Performances with Johanna Chemnitz

14 March 2012
Soft Target by Margrét Sara Gudjónsdóttir, Theater de NWE Vorst, Tilburg (NL) »link
Trailer: www.tanzforumberlin.de

23 March 2012
Soft Target von Margrét Sara Gudjónsdóttir, Why Not Festival, Amsterdam (NL) »link

20 & 21 April 2012
Soft Target by Margrét Sara Gudjónsdóttir, Art Triennale, Hasselt (BE) »link

20 May 2012
Soft Target by Margrét Sara Gudjónsdóttir, Göteborgs Dans & Teater Festival (SE) »link

Teaching Dates – Johanna Chemnitz

Ashtanga Yoga Mysore Classes at the Ashtanga Studio Berlin (GER)
Please check: www.ashtangastudio.de

10 January 2012
Dance- & Compositionworkshop for students of Fine Arts and Design at the Bauhaus University Weimar (GER) www.uni-weimar.de

5 February 2012
Workshop – Intro to Ashtanga Yoga Mysore Style at Yogacentralen, Copenhagen (DK)
For further information on the Workshop please check:
www.yoganet.dk, www.yogacentralen.dk
Sign up: create a profile on www.yoganet.dk

06 – 24 February 2012
Mysore classes in the morning at Yogacentralen, Copenhagen (DK)
For further information please check:
www.yoganet.dk, www.yogacentralen.dk
Sign up: create a profile on www.yoganet.dk

07, 14, 21 & 28 February 2012
Contact Improvisation – Open Classes, Copenhagen (DK)
Please check: www.ci-cph.dk

11 February 2012
Workshop – On how to chew choreographed material, Copenhagen (DK)
Within this workshop we will focus on dance technique, creative approaches towards choreographed material as well as on tools for the creation of it.
For further information please check: www.ci-cph.dk

12 February 2012
Workshop – Improvisational Performance Practice, Copenhagen (DK)
For further information please check: www.ci-cph.dk

13 – 17 & 20 – 24 February 2012
Professional Dancers Training at Dansens Hus Copenhagen (DK)
www.dansenshus.dk

05 – 09 March 2012
Morning Training – Ashtanga Yoga at Stands&Dans, Dansens Hus Copenhagen (DK)
www.standsogdans.dk

24 & 25 April 2012
Workshop – Movement, Body & Space 
for students of Fine Arts and Design at the Bauhaus University Weimar (GER), within the scope of Lena Ziese´s project Space chase. 
www.uni-weimar.de

Vision
In her workshops and classes, Johanna puts emphasis on developing the students' courage and trust as well as high technical skills as a base of artistic maturity. She works with methods that allow the students to move on from where they stand as individuals and within a group; Methods that support them to fully incorporate their strengths and weaknesses so that they can confront their limits and widen them in order to reach their potentials and unfold creativity. The students are encouraged to playfully explore the different layers we can approach as dancers and performers (form, emotion, imagination, etc.), to use them and to reach out for the emergence of poetry in movement and performance – and poetry has many different manifestations.

Dance Technique Class
The classes begin with a warm up, focusing on specific principles of movement and the body's structures in order to awaken the senses and creativity. This leads into the exploration of the principles of movement within improvisational structures and scores which will allow us to develop technical skills and tools for real time creation while naturally applying the body‘s intelligence. The vocabulary being approached is: falling, sliding, rolling, folding and unfolding, spiraling as well as upside-down material, jumping, running, walking etc. The build up of the class will also lead into sequences of choreographed movement that challenge memory and enrich our vocabulary by guiding the body into new paths. The classes may include partner work: dancing in duos, trios and bigger groups where supportive and both subtle and wild ways of dancing together can be experienced.

Workshops
Johanna Chemnitz has perceived the format of a workshop as a field for creative exploration and discovery in which knowledge can be taught and mediated in detail. Based on that, the group can then dive deeper into a subject in order to gain a more profound understanding of the things. An intensive dance workshop begins with a warm-up or a full technique class. In the second part the group explores the different elements- always in connection to the subject- more deeply: approaches and principles of movement; Partner work; Improvisation and composition as well as performance. The workshop ends with a discussion.

