Mani Obeya
“Aliens Talking – The Embodiment of Voice and Voicing of Movement”
August 05 – 09
16.30 – 18.30 H
Advanced
Studio B
In English
How do we deal with the alien, with someone whose intention we can neither read nor understand? How do we manage to translate them? Do we first have to find common tools or do instinct and intuition suffice? How do we bridge the gaps of incomprehension? Is mutual comprehension even necessary to coexist?
With song, play and physical rigor, the participants of this workshop will create something together, they will encounter one another, enter into dialog and resolve the conflicts that arise from the inability to “communicate” and “understand” the other.
The baseline of this workshop with Mani Obeya is to explore one's individual expression, which manifests itself in movements or the voice either instinctively or through a conscious choice/decision. The working process will be defined by the will to express and communicate, to empathize and to enter into an equal exchange.
Mani is a Nigerian born, British raised dancer, singer/songwriter and choreographer. Mani was a soloist at the Theater und Orchester Heidelberg, Nationaltheater Mannheim and UnterwegsTheater Heidelberg. After working four years with TTW – Tanztheater Wien under the direction of Liz King, he became a soloist at the Volksoper Wien where he danced and co-choreographed until 2003. In 2006, he became a guest performer with The Forsythe Company; in 2004, a member of Michael Keegan-Dolan’s Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre in Ireland with which he toured worldwide for more than a decade. Mani has been Michael Keegan-Dolan’s rehearsal director for several years.
Currently, he is a choreographer with D.ID Dance Identity, a platform for choreographic research and movement-based art in the Burgenland, works internationally on diverse youth programmes and creates work with asylum seekers recently arriving in Austria.