DANCE
Maarten Visser and Pravin Kannanur: Improvisation Workshop

MARCH DANCE 2020

Thu, 26.03.2020
5:00 PM Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Auditorium

Conversation with M Visser and P Kannanur
26 March 2020 I 5 pm I Goethe-Institut Library
 
Improvisation Workshop Sharing
26 March 2020 I 7 pm I Goethe-Institut Auditorium
 
The workshop

What equivalences exist between forms, how do we process the external impulse and channel it into a personal response? This workshop, open predominantly to performers but not limited to them, proposes improvisation as a way of listening, and further physicalising across practice.
Musician Maarten Visser and theatre/visual artist Pravin Kannanur lead the second edition of their workshop on modes of listening and responding between practitioners of different arts that culminates in the creation of performance scores and their enactment by the participants.
 
Artist’s bio

Between 1994 and 1998 Maarten Visser studies contemporary improvised music (saxophone) at the ʻBrabants Conservatorium (Netherlands), composes for a number of groups he plays for. After finishing conservatory in 1998 he goes to Chennai (India) to study carnatic music, quits soon. In 2000 he starts a collaboration with choreographer Padmini Chettur, composes music for ʻSegment of a Soloʼ (2000), ʻFragilityʼ (2001), ʻ3 Solosʼ (2003), ʻPaperdollʼ (2005)ʼ, PUSHED (2006), Beautiful Thing 1 (2008), Beautiful Thing 2 (2011), Wall Dancing (2012), Varnam (3 channel video-installation, 2016), Varnam (stage performance 2017).

In 2008 he releases a cd with saxophone solos. In 2008 Maarten Visser starts a contemporary improvised trio –MV3, with Keith Peters and Jeoraj George. MV3 plays till date all over India in festivals, clubs, corporate events etc. In Jan. 2011 Maarten Visser organizes a 9 city gallery tour in India with his experimental trio oto.3 with Holger Jetter and Robbert van Hulzen. In June 2011 this group tours in Holland as well. oto.3 is a group that brings together the sound work Maarten has been doing and his improvisational music. In December 2012 Maarten Visser and poet Vivek Narayanan premiere a collaborative work for saxophone and words, Maarten expands this work into an oto.3 project, the music has been released in 2014. In 2016 he composes music for a play, Sooravali, directed by Pravin Kannanur (Magic Lantern). For this play he constructs various instruments –tubulum, intona rumori.
Maarten Visser is currently composing new work for saxophone solo – his second saxophone solo production part of an experimental production with Susmit Biswas, visual artist, premiere in February 2017.

Maarten Visser is always working with various bands and projects, is active as a free-lance musician for shows and recording sessions and teaches saxophone.

Pravin Kannanur is an artist conversant in several disciplines, working predominantly in Tamil theatre and the visual arts. He worked and trained at the studio of abstractionist, Bhagwan S. Chavan in Chennai from 1986 to 1988. His early training in theatre was at the Theatre National de Strasbourg and the Theatre du Soleil, France 1989 to 1990.

From the first public showing of his work, an installation made for the group exhibition ‘Artists Against Aids’, Pravin has endeavored to bring the ‘play’ of his art into the social sphere.

His exhibition, “Haram-Me”, deals with the commodification of the artist in a humorous way through an installation of paintings and specially-made posters arranged in the manner of a puzzle.
In the Public Art Project at Studio Safdar, Pravin involved local people of Shadikampur in West Delhi to paint a large mural which was poetic and reflective of our times.

Having directed Moliere’s “Don Juan” and Camus’ “Caligula” for experimental theatre group, Koothu-p-pattarai in Chennai, Pravin went on to direct “Veshakkaran” (Moliere’s Tartuffe), and “Pattam”( Shakespeares’s Richard III) for Magic Lantern, a theatre group that believes in taking theatre to the people.

Pravin has had a long history of working with contemporary dance in Chennai. He has collaborated with dancer/ choreographers Padmini Chettur and Preethi Athreya. Starting with “Wings and Masks”, 1992, with Padmini upto “Conditions of Carriage”, 2016, with Preethi, he has worked in the capacities of director, dramaturg, technical director and performer.

Pravin Kannanur is a founding member of the theatre company, Magic Lantern, the art collective Basement 21 and the theatre collective India Theatre Forum. He strongly believes that artists have to nurture their eco-systems.