Ashtanga Yoga as we practice it today, goes back to the teachings of Sri K Pattabhi Jois. They bear a strong relation to the teachings of his teacher Sri Krishnamacharya, and therewith to a far reaching lineage of important Yoga teachers and Rishis.
Ashtanga Yoga is a powerful system that, when being practised on a regular basis, makes one flexible, strong and healthy both physically and mentally.
The sequences of postures (in the Sanskrit language called Asanas) of this Yoga form are composed in order to detoxicate the body, align the muscular and skeletal system and purify the nervous system. Ashtanga Yoga uses a unique method known as Vinyasa, which is the connecting between breath and movement. The Vinyasa determines the way the different postures are being linked together. The practice fully unfolds its power when it is combined with the Ujjayi breathing technique and the energetic muscular "locks" called Bandhas. To calm the mind and to deepen the practice even further, the eyes focus on specific points depending on the Asana. Ashtanga Yoga is a dynamic meditation.

Mysore Style classes
Traditionally Ashtanga Yoga is being taught in Mysore-Style classes. In this teaching system each student is individually being taught the series of Ashtanga Yoga step by step, but within a group class setting. This enables the teacher to guide each student safely through the practice and to be responsive to everyone’s individual issues and learning pace. Depending on the group however, it can make sense to begin with an intensive workshop and/or led classes and then slowly build up the Mysore-Style classes. Information and corrections that support the practitioner and ensure safe practice are communicated verbally, often also through hands-on adjustments. Ashtanga Yoga is a practice for everyone, no matter which age.

Johanna Chemnitz & Ashtanga Yoga
Johanna began studying Ashtanga Yoga with Andrea Lutz in 2005 and has been practicing this method intensively on a daily base ever since. She has been teaching Yoga classes at the Ashtanga Studio Berlin on a regular basis and as a freelance teacher at other places since 2007. She has done her Ashtanga Yoga Teachers Trainings with Andrea Lutz, Manju Jois and Nancy Gilgoff in Berlin (GER) and has assisted them in classes and workshops. In 2010 she also began practicing under the guidance of Susanna Finocchi in Copenhagen (DK).

Dance
Johanna was born 1981 in Hanover (GER) and studied Modern and Contemporary Dance at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Danceacademy Arnhem (NL) from 2000-2004.

She has been based in Berlin since 2004 and has worked with Jens van Daele; Eszter Gàl; Sasha Waltz & Guests; Trisha Brown; Pipaluk Supernova/Half Machine Copenhagen; AlexB; Mans Erlandson; Cie Salon Sauvage; Maren Witte; Nir De Volff/TotalBrutal and Margrèt-Sara Gudjónsdóttir/Panicproductions, Vidal Bini/KHZ. She is currently involved in Gudjónsdóttir´s new piece Variations on Closer which will premiere at the Icelandic Dance Festival in August 2012.
She is regularly involved in artistic collaboration with Anne Sophie Malmberg, Annika Nilsson, Malgven Gerbes & David Brandstätter/S-h-i-f-t-s and others.

She has been teaching workshops and classes in Improvisation & Composition and Dance Technique since 2005 and Ashtanga Yoga since 2007. Amongst other places, she has taught at Ponderosa Dance Festival, Tanzfabrik Berlin, Meg Stuart & Damaged Goods, Ekszena Zagreb, Ashtanga Studio Berlin, Eden Studios Berlin, Dansens Hus Copenhagen and Bauhaus University Weimar.
Since 2006, Johanna has been creating works mainly in collaboration with other artists, which have been performed nationally and internationally: the piece Festland together with Palina Krause; the work scrawling with Kathryn Rave; the solo Tief.Schwarz.; the short movies Stolzenhagen Princes together with the visual artists Sophie Malmberg and Annika Nilsson as well as the dance piece Dishevelled with Sonja Pregrad and the musician Neven Krajačić.
Since 2010 she has been partly based in Copenhagen (DK).

Yoga
Johanna began studying Ashtanga Yoga with Andrea Lutz in 2005 and has been practising this method intensively on a daily basis ever since. She has been teaching Yoga classes at the Ashtanga Studio Berlin regularly and as a freelance teacher at other places since 2007.

