Residence week 4 / 2024

belief systems is a preliminary project by dance artist Marie Rechsteiner that revolves around the theme of faith and conviction. The project will explore strategies for developing movement material, the collective versus the individual, and ask questions about how and what we believe in in a modern, secularized and individual-oriented society.

Several theories surrounding the human need for faith are based on the need to understand how the world is connected in a system, both ourselves and phenomena such as dreams, death and the soul. In this preliminary project, I will explore the deep-seated human need to personify things we do not understand and cannot control.

The project will try to develop methods to exercise persuasiveness. What does it take for each individual in the group to devote themselves to the material and create a common belief/conviction about what they produce? Rechsteiner thinks that a belief system often includes representation or alternative worlds, utopian or revolutionary systems: a world as it should or must be. Can the performers, through repetition and an insistence in the movement material, create mini-universes that exist between them? A kind of accepted reality that exists within the group, but which can also seem transferable to a potential audience?

Marie will show an open work in progress in the studio at DansiT / Svartlamon on Friday 26th of January from 2 – 3pm. Everyone is welcome! Please let producer Betty know in advance if you are planning to come: betty@dansit.no

About the artist

Marie Rechsteiner is a Norwegian dance artist, based between Trondheim and Berlin. She graduated from the University of Stavanger in 2012 with a Bachelor in dance, and has a Master in Dance Studies from NTNU. She has been engaged as a performer in a number of performances and collaborative projects, in addition to developing her own choreographic practice. A large part of her work is of an interdisciplinary nature, where movement is combined with sound art, video projections, objects and site-specific, improvised interaction. Thematically, her work revolves around current social issues and looks at how society’s discourses are manifested in the body and can be seen in the choreographic work. She is one of the founders of the studio collective Garage – Werkstatt für Darstellende Künste, a production and display arena for the free field in Berlin.

Credits

Choreographer: Marie Rechsteiner

Performers: Nina Wollny, Veslemøy Frengstad, Ken Bruun, Edith Buttingsrud Pedersen, Marie Rechsteiner Composer: Heida Karine J. Mobeck

Supported by: Directorate of Culture, Trondheim Municipality