I was chosen among the 3 choreographers to create a new dance piece with 7 dancers @ La Biennale di Venezia 2017 for the 11th Festival of Contemporary Dance.

La Biennale College - Danza 2017 offers in-kind-support (exposure, a cast of professional dancers, rehearsal space, research advice and production support) but I still need to provide myself travel and accommodation, therefore . . .
I am starting a crowdfunding campaign to make the project possible !

I will reside in Venice from May 16th to July 1st so I have just enough time to launch this appeal !
The money you donate will go towards the traveling expenses from Amsterdam where I live and run the independent art space 4bid gallery, to Venice and back + accommodation and daily transport in Venice to and from the Arsenale where I will be rehearsing 6 days a week with the dancers.
You will enable me to accept an offer that most probably won't happen twice !

Why do I do what I do?

I am a mover inspired by change, by circumstances, by a fight against

coherency.

I should not know what I am doing, and feel most nourished by not finding out,

by fighting against the natural will to understand. Not keen on defining, but

discovering. Discovery is undefined.

I choreograph by feeling, yet require a reason which may be given by a physical

need or an intellectual problem that seeks solving.

Movement provides an intangible solution to both kinds of problems. Body

responds to questions. I like solutions, not answers. And I like collectively found

solutions,

that are open. I am interested in opening, beginning, finding solutions to un-
asked questions, de-defining problems.

I am not interested in method, but method is necessary even for a one-time

experience. I am interested in one-time experiences with one-time methods.

Disposable formulas.

No settling with one technique, but making the inconsistency the technique to

experience each occasion uniquely.

Is method necessary? Is knowing necessary? Is formula necessary?

These the questions, that move my research forwards and this frustration, the

impossibility of escaping formula, are those which lead me to continue looking

for ‘other’, ‘unstable’, ‘restless’.

It’s not for training that I decided to choreograph, for learning to do anything

better, rather a mission to keep the waters moving, not to settle, just for the sake

of not settling.

I don’t have a goal, I have a mission and it is not for my life but for the waters

and the winds never to stop. It is for LIFE.

It’s so simple, yet indescribable. It’s the flow of life, non stop need for motion. I

need to confront and share visions on what is not, what is not yet, which will

inevitably be, and I want to delay it, together.

What will I do in Venice?

I will work on a new choreography, and at the end of a preliminary phase of preparation, dedicated to an analysis of the Forsythe method, I will work for 6 consecutive weeks with 7 professional dancers with extensive experience selected for the occasion.
The project features 3 new choreographers among which myself. I will be working with expert professional dancers, with the support in dramaturgy, composition, direction; through the advice of professionals. These are selected by Marie Chouinard for their excellence and for the range of their theoretical and artistic experiences:
Elizabeth Waterhouse, a great dancer, trained at the school of the American Ballet, and a member of the Ballet Frankfurt/The Forsythe Company for nine years, who is also a theoretician, a graduate in physics from Harvard, and is currently completing her Ph.D in the study of movement in Bern;
Hildegard de Vuyst, a dramaturg since 1994 for the choreographic works of Alain Platel and his company, les ballets C de la B, and since 2001 at the Royal Flemish Theatre in Brussels;
Catherine Schaub Abkarian, actress, director, dancer, with particular attention to Kathakali dance, who worked at length with Ariane Mnouchkine's Théâtre du Soleil.

watch a video of the above performance at Galerie Gabriel Rolt

What is my motivation?

My motivation to accept this endeavor:

I work with movement and dance, creating independently as well as collaboratively with artists coming from different fields of the Art. I have deepened my practice and interest through artist residencies and worked as a performer and choreographer in many different settings from the black box, to the white cube, to public and semi-public spaces.
I am simply eager to [get to know the dancers taking part in the project, to explore together the world of making and pushing boundaries to] redefine what contemporary dance is to become.

I want to focus on the context of the entire performative experience, where the code is the language[.] and public needs no intellectual training to consume the dance work. Dancers want to make public think, or follow and get lost in body-world. I hope to get the dancers to want to emphatically reach everyone equally.

Despite dance being an affective labor (intended to produce or modify emotional experiences in people), it always is embodied, physical and material. It produces no tangible goods directly, yet it is physical work which can manage (induce) the emotional state of consumers (public).

As makers and dancers, we want a new way of looking at collaboration in the future of dance and performable spaces. Relationships between location, workers and the dancer are crucial to the process of choreographing.
That is what I would like to invest into.

Who am I?

Italian / Finnish dancer and maker, Irina Baldini trained in Italy and the UK at the Laban Centre for movement and dance, whilst working with professionals as Charles Linenhan and Rosalind Crisp. Since 2010 she worked with different choreographers in the UK (Yvonne Rainer, Xavier Leroy, Marten Spangberg, Simone Forti, Mike Kelley, Pablo Bronstein, Susan Sentler) at venues such at the Hayward Gallery, The White Cube, Institute of Contemporary Art, Raven Row Gallery, Tate Britain; in the Netherlands (Svetlin Velchev and Branka Zgonjanin); in the US with Pat Catterson as well as producing her own work.

• In 2013, Irina established the 4bid gallery in Amsterdam, a place of experimentation and site for the development of temporary cultures. She choreographed works there as well as initiating programs as Highs & Lows, evening of performance. Recipient of the Lisa Ullman Traveling Scholarship Fund in 2012 she also traveled to NY with Masako to be Artist in Residency at Residency Unlimited, Brooklyn.

• Invited to Amsterdam in 2013 by OT301, she worked between The Netherlands and the UK. In 2015, in Leipzig DE, she choreographed a work with no dance, with advice and dramaturgy of Dierck Roosen and created Palindrome – an immaterial performance, with space, noise, voice.

• Her encounter with the OT301 has been decisive for giving a base to her ongoing research, productions, touring and teaching.

• Irina teaches at the OT301 Amsterdam, makes costumes for The Camera Club London, gives Cyanotype and Printmaking workshops in Amsterdam and curates exhibitions and visual art events in a and out of 4bid Gallery Amsterdam.

My printmaking work supports my dance practice.

In the past 6 years I have been making graphic work and teaching printmaking consistently.
You can see below what a couple of them looks like, and among many other rewards, YOU could get one of these original works when you contribute to this campaign.
I would be very pleased to give them a home with someone who appreciate what I do.