Every two years, europalia spotlights the distinct relationship between heritage and art by curating a varied artistic programme focusing on a centralising theme or country. This year, the festival looks at Georgia. Femke Gyselinck and Anushka Chkheidze took on the challenge of overcoming distance and creating a performance - created for europalia georgia - that combined dance and music, as well as some specific characteristics of each artist. '324 mountains between us' is the outcome of their work. It's the place where they not only found each other, but also managed to create their own language.
Femke and Anushka, could you please introduce yourselves?
Anushka: I'm from Georgia and I'm currently doing a master's degree in composition direction at the Faculty of Music and Technology in the Netherlands. My main interest in this field is producing music to be released as albums, but also working in collaboration with theatres. At the moment, I've been working with Femke and making my music.
Femke: I'm a dancer and choreographer and I dance in all of my works. I like to translate the lyrics of a song, music or an atmosphere into a language of movement. I always work together with musicians who are themselves performing on stage, with most of them being acoustic and jazz musicians.
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Have you ever worked together on another project?
Anushka: No, it all happened like a blind date.
What would you say were the first steps in terms of research and composition when you started creating this performance?
Femke: For this performance, I started listening to Anushka's songs on Bandcamp [laughs]. At the beginning of the residency, we immediately worked with some tracks that Anushka had shared with me. Her beats were very fast, which was interesting as I'm not used to fast movements in my practice. Anushka also shared with me her desire to work with Georgian harmonies, using them as a reference, but always keeping in mind that the aim was not to exoticize them. As she had also shown an interest in using vocals, I told her that we could do the singing ourselves. The third element Anushka shared at the time, was a text she had recorded. It was a beautiful but tragic personal story. I then translated the words of this text into movements. I can say that these three elements, which were raised during our first week of work, are clearly a major part of the piece now.
At the beginning of the residency, we immediately worked with some tracks that Anushka had shared with me
Anushka: For me, the first step was to see how Femke was working. I was happy to be invited to see two of her pieces. The first one was Lachrimae, a piece that had a big impact on me. I had never seen these kinds of minimalist movements in such a charismatic way. In the beginning, I had some insecurities about the distance between the music I was making and what I was seeing in her works. She worked mainly with acoustic instrumentalists and great jazz musicians, while my music consists of many electronic sounds and different influences. It was a challenge for us.
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Despite the challenges, how was the process of creation in itself? Was there an order of things?
Anushka: It’s a fact that people are inspired by music and music encourages movement. But it’s important to say that making this performance wasn't just an action and reaction dynamic: I make the music and Femke dances to it. On many occasions, the music I was making was actually being developed while I was watching her dance. For me, the whole work process was also full of challenges. In Georgia, the control over people’s creative process is big. It is difficult to work on new creations knowing that, at the same time, friends are under political pressure.
On many occasions the music I was making was actually being developed while I was watching her dance
Femke: Anushka and I talked about it a lot. It wasn't an easy process and we had to dig deep. There was always a great concern not to appropriate Georgian music and to focus on elements that would make the music particular to Anushka herself. During the process, we both felt very responsible for what we had to do and we were very careful when making our choices. We truly developed a lot of respect for each other.
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Why '324 mountains between us'?
Anushka: That was something Femke came up with [laughs]. We started thinking about the mountains of Georgia and the actual physical distance between the two of us. The name also has a lot to do with our process of creating together and finding each other along the way. I feel that through this process, and with all the respect we've already mentioned, we were slowly breaking down a distance. I started to get closer until the moment I finally found her! Maybe Femke can explain it better [laughs].
We started thinking about the mountains of Georgia and the actual physical distance between the two of us
Femke: I wanted a title by which the audience would immediately understand the existence of a certain distance. I also wanted the word mountains in it [laughs]. In a theatrical way, we can play with this notion of distance. As this performance is made up of dance and sound, with no other texts, the title should be able to compile all of those meanings.
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Now that we have an overview of the process, could you give us a brief introduction of '324 mountains between us'? What should the audience expect?
Anushka: For me, this piece has many special moments and is also made up of a mixture of global and personal elements. It's about two people trying to express themselves, and at the same time trying to respect the boundaries and limits that exist between them, while stepping out of their respective comfort zones. These are elements that I believe you can really feel when you see the performance on stage.
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Femke: This piece is a movement mixer. When creating it, I had to study how to translate these sounds into movements, which were so different for me. I'm very curious to know how the audience will perceive this language of movement that has been developed and that is so specific to our duo. The audience will certainly see that we've both stepped out of our comfort zones! Anushka is dancing, I'm also singing... That's basically all I can say about it for now! [laughs]
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<div class="editorial-banner"> <div class=“editorial-credits”> @europalia / @femkegyselinck / @__halfie__ / @pilarbrussels </div> visit europalia.eu </div></div>
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