Evelin lives in Hong Kong and teaches ballet, creative dance and school workshops (primary and secondary). She makes work for her dance company Motive for Motion and has collaborated and performed for the VivaDanca Festival directed by Cristina Castro in Salvador-Bahia, Brazil. During the recent political unrest in Hong Kong her performance work has been in jeopardy.
What impact has CAP had on your practice?
CAP has impacted positively and consistently in my development as an artist. Encouraging me on my journey rather than holding me back. Through CAP I am able to navigate my creative process with a sense of direction and yet curiosity and excitement to challenge it.
CAP has helped me to develop a consciousness and embody the discovered knowledge in my performance, choreography or in my teaching practice. It’s essential to have a research methodology that allows the creative process to breathe and continue to grow, following a line of inquiry that is not linear.
How did you learn about CAP?
I learned about CAP while preparing for a lecture-performance at the Innovation in Performing Arts Education Symposium 2017 at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, where I graduated as Master of Fine Arts in 2011. For the Symposium, I presented the concept of the Dance Platform, Solo Works, that I was launching in Hong Kong.
Born out of restless curiosity, Solo Works is a process-based dance platform. It aims to be a space for dance artists who are looking for an opportunity to explore and nurture creativity in their own practice. To choose solo composition, which I acknowledge is not always a choice, affirms a field of dance and the importance of exploring a subject’s own identity, movement, and language.
What do you use CAP for?
I use CAP in my dance making for contextualising, making concrete and enabling collaboration. I use it to help me embody movement and put choreographic ideas into practice.
I use CAP to examine my original intentions and motives and articulate my practice in a more systematic and cyclic process of creativity. This allows for a more clear understanding of the process and fluidity in my writing. I can see how the imagery comes out and takes shape.
This is something I need in order to contextualise that which I can’t grasp. It’s not so literal as reflecting on what I am doing as it happens. Rather I have to find a structure that gives space for active enquiring; a foundation to be free to explore. CAP allows me to go to the studio with concrete ideas so that movement research happens.
How do you use CAP with your collaborators?
CAP has provided the method I need to articulate my thoughts in a more effective way so that other artists can understand the process and are motivated to contribute and collaborate creatively instead of following instructions or executing preconceived ideas.
I work collaboratively with my sister who is a musician and CAP lets us find ways of creating together. I have a system of drawing sketches of the choreographic ‘cells’ and their development like a map. I give her the drawings to create the bases for the music. This also allows her to create freely within the existing structure.
How do you use writing in your creative process?
In this process, writing became not only a method to register the journey but a way to process while doing it. Writing became a way to grasp and shape thoughts in my practice. Formulating sentences, choosing words to describe, selecting topics, erasing, deleting…just like we do with our movement exploration while trying to find a dramaturgy, a storyline to bold, to sustain without grounding you.
Writing down your reflections, insights, even rehearsal tasks and notes become an extension of the studio practice and the scaffolding of later analysis. The whole process became more one of a spiral, you almost circle back then you take a leap again. You contradict your own initial thoughts as you do it, and therefore it’s crucial to keep doing it.
Tell me about your forthcoming performance
I am planning to stand on stage and just tell the audience what I am about to do: how I discover the movement idea, how I am planning to perform it, step by step, very literal. I would like for the audience to imagine the dance before I perform it.
I have a set of movements that I explore during the elaboration of the piece and I dance a structured improvisation following pre-recorded music. This is the same format as how I rehearse and that is how I am planning to perform.
I was selected to participate in the process-based platform Hier=Jetz in Munich, but due to the COVID outbreak that performance was cancelled.
Tell us about your work
Zoom
Zoom was created and choreographed for the camera. The video dance happens live from the backstage while projected at the cyclorama for the audience. Only by the end of the choreography, the audience will realize that was happening live as Evelin walks on the stage and perform the dance again in from of their eyes, now the choreography takes another dimension as it evolves what originally initiate from the movements of her feet.
The Bachianas
The Bachianas choreography starts as an experiment with movements in relation to its shadow and light from the mobile phone. Created for the music As Bachianas from the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, Evelin uses the light and the absence of it to reveal the “Saudade” embodied in her dance. Saudade (in Portuguese) a deep emotional state of longing for an absent something or someone. In this choreography, Evelin remembers her ballet background still present in her body and memories.
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For more information about Evelin’s working process check out her updates on social media
Facebook: EvelinKeller
Instagram: EvelinMotionWorks