Early Works
2010 Sweet Dreams are made
2009 Bach
2006 Vue Imprenable
2006 There is no exception
2004 PYHO
2002 TBYLTMYS
2001 SPFC
2000 TIJTD
2000 Ecce@Ens
There is no exception to the rule because I am never what I have
There is no Exception…
This collaboration between Serbian choreographer Dalija Acin and Isabelle Schad – choreographer based in Berlin – started during the project COLINA 2005, that took place in August 2005 in Tanzhaus NRW Düsseldorf.
The project is dealing with the notion of self-representation and the fluctuations between ’self’ and ’other’, foreign and own, female and male, outside and inside, natural and artificial, fake and real.
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The project takes the shape of a solo for Dalija Acin that takes in account autobiographical aspects, discourse and theory, through a series of interviews and daily conversations about being on stage.
How many bodies do you have?
How many faces do you have?
What do you have? What do you own?
What is taken away from you?
How different can you perceive your own self from one moment to the next?
What is a fluid identity?
Do you become visible on stage?
Do you become invisible on stage?
For whom do you become invisible, for yourself or for the observer?
What kind of representation?
What kind of presence?
What is a political body?
How does your own political body look like?
What is the moment of transition revealing?
Leaving your own body behind.
Splitting voice and body.
Putting in relation language and body.
Working on transformations of your own body.
Designing a space for imagination.
Triggering and stimulating imagination.
Editing (text, body, light, sound material)
Manipulating from outside.
Manipulating from inside.
Producing illusion.
Using the stage apparatus to alter the perception of time and space.
Producing a form of spectacle that can reflect upon itself.
Using referential images as proposing again another body.
Reflecting on the self and the non-self.
Producing emotions through an anatomical body approach.
Building expectations.
Breaking expectations.
Working with the codes of beauty
“The skin is deceptive …in life one only has one’s skin…there is an error in human relations because one never is what one has…I have an angel’s skin but I am a jackal…a crocodile’s skin but I am a puppy, a black skin but I am white; a woman’s skin but I am a man; I never have the skin of what I am. There is no exception to the rule because I am never what I have.” (Dangerous Connections by Bojana Kunst)
This piece, if related to the personalities and the experiences of Dalija Acin and Isabelle Schad, is more generally a work on the body – the body as an anatomic experience and the body as the object of representation.
A physical approach based on the activation of different systems (respiratory, skeleton, ligaments, muscles, fascia, fat, skin, organs, glands, nerves and fluids), on vocalization and on dynamics of perception produces manyfold different qualities of movement. This approach emphasizes the observation of the self, the awareness of what happens in one’s body in each moment
The ’looking’ – envisioning the eyes as an organ – and the observation through and from within the whole body become important elements in the process.
The perception of duration and the possibility to focus on details are there interrelated.
The collaboration of Acin and Schad questions what is given to be seen, the relation between presentation and representation, between reality and imagination, and proposes to reconsider habits in perceiving.
Concept and choreography: Isabelle Schad and Dalija Aćin
Performance: Dalija Aćin
Coaching and editing: Isabelle Schad
Light design/Technical realisation: Bruno Pocheron
Soundtrack: Extracts from conversations between Dalija Aćin and Isabelle Schad
Music: Serge Gainsbourg / Elysian Field “Les Amours Perdues”
Production Management: Susanne Beyer
Production: Cie Isabelle Schad / Good Work Productions and Dalija Aćin in co-production with NPN (Nationales Performance Netz) Munich, BITEF Theater Belgrade, Tanzhaus NRW Düsseldorf
supported by: TanzWerkstatt Berlin and Colina – Collaboration in Arts 2005, Düsseldorf.
This specific formulation of the credits has to be respected by any venue presenting this work in any published document.
Photos © annika b. lewis
2007 Balkan Dance Platform, Athens
13th OCTOBER
Mitropoulos Hall
Dalija Acin & Isabelle Schad “There is no exception to the rule because I am never what I have”
Full House Promotion in collaboration with the Megaron, Athens Concert Hall and with the international partners of the Platform:
The Red House from Bulgaria,
Lokomotiva from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
ArtLink from Romania
2007 L I E evening in Ballhaus Ost Berlin
See online: Ballhaus Ost Berlin
2006 Eine Frage nach der Geste, Kellertheater der Oper Leipzig
See online: eine frage nach der geste
2006 Isabelle Schad & Dalija Acin, Bitef Theatre, Belgrade
2006 Showcase at Bitef Teatar, Belgrade
’In the line of conceptual dance and, on the other hand, the issues of culture and gender studies, the work raises, from general female point of view, well-known questions on contemporary identities and mechanisms of construction of human body/bodies; here all the mechanisms are internalized in the very choreography: dance movement and dialogue between choreographers.’ (Ana Vujanović, selector of Showcase)
2006 Isabelle Schad & Dalija Acin (D/SER) DT. Erstaufführung, Tanzhaus NRW
Konzept und Choreografie: Isabelle Schad, Dalija Acin; Darstellung: Dalija Acin; Coaching, Editing: Isabelle Schad; Licht, Bühne und technische Umsetzung: Bruno Pocheron; Soundtracks: Auszüge aus Gesprächen zwischen Isabelle Schad und Dalija Acin; Musik: Serge Gainsbourg/Elysian Fields „Les Amours Perdues“.
Eine Produktion von Cie Isabelle Schad/Good Work Productions, koproduziert durch Bitef Theater Belgrad, Nationales Performance Netz (NPN) und tanzhaus nrw. Unterstützt durch die Tanzwerkstatt Berlin und Colina – Collaboration in Arts 2005, Düsseldorf.
See online: Tanzhaus NRW
2006 in Bitef Theater Belgrade
Dalija Acin is performing this piece again at the BITEF THEATER on the 17th of April, the 8th of May and the 11th of June 2006
2005 in Bitef Theater Belgrade
There is no exception to the rule because I am never what I have’, a collaboration between Dalija Acin and Isabelle Schad will premiere in Bitef Theater Belgrade 24th March 2006
In the line of conceptual dance and, on the other hand, the issues of culture and gender studies, the work raises, from general female point of view, well-known questions on contemporary identities and mechanisms of construction of human body/bodies; here all the mechanisms are internalized in the very choreography: dance, movement and dialogue between choreographers. (Ana Vujanović, selector of Showcase in Bitef Festival 2006)
’This piece is born from a dialogue between the choreographers Dalija Acin from Belgrade and Isabelle Schad from Berlin.
In a series of recorded conversations they have been discussing the topics of the representations of the body, different notions of identity, the versatility of the parameters of beauty, the interplays between absence and presence, the expectations of the spectator.
Dealing with the notion of self-representation, ’There is no exception to the rule because I am never what I have’ seeks for the fluidity of the performer’s presence. It reflects on the frame of the theatre stage as a place of expectations and desires, and aims to question habits in perceiving both this presence and that frame.’ (From the program text in Belgrade)