"ON MENDING"

The Project, selected in the first edition of Call for Creation, was born out of the urgency and uniqueness of the historical moment. Through physical metaphor and imagery 'On Mending' explores three main tenets: the impermanent, the imperfect, and the incomplete. Using these three ideas, specifically in relation to the concepts of self/body, home, and community, the work negotiates with what it means to mend, to tend to, and to rebuild.

“Is healing inevitably intertwined with being broken? Are we not more curious for being incomplete, and more beautiful for being impermanent? We admire resilience, yet resilience cannot exist without difficulties.”

The work proposes these questions to its performers and viewers, and hints at a deeper beauty to be found in our universal capacity to support and be supported.

Biography

Emilie Leriche

Emilie Leriche is an award-winning American-born dancer, now based in Sweden with GöteborgsOperans Danskompani.

Her career has travelled her many places, and built her many homes. Following two years in their second company, Leriche spent four years dancing with the main company of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. Leaving her home and community in Chicago to move across the sea provided a needed reset and shift, and carried the important lesson that ‘Home’ can be so many places and with so many people.

Over her years in Sweden, she has felt herself drawn towards creation, towards the tender place we all go as artists when we decide to build and explore something new. It is what she loves most about dance and choreography: their ability to reveal the deeper, human qualities that are within us and connect us. Over the past year, these creativities have expressed themselves through film, and directing, paired with the beautiful realization that -together- they possess the ability to magnify the intimacy of choreography; the camera acting as another dancer/ another participant to the scene.

Biography

Shawn Fitzgerald Ahern

Shawn Fitzgerald Ahern is a Brussels & Berlin based freelance performer, choreographer and movement director who emphasizes humanity in his work.

He believes strongly in the power of collaborative approach and is known for his visceral, masterful approach to partnering work and for pairing subtle theatricality with dynamic physicality. Following a seven year tenure creating and performing with New York City based dance-theatre company, Pilobolus, he moved to Belgium where he has spent four years as a lead performer and choreographic assistant of Belgian-Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.

Fitzgerald has contributed to more than thirty major productions across a wide range of platforms for movement and dance including contemporary theatre, opera, concert dance, music videos and film. Working with Cherkaoui, Pilobolus, Damien Jalet, Marina Abramovic and many other major choreographers and directors, he has performed over one thousand live shows in theatres and opera houses worldwide and his work has been seen on live television, in cinemas, and on screen by millions. Shawn has been a creative contributor for three Grammy Award nominated dance films (Anima, Thom York/Netflix; All Is Not Lost, OKGo; ApeS**t, The Carters) and is currently on the creation team for a new work under the direction of Damien Jalet, set to premiere at the Chaillot theatre, Paris, France, and in Tokyo, Japan in Autumn 2021.