LOL (lots of love)

Protein Dance (UK)

28.5.2011. | 20:00h | ZKM
29.5.2011. | 20:00h | HKD Rijeka


LOL (lots of love)
Protein Dance (UK)
Choreography: Luca Silvestrini
Video and animation : Rachel Davies
Composer: Andy Pink
Light Designer: Jackie Shemesh
Dancers: Patsy Browne-Hope, Omar Gordon, Kip Johnson, Sally Marie, Vicki Manderson, Stuart Waters


www.lollotsoflove.net
www.proteindance.co.uk
About the Show:
Known for turning the everyday into witty and profound dance theatre, Luca Silvestrini’s award-winning Protein presents a critically acclaimed production of physical theatre where love, wanting and connectedness take centre stage.
Logging on to our lives online, LOL (lots of love) delves into the world of electronic communication to uncover the evolutionary shift that social networking and the internet have had upon the way we live and love.
With video animation by Rachel Davies, lighting by Jackie Shemesh and with original music by Andy Pink, LOL (lots of love) mixes social comment, provocative humour and engaging performances by six highly articulate dancers.

Logging on to our lives online, LOL (lots of love) delves into the world of electronic communication to uncover the evolutionary shift that social networking and the internet have had upon the way we live and love. With video animation by Rachel Davies, lighting by Jackie Shemesh (co-creators of Protein's Dear Body) and with original music by Andy Pink, LOL (lots of love) mixes social comment and provocative humour to put love, wanting and connectedness centre stage.

Kroz video animaciju umjetnice Rachel Davies, uz svjetlosne efekte Jackie Shemesh te uz autentični glazbeni predložak kojeg potpisuje Andy Pink, LOL (lots of love) koristi socijalne komentare, provokativni humor te upravo fascinantne, izuzetne fizičke bravura šestoro vrhunskih plesača.

Commissioned by Dance East, Greenwich Dance and The Place and supported by South Hill Park Arts Centre, Bracknell

Trailer:

About the Authors:

Luca Silvestrini:

Born in Italy, Luca studied Performing Arts at Bologna University before moving to the
UK in 1995 to complete his dance training at Laban. His choreography dates from 1997 when he founded Protein Dance. As Artistic Director of Protein he is known for idiosyncratic dance theatre work provoked by its deep connections with the everyday. His Protein catalogue includes the site-specific international hit Publife, and stage works The Banquet, Big Sale and Dear Body. His personality is stamped on large-scale cross-generational and participatory events including the world record breaking Big Dance Class, Eat London (which won a Visit London Gold Award) and Big Dance 2010, both of which took place in Trafalgar Square. He has created full length intergenerational productions in Valenciennes and Athens; and taught and presented Protein’s participatory work at schools and conferences in Singapore, Spain and Italy. Luca has created work for Bare Bones, CandoCo, From Here to Maturity, Funny Bones and Company of Elders at Sadler’s Wells.

Theatre and opera credits include work for English National Opera, Theatre Rites, Royal Court Theatre, Duckie and Youth Music Theatre UK. He has won a Jerwood Choreography Award, a Bonnie Bird New Choreography Award and The Place Prize 2006 Audience Award and was one of the first recipients of a Rayne Choreography Award (2006).

Rachel Davies (Video, animation and film):
Rachel Davies has directed video and animation for nearly 20 years. Initially she studied  fine art, and animation at the Royal College of Art, then directed award-winning animation promos for MTV. She has since directed numerous short films for Channel 4, collaborating with a diverse range of performing artists, and varied projection pieces for stage with dance and theatre companies. Among her collaborators are Akram Khan, Robert Cohan, Annie Lok and H2Dance. Her work is toured by British Council to international film festivals such as Chicago, Oslo and New York and has shown here in venues such as ICA, Purcell Room and NFT. In 2000 she was Associate Artist at The Place. In 2005 she won the IMZ Grand Prix for her short film Gold. In 2007 she was John Thaw Fellow at Manchester University making The Assembly installation, now a film, for Manchester International Festival and Sadlers Wells. She collaborated with Protein on Dear Body in 2008/09. Earlier this year Rachel Davies was awarded research funding from BDE and she created an installation for Sadlers Wells The Light Garden

