DESCRIPTION

The SOTA@GARAGE performance festival is the final event in the annual SOTA intensive program in contemporary dance and performance.

SOTA was started last year by dancer and choreographer Dina Khuseyn, and this year became a part of the public program at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. Every year the program is structured around a different theme; this year’s program is called Mass vs. Multitude: Alternative Spaces and focuses on studying the shifting perception of collectiveness and union, as well as present-day attitudes toward “mass action.” How different is the idea of “unity” today compared with the same notion several years—or decades—ago?

The festival opens on Friday, June 3, with Collective Jumps. Installation, a performance by German choreographer Isabelle Schad and artist Laurent Goldring, created in collaboration with SOTA@GARAGE students. The show opened in 2014 at Berlin’s well-known HAU Hebbel am Ufer theater center, and in their performance, Schad and Goldring address the issues of collectiveness and resistance, exploring the possible relations between freedom and form in dance.

On Saturday, July 4, 16 SOTA students will turn Garage Atrium and ground floor into a performance space. Performances based on the students’ final projects and their teachers’ works will happen randomly throughout the day, and will explore the potentiality of the museum as a public space. This summer will mark Garage’s first year in its new building, a former restaurant and Soviet Modernist structure that was converted into a museum of contemporary art. Over the past year, it has become one of the most popular recreation zones in the city. All works presented at the festival explore different ways of making sense of the public beyond organized collective activities.

On Sunday, visitors are invited to see Choir, a musical performance by Dmitri Kourliandski specially created for the SOTA@GARAGE performance festival. The work explores the nature of governing and subordination, and is designed to engage the audience in the process of collective creation.

Organized by Dina Khuseyn, Founder of the SOTA educational program, and Anastasia Mityushina, Garage Curator of Public Programs.

ABOUT THE FOUNDER

Dina Khuseyn is a choreographer, teacher, and curator of the SOTA education program and the Space of Performance Practices. She studied at choreography college in Moscow and the Rotterdam Dance Academy, and has worked with Galili Dance (the Netherlands). She is a recipient of DanceWEB scholarship (2002) at ImpulsTanz in Vienna. She staged the performances Instead of My Dream and Flies at the Theater of Nations in Moscow, in collaboration with Anna Abalikhina (nominated for Golden Mask in 2006). She has also collaborated with Anouk van Dijk, Philippe Jamet, and Regis Obadia, among others. In 2009 she completed the EX.E.R.CE program at the Contemporary Dance Center in Montpellier, France, run by Mathilde Monnier. Khuseyn later worked at the Centre Pompidou, L'étoile du nord theater, and Point Éphémère in Paris. She is the recipient of the Jardin d'Europe scholarship. She lives and works in France and is currently working on several projects in Russia.