About the forest

In times when parts of life and significant portion of study shifted online due to external conditions (measures to contain Covid-19 pandemic), the idea of online forest comes for several directions. One draws the line to the etymology of the word forest, which goes back to Latin foris meaning ‘outside’ as ‘foreign’. And so the online space as outside to choreography and performance as we are used to know and study them in studios, theatres and spaces where bodies congregate together for a determined period of time in a focused way. Foreign also as a landscape, a medium and apparatus and yet the one one needs to engage with. Not to conquer, tame and familiarize the online space but rather to get re-acquainted and familiar with the choreographic in and through this ‘outside’ realm. However temporary this may and up being the case.

Further, the forest online complexifies the already impure relationships between nature and artifice, between real and unreal(?), live and un-live(?), virtual and that which exists only in physical realm.

This forest is an online ecosystem featuring studies, exercises and sketches, as well as fairly rounded bodies, ideas and creations of SNDO – School for New Dance Development students.

The works are organized in two ways, one way is to enter through a category; for instance through the Video Hills if you are up for watching number of videos, audio works are obviously to be found under the Flock of Sounds, Clear Streams host number of live streams and Wondrous Sites lead to other expanded corners of the online realm where you will be welcomed on (web)sites as cultivated or left wild by our students.

If you want to visit a particular cluster of works, which appear in the forest at a particular moment in time we advise you to enter through Festivals. Less of a festival as we know it from non-online world where they are supposed to hold a representation or selection of the ‘best’, ‘new’, ‘hot’, etc., rather Festivals as sites for celebration of doing something together and sharing it with others.

Enjoy.

The SNDO is a choreography BA and part of the Academy of Theatre and Dance at the Amsterdam University of the Arts.

SNDO team: Mentor SNDO 1: Ria Higler; Mentor SNDO 2: Bruno Listopad; Mentor SNDO 3: Joy Mariama Smith; Mentor SNDO 4: Ana Vujanović; Production and publicity coordinator: Stephanie Lühn; Administrative assistant: Eline Oosterbroek; Artistic director: Bojana Mladenović 

 

 

Colophon

Web design: Céline Wouters; Programming: Jonathan Sachse Mikkelsen; Forest drawings: Ania Harre; Concept, content and editing: SNDO