Andy Pink (composer)  has worked with renown companies such as Lumiere & Son and Station House Opera. He has covered a broad range of assignments including work with English National Opera, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the first Native American Fashion Showcase at The Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 2004 Andy was commissioned by The Siobhan Davies Dance Company to compose the soundscore for 'Bird Song' which toured nationally and internationally to critical acclaim. Bird Song was part of the successful bid in July 2005 for the London Olympics in 2012 via the '40 Artists 40 Days' initiative organised by the Tate in London. In 2005 Andy composed music for 'Imperial Borders', part of Mavin Khoo's 'Chandra Luna', designed the sound for Adam Cooper's 'Les Liaisons Dangereuse' in Japan and worked on a new R.O.H. commission with Mem Morrison that explored the world of the childhood bully. The end of the year brought a collaboration with Gerry Pilgrim's Corridor group, a site specific work in Soho's Marshall Street swimming baths. 2006/7 saw Andy collaborating with composers Will Todd and Ben Dunwell on the soundscore for the opera 'Whirlwind'. The year also included writing the music for the launch of Mazda's new MX5 for The Imagination Group whilst Bird Song was chosen as part of the national curriculum for GCSE dance for 2006-9. 'Leftovers', a sound installation with Mem Morrison, took place in choice greasy spoon cafes throughout 2007/8. Andy then worked with the Michael Clark Company on The Stravinsky Project, which toured internationally throughout 2008. 'SALT' was an installation over four floors of a disused salt factory for the Ruhr Triennale festival throughout the summer of 2008, for which Andy wrote the music and designed the sound. More work with The Michael Clark company in 2009 followed by a collaboration with The Mem Morrison company resulting in 'Ringside' which tours to this day and is heading for Asia and Australia in March

Jackie Shemesh (Dizajn Svjetla )
Recent works for Dance include Luca Silvestrini’s B for Body; Bettina Strickler and Saiko Kino’s Where the Light was Less; Constansa Macras’ Big In Bombay; Hungry Ghosts by Lost Dog; Nigel Charnock’s Habayta; Introdans’ Desclose; Yasmeen Godder’s Two Playful Pink Strawberry Cream Gunpowder and i feel funny today; and various pieces for the Bathsheva Ensemble over the years of 1995-2005. Recent work in Theatre includes What we did to Weinstein (dir:Tim Supple), London; Wishuponastar for Akko Theatre Group, Berliner Festshpile Berlin: The Arab and the Jew Gecko; Ramayana at Lyric Hammersmith; and The Hound of The Baskervilles Peepolikus and West Yorkshire Playhouse. Recent designs for music theatre include the Opera Sante, LSO at St. Lukes London andThe Laya Project Live Concert India 2007, 2008.

About the Company:
Protein was founded in 1997 by Italian born Luca Silvestrini and Bettina Strickler from Switzerland who attended the Laban conservatoire for dance in London together as students. Beginning with their bilingual duet Duel in 1998, they created a series of professional touring works, each one relishing a different aspect of contemporary life: confessional television (Portrait with Group and Duck 1998), psychoanalysis (On the Couch, 2000), booze culture (Publife, 2002) and social Darwinism (The Banquet, 2003).Continuing as sole Artistic Director after Bettina’s departure from the company, Luca went on to tackle consumerism (Big Sale, 2005) and obsession with body image (Dear Body 2008/09) which grew out of his piece for The Place Prize choreographic competition in 2006 when he won the Audience Vote.

Protein has toured throughout the United Kingdom and internationally, with performances in Italy, Spain, Denmark, Switzerland, France, Germany, Croatia, Malta, Czech Republic, Holland, Canada, and the USA. Protein has always been inspired by the challenge of making work for unusual sites. As well as Publife, which toured to pubs and clubs in the UK and internationally, there have been three short pieces commissioned by the Wapping Project, London (2001, 2003 and 2009), and The Factory, a promenade performance to mark the official opening of the new Laban in February 2003. In 2008 Luca Silvestrini made On Display, set in and amongst the shops of Birmingham for International Dance Festival Birmingham, and, for the same festival two years later, made Invisible Dances, a site specific work for the streets of Birmingham which grew in
size and complexity each day.

