Hammering//Shy Grandeur

The double bill from the Danish National School of Performing Arts presents works from two young choreographers; “Hammering” by Manon Siv Duquesnay and “Shy Grandeur” by
Max Wallmeier.

In ‘Hammering’ you enter a process of building, where three dancers are working with wood, sawing and hammering. They shift between the parts and the whole, paying attention to detail and supporting the common project. A bigger structure appears through the means of movement. Building becomes the poetic for this something we do better together. The emerging structure as the symbol of something existing or belonging to a common imagination.

In the creation process building notions such as lines and geometry, have been applied to inform the dancing body. The craft of the dancer has likewise been feeding the process of building by the way it relates to weight, folding and unfolding of articulations and the awareness of space and its interconnectedness with lines and geometry. Building is used as a place of (re)discovering the dancing body and its capacities applied in another context.

Within the references or imaginarium of this work, a local folk dance from Asturias, where the beginning process took place, is equally being referenced as the soft celebration of the ending working day.

Ongoing like waves appearing and disappearing, two dancers move within a gently changing landscape. The work is inspired by trips to the shore, where the constant, ever-changing motion of the sea invites for contemplation and daydreaming.

This work was made in the frame of Max Wallmeier’s studies in the master program in choreography at the Danish National School of Performing Arts. Dancer Antonia Harke was invited into the process and the piece premiered in November 2020.

With the memory of the trips to the shore – and a couple of movement exercises as a starting point – Max and Antonia developed a series of movement sequences. They returned to these sequences over and over again and let their inner logics unfold as possibilities for composing the piece.

The starting point for the piece is Wallmeier’s interest in slowness and repetition as ways to highlight details and enter calm, contemplative states through dancing. The choreography aims to create an openness for the viewer to perceive multiple understandings and imaginations.