About
Marialena Marouda is a perfomance maker. She studied philosophy and visual arts at Columbia University in New York and continued her studies at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies at the University of Giessen. In May 2018 she completed the Advanced Performance and Scenography Studies (a.pass), a program for artistic research in Brussels. Marialena focuses on relational knowldedge practices and their performances. She works primarily with language and (its) sound. Her work is developed over the long term and is research-based. It takes place outside and beyond the black box, often developed in situ. She is the initiator of The Oceanographies Institute (2018-present), which has been presented in the festivals C-Takt #5 (2020), Chambres d’O (2020), Wandering Arts Biennial (2018, 2020) and the wpZimmer Open House #13 (2018). Previous works include Poetry Exercises: a choir of urban sounds (2017) shown at the International Festival for Performing Arts in Terni (IT), Poetry Exercises: an archive of (un)familiar things (2013-16) presented during the Festival Implantieren 2016 in the Institute for City History at Frankfurt am Main, and Walking Exercises (2010-13), shown at the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt am Main and the Sophiensaele in Berlin. Marialena is collaborating with choreographer Fabrice Mazliah on the Manufactured Series (2019-present). She has also collaborated with the choreographers Deufert&Plischke for their works Entropic Institute (2012) and Anarchiv I (2008). As a writer and critic, she has written for the Performing Arts Journals MASKA and Etcetera a.o.
Elpida Orfanidou (1981, Berlin) is a Greek choreographer and performer based between Berlin and Athens. She studied Dance first in Athens parallel to her Piano and Pharmacology Degree, before continuing her dance studies in Arnhem, Montpellier and London. For her studies abroad she received the Greek State Scholarship. In 2009 she was the Greek recipient of DanceWeb scholarship at ImPulsTanz in Vienna. She creates works alone or in collaboration with other artists like with Hermann Heisig for the duet UNITED STATES, Juan Perno for the project ELPID’ARC, Alma Toaspern for the duet ZEITFISCHEN. Her works have been presented in frames and places around the world like Tanz im August, HAU Theatre, Sophiensaele, Athens Festival, Onassis Cultural Center Athens, Tanzquartier Wien, Teatar i TD Zagreb, La Casa Encendida Madrid and Supercell Festival Brisbane. As a performer Elpida has worked a.o. with Fabrice Mazliah, Daniel Wittkopp, Pieter Ampe, Meg Stuart, Tim Etchells, Vlatka Horvat and Gui Garrido. As an artistic collaborator she has worked with Ioannis Mandafounis & May Zarhy. In 2014, she started a collaboration with Simone Truong and a group of four female choreographers – Anna Massoni, Adina Secretan, Eilit Marom – for the collective project (TO) COME AND SEE which premiered in 2016 in Gessnerallee and toured in Switzerland, France, Australia, Israel and Holland. In 2017, Elpida created the project PHARMACIST or BALLOONIST, a dance and herbs laboratory where she invited a number of guest artists to engage in diverse ways. The project was supported by Hauptstadtkulturfonds and Onassis Cultural Center Athens. In 2019 with the Recherchestipendium of the Berlin Senat, PoB expanded to a broader research on the encounter of performance art with the traditions of herbal healing in Mexico. At the moment Elpida is conducting research on the intersection of ethnography, traditional singing and somatics.
www.vimeo.com/elpidaorfanidou www.tocomeandsee.com
Charlie Usher (1987, UK) is a composer based in Brussels working with long duration, writing for live instruments, field recordings, static and rotary speaker installations. He is the founder and former director of
Dedans / dehors / inside out, a regular series of experimental music in Paris. In 2009, he completed his principal studies with David Horne at the RNCM, Manchester and then continued with mentorships by Antoine Beuger, Tom Johnson, Hanna Hartman and Howard Skempton. Over the years, he has had residencies and workshops with Xavier Le Roy (In Vivo Dance) (2016), Festival Sirga – Musiques de Recerca, Flix, Catalonia (2016), the Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada (2011) and the Soundings Festival at the Austrian Cultural Forum (2013). His pieces have been presented at Bâtard Festival, Q-O2 Workspace for Experimental Music, Lincoln Center NYC, South Bank Centre, London, and during multiple US and UK tours.
Dig deeper
Interview:
A conversation with Marialena Marouda during her residency at KAAP (NL/EN, 2020)
Review:
The presentation of the work-in-progress of TOI during Winternights 2019 (translation in EN, 2019)