She has done her Ashtanga Yoga Teachers Trainings with Andrea Lutz, Manju Jois and Nancy Gilgoff in Berlin (GER) and has assisted them in classes and workshops. In 2010, she also began practising under the guidance of Susanna Finocchi in Copenhagen (DK).

Extracts of the article published in TANZ magazine (edition November 2010) on Johanna Chemnitz performing Margrét Sara Gudjónsdóttirs piece Soft Target.
By Arnd Wesemann
"A naked room in the Ballhaus Ost in Berlin. Four flood lights edge the dancer like in a cage. Her in stakkato blinking eyes fire back. Her feet are standing calmly on the attic floorboards. Rhythmical beats wander from the eyelids through her strong body. Her gaze bites to the fast lounge beats of Peter Rehberg. She is the caged game. On all threes, she carefully lifts one powerful paw into the space. (…) Each of her muscular steps appears animal like: strong, thoughtful, purposeful, careful. During her studies at the Dance Academy Arnhem she already learned that by mere deconstruction, bodies turn into a catastrophe. Her body tousles, as lastly in her duet Dishevelled with Sonja Pregrad. She sews together again this exposed, stage captured and choreographically fragmented body. Decisively she strains her head into the plaintiveness of the room as if to feel a wind gust of freedom. She captures the eye by letting her body begin to think. (…)"

scrawling MARRAKESH
Johanna Chemnitz reports on a festival in Moroccans “Red City”
published in tanzraumberlin (edition 07-08 2009)
"Nowadays, many dance festivals take place close to, but outside the European borders. Johanna Chemnitz, a choreographer from Berlin, performed at the Festival International de Danse Contemporaine de Marrakech in January. In tanzraumberlin she tells us about her impressions.
Text: Johanna Chemnitz, choreographer & dancer
I was just doing rehearsals in Basel, in the middle of the Swiss Alps. Shortly after I find myself in Marrakesh. I am being pushed out of the airplane, breathe in the Moroccan air, look up to the sky and discover with amazement that snow-covered mountains likewise frame this city. I am being picked up by Jessica Laignel who lives in Marrakesh, works for the dialogue point of the Goethe-Institute and who has invited me and Kathryn Rave to take part at the Festival International de Danse Contemporaine de Marrakech On Marche…
We go by bus to the city, donkey carts, honking mopeds and many taxis pass us by. We then arrive in the historic city, Medina: A place, where the atmosphere changes every hour, as we will realise soon. The alleys are crowded with people, animals and in between that, vehicles. Useful and useless things pile up along the sides. Wild cats with chicken heads between teeth and claws are everywhere. Right after arriving at the hotel, we cut our way through the mesh of roads toward our first performance at the Grand Theatre Royal. We are being warmly welcomed and greeted by Bouchra Ouizguen, Taoufiq Izzediou and all the other idealists who, with an incredible vigour, create a room for contemporary dance within their culture. Their strong will and great passion for dance are clearly noticeable. What they do is absolutely pioneering. The situation of theatre and dance in Morocco becomes visible in the Theatre Royal. The building is mighty; the facades stand proudly in the middle of the city. Inside however, the theatre is in ruin and lies idle. The permission to perform in the never completed performance hall was withdrawn at the last minute. In defiance of that, On Marche… takes the room, enlivens it. In the once magnificent foyer, we perform our work scrawling, in which we are dealing directly using dance with our sensations of Marrakech and we create sketchy and imagined drawings with the body. In doing so, it involves structured improvisations and compositions that are being influenced by the dynamic, the energies and the structures of the location. 
We not only notice the curious reaction of the Moroccan audience during our own performance, but also whenever we were part of the audience while visiting the performances of others. The audience consists of international experts and from evening to evening a growing number of young and interested Moroccans who have never been in touch with contemporary dance before constitutes a highly dynamic mixture. Movement passes through the hall; people laugh, whisper, whistle, yell, keep silent in keen attentiveness, come in and go out. And it becomes obvious that the way the body is being dealt with in the presented performances both fascinates and at the same time embarrasses the young Moroccan audience, as it is very different from the familiar. Still, there is a great, alert curiosity and we performers are secure of animated feedback coming from a strongly intuitive connection. Every night, we eat together and talk; thoughts and contacts are being exchanged until one sinks exhausted into the pillows. 
Another special experience was our performance of scrawling in the ESAV, the sole film academy in the whole of Africa. Just as we began to dance on the terrace of the new building, a storm came on out of seemingly nowhere. The dance carpet made waves and the stage was about to disintegrate. Someone from the audience started to bring wooden palettes that were lying around nearby to ballast the dance carpet. Others joined in and all of a sudden, a stage decor emerged, beautiful and wild like we could have never pictured it ourselves. 
My flight back to Germany leaves on the next day already. One more time haggling over the price for the cab ride and a few remaining coins for coffee and croissant. In the plane I can't keep my eyes open, I wake up at Bremen Airport and Marrakesh’s impressive images, enriching experiences and warmth are still present."