Alongside work in professional contexts, Protein’s engagement with the public as participants in education and community dance projects stamps the company’s personality on cross-generational productions and creative activity in educational settings. Most influentially, Alfresco (2005) established Protein’s reputation for cross-generational work internationally, leading to commissions for Luca Silvestrini in Greece (Crossroad) and France (Valfresco) in 2007. At the same time, Protein has developed dance participation in its professional productions; the company included a company of twelve local amateur performers in each of its touring performances of Dear Body).

Education packages for schools and colleges that help to enhance students’ understanding of touring productions and meet the needs of the National Curriculum for dance and performing arts. With East London Dance, Protein created its dance film Start to Finish which involved 150 schoolchildren, the development of which has led to the creation of Dansathletic, an educational CD Rom which enables teachers to link dance to the Olympics, and a large-scale outdoor performance for Big Dance in 2006. Other Big Dance events include the Big Dance Class which involved the record-breaking simultaneous participation of 8962 people all around the country, 8 Steps for 08 for Liverpool City of Culture and Big World Dance in Trafalgar Square in 2010. Equally challenging and also immensely rewarding have been Protein’s work at the Evelina Children’s Hospital and in pupil referral units. The creation of I Woz ‘Ere 2 with young people at the Pavilion PRU in Totteridge in 2006 was the subject of a Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation commissioned documentary Everything Stopped.

Press / Reviews:
“…clever, comic and finally devastating…” Sanjoy Roy, www.londondance.com
“..the performance never veered far away from the boundaries of outstanding. By the second night, it was flawless: a four star performance rocketing to the furthest outreaches of five!” Graham Watts, www.ballet.co.uk
“…Protein’s sharpest and funniest work so far … The dialogue … is alive with flashing ironies” Kevin Berry, The Stage
“…human communication on virtual speed, exhilarating and funny…” Judith Mackrell, The Guardian ****
“Talking and dancing at high speed, the cast nail, with elegant wit, the language of mailing, messaging and tweeting…” Judith Mackrell, The Guardian ****
“Luca Silvestrini is the sharpest of comic choreographers. And what makes this his best creation to date is not only the sparkle of the comedy, but the poignancy with which it is infused.” Judith Mackrell, The Guardian ****
“…savvy highly entertaining dance theatre…” Donald Hutera, The Times
“…gimlet-eyed humour underpinned by genuine feelings…” Donald Hutera, The Times ****
“Pared down until it sings with melancholy tension, LOL is Silvestrini's strongest work to date" Luke Jennings, The Observer
 “…beautifully detailed and sharply satirical…” Donald Hutera, The Times ****
“Talking and dancing at high speed, the cast nail, with elegant wit, the language of mailing, messaging and tweeting” Judith Mackrell, The Guardian ****
“Silvestrini’s right on the zeitgeist – and on peak form…” Keith Watson, Metro
“…a razor-sharp look at how we are rewiring romance.” Keith Watson, Metro
“Protein’s sharpest and funniest work so far … The dialogue … is alive with flashing ironies” Kevin Berry, The Stage
 “clever, comic and finally devastating” Sanjoy Roy, www.londondance.com
Interview with the artist: www.lollotsoflove.net/the-show/videos/interviews

Web: www.proteindance.co.uk

On October 1, 2010 driven by the success of the performance and the desire to provide an avenue for audiences to stay connected to each other and to the performance and the company, a micro-site was launched to reflect a new community arising from LOL. Audiences can now share not only their opinions and comment the show, but post their own experiences: www.lollotsoflove.net

 



Photos from the performance / 28.5.2011. ZKM Zagreb / 28.DWF:

Photo: Mirna Hari
Regular ticket price:
/ discounts available... /
100kn