Day 4 - The Artists Are Present #1

Identity, reality and imagination, embodied poetry

Sigrid Stigsdatter Mathiassen - Cold Hawaii
So she retreats. She explores the vast emptiness, the territory of pleasure and the realm of silence after something breaking. Like a heartbreak that builds up, only to break down again, she creates a character that breathes, rises and disappears. Through movement and sound, words and songs she negotiates between harsh realities and the soft worlds of her imagination.
Cold Hawaii is a solo that can be thought of as an esoteric novel where fiction becomes the map to reimagine reality. It is a paradox and a myth seeking to confront the desire to be exposed and be private, to be shy and be too much, to be someone, be no one, to be wild and be serene. It is a piece full of heartbreak, disappointment and rejection.

Charles Pas - Victory Boogie Woogie (pre-premiere)

In the mime solo Victory Boogie Woogie, Charles Pas places himself in a dystopian in-between space to explore what it means when you constantly have to rig yourself up. As a lost young man, he confronts the mundane, trying to tame it and look for all that lies behind it. What does it mean when you can't find a connection, distraught takes over, but you have no choice but to keep going?

In this performance, where the strength lies in the minimal use of theatrical means, Charles is in dialogue with a fully sampled soundscape of the soundtrack of city life. Victory Boogie Woogie is a dynamic trip in which, through flashes of a life in the city, an ever-expanding picture reveals itself to the viewer. The threat of radicalising the individual is constantly lurking.

Sigrid Stigsdatter Mathiassen

Sigrid Stigsdatter Mathiassen travels through dance with an open heart and a critical mind seeking to tell stories from the place where reality meets fantasy and fiction. Sigrid Stigsdatter Mathiassen is a Danish artist based between Amsterdam and Copenhagen. She works with choreography, performance, singing and writing.

Sigrid Stigsdatter Mathiassen grew up by the North Sea in Denmark, a place she carries with her always, and the place that Cold Hawaii is named after. She completed her studies at the SNDO (School for New Dance Development – Amsterdam) in 2017 with the solo Remembrane. The solo won her the Moving Forward trajectory the same year and gave her the opportunity to create her first production after school, the piece Hope and Heavy Metal. In her works, she uses word and voice, dance and sound as power tools to deal with the female body on and off stage, she does this through loneliness, rage, intimacy and humour. Stigsdatter is a member of Jacuzzi Dance space in Amsterdam, Dance Cooperative in Copenhagen, and she is part of the writing collective Awful. Being part of these collectives and shaping the dance community and the politics around it is very important in regards to her function as an artist. Next to making her own work, she works as an adviser and performer for other artists. She is currently touring Cold Hawaii and is working on the project Ongoing Pleasures, a femme fatale musical.

Charles Pas

Charles is a physical and visual theatre maker. His work exists somewhere in the intersection of performance, absurd theatre and magical realism. He either directs or performs in his own pieces. In his work the audience is thrown into timeless in-between spaces. He makes theatrical translations of the inner worlds of his characters through the interplay of dreams and reality. He shows emotional non-linear journeys characterized by melancholy, humor and the urge for the unknown. These qualities make his work culminate in systems; shaped by repetition, virtuoso movement and soundtracks that guide the spectator through different worlds. He wants to move and confuse the viewer by presenting them an absurd version of banal reality. He desires to bring people together.

“Deep down, I fear never to find a real connection with my fellow human or to lose someone I love because of my own mistakes. Creating is my ultimate attempt to understand that fear.”

Charles graduated from the Mime Academy in Amsterdam in 2020. During his training he worked with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Francesca Lazzeri (Proud Flesh), Dries Verhoeven, Elien van den Hoek and Charli Chung, among others, and he made two short performances with Frascati, as well as his own work at school. Last year, he made a production at Over Het IJ and did research at ICK Artist Space and Likeminds. He performed his own work and collaborations at various festivals and venues such as De Singel, Boulevard, Bostheater, De Parade and De Brakke Grond.

Victory Boogie Woogie is produced by Likeminds in collaboration with ICK-Artist Space.

By: Charles Pas, Willem Lenaerts, Rint Mennes

Coaching: Stephen Liebman, Liet Lenshoek, Suzy Blok

Dramaturgy: Wessel Padberg

Poster: Delfin Lev

In collaboration with ICK Artist Space

Special thanks to: DeSingel, Corso, Niels van Heijningen, Emma de Mol, Shamisa Debroey