EOALAB
January 20, Monday, 12.00 at the Balcony Theatre (LMTA central building)
Lecture | Same Old, Same New? The Opera Market Between Avantgarde And Tradition by Susanne Schimmack (ZUYD)
As part of her contribution to the EOALAB project, Susanne currently researches opera markets focusing on the German market. Having shared her concept of deconstruction/reconstruction of repertoire, her presentation will evolve around insights from her study of the market, including statistics of theatres and opera houses in Germany. Which market trends can be seen regarding programming, in large opera houses versus smaller companies? What are recent developments regarding opera audiences? How is contemporary opera reflected in the market? And finally, what conclusions can we draw towards the market’s future and what are implications for opera makers? Rather than trying to predict the future, the presentation will provide food for thought and inspirational hints.
January 20, Monday, 18:30 at Mo Museum
Concert | Sounding Pictures: Performances And Improvisations
Programme, part I: Dieter Schnebel Museumsstücke
Programme, part II: improvised music
Performers: master students of Contemporary Music Performance of the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre: Mėta Pelegrimaitė (flute), Matas Samulionis (saxophone), Simas Petkevičius (saxophone), Klaudija Indriliūnaitė (guitar), Kęstutis Zubavičius (percussion), Lina Rovaitė (vocals), Salomėja Kalvelytė (flute), Haroldas Parulis (clarinet), Mikas Kurtinaitis (tuba), Klaudijus Štuopinis (saxophone).
Supervised by teachers Vykintas Baltakas, Liudas Mockūnas, and Arnas Mikalkėnas
January 21, Tuesday, 9.30 at Balcony Theatre
Workshop | Getting “E-Motional” by António Salgado and Claire Binyon (ESMAE)
This workshop combines a series of body movement and vocal exercises that aim to enable singers to connect themselves with their voices and their emotions. Within an improvising methodology, the singers will learn, from the personal and collective experience of different emotional states, to express different emotions and moods through vocal sound, postures and body gesture. Based on Ideo-kinetic method, on emotional imagery and on evidence of performative cues of emotions within music structure, which are a result of performance studies Investigation over the last years, a series of exercises will be suggested to the singers and the students of singing. This series of exercises propose the use of a set of music intervals (or short musical cells and/or musical phrases) with which each singer, or participant, will be invited to produce an emotional sound-voice connected to a corporal gesture (body and/or face) and body posture. This way, the singer will try to be able to express and identify the intended emotion and the intended emotional meaning for him/herself and the others. This embodied emotion will be worked-out by the singer as a means of emotional communication between himself and the other singers and the audience itself. As a goal of the exercises a kinetic-musical monologue, dialogue, or multilogue, will happen through vocal gestures, facial expressions, corporal movements and body postures intended to express the different embodied emotional states and meanings musically conveyed.
The purpose of this workshop is to ‘experiment’ with singers and other performers, through body movement, improvisation, vocality and the arousing of emotions, a new approach to Opera and Opera making that clearly contradicts the line of dehumanized thought of opera writing, composing and making that could be found in a great part of opera making, writing or composing, over the last decades. This kind of ‘new acting’ through joint experimentation will enable the singers/performers to better connect themselves with their bodies and the bodies of the others, voices and emotions, as well as it will bring them a better understanding of what should be the meaning and the act of making new opera nowadays.
January 22, Wednesday, 9.30 at Balcony Theatre
Workshop | Library of Moments by Joachim Junghanss (ZUYD)
Which role can collective improvisation play in new opera creation? How can we use collective improvisation to develop new repertoire? This workshop focusses on creation through collaborative making in the moment and reflection on the development process using improvisation practice.
January 22, Wednesday, 11.30 at Balcony Theatre
Discussion | Composing Contemporary Opera with Vykintas Baltakas (LMTA), Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė and Lina Lapelytė (Sun & Sea: Marina), Anna Ķirse (JVLMA) (Balcony Theatre)
January 23, Thursday, 16.30 at Balcony theatre
Lecture | Opera As Art In Between by Peter Missotten (ZUYD)
Opera has always been an intermedial art: a crossover between theatre and music. As such, it has always been keen on embracing the best and newest evolutions in both art worlds. The most controversial theatre experiments happen in huge opera productions (Christoph Schlingensief in Bayreuth? Romeo Castellucci in Aix? Bill Viola in Paris?… the list is endless…). For contemporary composers and directors alike, creating a new opera is one of the highlights of their career. Strangely, that reality is in juxtaposition with its reputation as an old fashioned, bourgeois, museum-art. Even among musicians and singers, the image of opera as a red-velvet home of conservatisme, is widely embraced. That may be true for some provincial, smaller scale venues, but not for the front of the pack. In opera, something really strange is going on: huge opera houses lead the avant garde and take enormous artistic risks, while most smaller houses remain closer to the traditions of a long gone past. This reversal of the position of the avant garde, is due to the intermedial position of opera as an art medium. It has always been upfront in embracing new technologies. Subtitling (or better, super-titling) opera for example is now the international norm, and it has silently revolutionised it’s art form. In this lecture and following debate, Peter Missotten will try to illustrate with lot’s of examples, that opera is undeniably the art of the future and not some overdue reminiscent of a past long gone. Because opera has always been ‘an art in between’.
January 24, Friday, 14.00 at Balcony Theatre