July 2018 Totem CCD presented Ukraine on Summer Academy “Actors of Social Changes” in Hungary, which for 2 weeks united theatres of different genres. We presented Totem Centre Theatre Lab and Insight dance group (Kherson, UA) – together we organised workshops for international participants and involved them to the site-specific performances creation and documentation. The Summer Academy combined positive characteristics of pedagogy but added an innovative layer from the performing arts. It focuses on both theoretical and practical education through artistic creations.
The main idea of the Summer Academy was that theatre-makers strived to build constructive dialogues within and between cultures. Its focus on the educational practice and cultural exchange allowed extending our personal and cultural horizons. It was developed by Pro.Progression NGO and supported by Erasmus+. Totem CCD became a partner of this international project.
During two weeks we cooperated to theatre workers from all over Europe for exchange of experience and creative practices. Insight dance group conducted workshops on site-specific performance. Site-specific or Environmental art refers to an artist’s intervention in a specific locale, creating a work that is integrated with its surroundings and that explores its relationship to the topography of its location, whether indoors or out, urban, desert, marine, or otherwise.
Julia Artemenko, choreographer of Insight dance group says:
“For me the process of creation of site-specific performances is a kind of magic on the present moment, feeling of confluence and dissolution in the process, space and group of people. It is an acquaintance and co-operating with space on some other level, with other rules, under other point of view.”
During to the Summer Academy we developed workshop on site-specific performance using methods of physical theatre, body language, photo and video documentation and analysis. We made a number of site-specific performances in city of Miskolc, in rural locations and in some special places such as famous Cave Bath. Park of Miskolc university was also the interesting place of workshops and performances due to modern park sculptures made of industrials machines and details – as example of revitalisation and creative recycling in urban space, which we brought from Hungary to Ukraine also.
The results you can see here: