for parts of herself. Amsterdam’s urban environment provides a counterbalance. Katharina’s fascination springs forth from a longing for far sight that so often is absent within urban environment. The horizon is a metaphor for space and openness that seems to get lost in our conditioned, efficiency-minded city life. The horizon is also a typical Dutch theme. Just as the tops of the mountains exude a feeling of freedom, in the Netherlands the broad horizon brings about a longing for this very same feeling.
Choreography and directing: Katharina Conradi
Editing and directing: Sergio Gridelli
Performance: Marieke Dermul
The Home Project – Book Community Project
‘The Home Project’ is a book about identity and shared experience. Together with photographer and graphic designer Matina Sideri, I created a book about people living in my neighbourhood in the center of old Amsterdam. We inteviewed thirty residents of the neigbourhood, young and old, of different ethnicity, age and gender, about what home means to them and what is necessary in feeling at home in a neighbourhood. We went to interview and photograph them in their own environment to capture them authentically. A book with beautiful portraits of people in a unique neighbourhood.
Text: Katharina Conradi
Photos & design: Matina Sidero
The Snow and the Maiden – Dance Film
A red dot in infinite white. A woman, alone in the snow. She sinks into the snow up to her knees, inexorably. White virginal, cold. All the colors in one.
The white environment at 3000 meters altitude and the dancer are the protagonists in this film. The vulnerable body of a woman is in sharp contrast with the powerful, cold environment. A surrealistic image. The snow is not an easy partner – at one moment the woman nests in the snow as if it were a blanket, in the next moment she falls and comes into speed: like a red ball she rolls off the mountain, just to start climbing back up again. When she gets to the top, we can see more of the breathtaking panorama. Her movements become delayed and seem weightless: she seems to glide like a bird of prey in the air.
Choreography and direction: Katharina Conradi
Performance: Danielle van de Ven
Film directing and camera: Josje van Erkel
Black Butterflies – Dance Performance
‘Black Butterflies’ (‘Zwarte Vlinders’) is a collaboration between a flamenco dancer and a physical performer. Two women are performing a ritual about death and mourning; expecting death, mourning the dead and overcoming grief. One rhythm introduces you into the next, while breathing becomes louder and different sounds become words. This universal theme is interpreted in an unexpected and fascinating way.
Performance: Maria Cortez and Sarah Ringoet
Text: Canto Jondo – Garcia Lorca
Duets
In ‘Duets’ two dancers are depending on a wall. They lean onto the wall and need its support. The wall gives possibilities and limitations. The dancers look for each others support and search for balance. At the end they support each other by leaning into each other and the wall is no longer necessary. The back wall of an old red stone fabric building in Amsterdam at sunset is the atmosphere in which this performance takes place.
Choreography: Katharina Conradi
Dance: Esther Hinz, Kristiina Backman
Leeuwenhart
The heart starts to beat faster; the blood runs through the veins, the mind is focused. And then comes the moment of now – I will do it, now!
The decisive moment. How do you experience this moment in the body? Is it liberating or frightening? Or both? Courage gives the power to overcome fear, to talk and to move in the way you should to become the person you want to be.
Directed by: Katharina Conradi
Performers: Ties van den Broek, Ana Diadorim Rocha de Cunto Lemos, Flint Louis Hignett, Luc Hoogland-Kalff, Thijs Hoogland-Kalff, Cleo Julia Mullis, Balou Rietveld, Anna Vos, Maud Vos
Kom dichter… (Come Closer…)
If you are different, you can feel being left out; you are weird and you don’t belong to a group. Kom dichter… shows what happens when everything is turned around and nothing is as it should be. A girl who is good at playing the drums, two boys who become intimate with each other, a girl that explores her super-power. The rhythm of the drummer excites them, supports them and triggers them. A dance performance with feminine and masculine aspects that could get out of control.
Choreography: Katharina Conradi
Dance: Mirte Courtens, Uri Evgy, Markus Schnitzer
Drums: Clara de MIK
Dramaturgy: Sarah Ringoet