Adina Secretan and Mona De Weerdt
Photo: Isabel Ortiz
Adina works in Switzerland and abroad as a director, choreographer, dramaturge, performer and artistic collaborator. She has also worked as a researcher and trainer at the Haute Ecole de Théâtre de Suisse Romande. From 2017 to 2019, she was an associated artist of far°, Festival des Arts Vivants in Nyon. Her various creations or collective co-creations (in particular with the choreographers Eilit Marom, Elpida Orfanidou, Anna Massoni and Simone Truong or the Chilean collective MIL M2) have been presented in numerous venues and festivals in Switzerland, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Australia, as well as in the selection at the Swiss Dance Days 2017 (with "PLACE", created at Arsenic - Centre d'art scénique contemporain, Lausanne). Her latest piece, "Une Bonne Histoire", which was also created at Arsenic in 2022 and will tour Switzerland in 2023/24, is dedicated to the topic of the infiltration of activist circles by private companies. Over the course of the seasons, she also accompanies numerous artists, choreographers, directors and performers in their own creative work. In her dramaturgy practice, which she likes to call "accompanying practice", Adina is particularly interested in tools for developing collective intelligence, for the appropriation of dramaturgical practice by all, for raising awareness of the power relations underlying creative processes and for the empowerment of artists.
Photo: Mona De Weerdt
Mona De Weerdt (*1987) is a theatre and dance scholar and dramaturge. From 2012-2016, she researched and taught at the Institute of Theatre Studies at the University of Bern. From 2016-2018 she worked as a dramaturge at Südpol Lucerne. She currently works as a project dramaturge at TanzPlan Ost and as a freelance dramaturge with various choreographers and companies on the topics of climate catastrophe, the connections between individual, ecological, social and political exhaustion phenomena, identity and neurodiversity. In 2019, she received a cultural award from the City of Zurich in recognition of her work in dramaturgy and dance studies. Together with filmmaker Michelle Ettlin, she has been realising the project Choreographers at Work! - a documentary film series about creation processes in contemporary dance. www.choreographersatwork.ch
Project
Mona De Weerdt - doing dramaturgy
What is dramaturgy in dance? And what does a dance dramaturge actually do? Dance dramaturges are often asked this question, and it is not easy or conclusive to answer. This is because dramaturgical work is diverse and involves a wide variety of functions and areas of responsibility. As part of the Double Mentoring program, Mona De Weerdt, accompanied by mentor Adina Secretan, is dedicating herself to contemporary dramaturgical practices in dance. The doing dramaturgy project initiated by Mona aims to encourage encounters and exchanges between dance dramaturges far removed from competitive thinking and to break up the often solitary dramaturgical activity learnt in a learning-by-doing process. To engage in an exchange, Mona De Weerdt conducts interviews with various dance dramaturges. What is their respective self-image as a dramaturge? How do they describe their dramaturgical practice? What methods and tools do they use in the creative process? A workshop is also planned with the invited dramaturges for the purpose of meeting, networking and generating collective knowledge.
The dramaturgical knowledge collected and newly generated in this way will be systematically processed by Mona De Weerdt and published in a form yet to be determined (homepage, poster, booklet, concrete toolbox). The result will be a kind of toolbox that opens playful access to dramaturgical practices and approaches and contains research, composition and feedback methods that help to structure and reflect on processes and clarify political, ethical, structural, conceptual as well as production and reception-aesthetic questions. This fills a gap, as established methods, easily available approaches and concrete dramaturgical tools and practices in the sense of a "dramaturgical toolbox" for (prospective as well as experienced) dramaturges, choreographers and dance theorists are (almost) non-existent.