Interview with Sonja Pregrad and Johanna Chemnitz on their choreography Dishevelled, opening piece of the Festival Tanztage Berlin in 2010
published in January 2010 in Tanzpresse, an online journal for dance reviews
www.tanzpresse.de
"How would you describe your dance piece Dishevelled? 
Johanna: In Dishevelled we give ourselves to a world beyond logic and we dedicate ourselves to the indefinable. The piece deals with reality, identity and dissolution. Within this process, we have also delved into failure and into the different possibilities and forms of failure: the calm and quiet failing; the intense, noisy and agitated failing and above all, the courage and lust for failing. 
Sonja: I would also describe it as dealing with the physical texture, which actually carries an emotional confrontation for each one of us. Through shaking, the structure falls off and maybe leaves a different shape of what is identity, be it personal, gender, social.
What were the influences and motivations for this piece?
Sonja: The collaboration and exchange of two and then three people sharing a language of looking at things and coming from two different areas of Europe, two cities, which in very different way support and carry in itself a great production of art and culture and dialogue. I think the motivation was a desire for confrontation in many subtle and less subtle ways. Some of the influences were the film Thelma and Louise, Egon Schiele, André Lepecki and Johanna Chemnitz.
Johanna: Francis Bacon and Matthew Barney are among the influences. Other important things are the photos that came up during our rehearsals with Sophie Malmberg. The visual arts in the form of photography, painting and sculpture also had a very strong influence on our work. The workshop with Meg Stuart that I took part in this summer in Stolzenhagen also was inspiring and formative for me. And the work with Sonja of course!
How were the circumstances of production in Berlin?
Sonja: Helpful and intense.
Johanna: We were lucky to be able to rehearse in the new spaces of Dock 11 in Pankow: a huge and splendid room in an old building. The work benefited from that. The financial conditions however were difficult. Nevertheless, we made the decision to pay all participants with our small budget, as we want to avoid unpaid work by all means. 
What do dance and choreography mean to you?
Johanna: I would describe dance and choreography as a big love of mine. And challenges, communication, passion, a lot of conflict and sometimes a lot of fear but also a lot of happiness make parts of such a strong love. Apart from that I find that dance and choreography embody a unique form of communication. I see this as a long process. 
Sonja: It is a call, a profession, a political attitude. I desire to work with physicality of dance, seeing what kind of text and dramaturgy it produces.
What do you like about the dance scene in Berlin?
Sonja: I guess I like, that there is a lot of organized experiments with a political attitude.
Johanna: I really like its diversity: I wouldn't want to miss the people that operate in it and the encounters I have with them."

Johanna Chemnitz
Knaackstraße 66
D – 10435 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0)176 – 23 32 34 32
mail@johannachemnitz.com

links:
www.ashtangastudio.de 
www.khz-vidalbini.com
www.carolinemeyerpicard.com
www.panicproductions.is
www.s-h-i-f-t-s.org
www.annesophiemalmberg.com
www.liveartinstallations.com
www.ponderosa-dance.de
www.tanzscoutberlin.de
www.candicemilon.com

Design: Hannes Nordiek (www.hannesnordiek.de, email)
Programming: Nicolas Traeder (www.codebility.com, email)

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