Performing Criticism Globally (PCG)
Performing Criticism Globally organize writing-workshops, network-meetings, seminars and talks about performing arts-criticism in Norway and internationally. PCG was initiated in 2017 by Geir Lindahl of Performing Arts Hub Norway (PAHN). PCG is programmed by critics and writers Hild Borchgrevink and Anette Therese Pettersen.
Previous events
Dance and Performing Arts Criticism in Europe - was an international project that aimed to network, and to strengthen the status and expertise of European dance-critics. Taneční aktuality.cz, which runs an online platform called Czech Dance News, participated in the project together with Performing Criticism Globally. The aim was to facilitate an intercultural exchange of experiences and exemplary practice in dance criticism. In 2022 PCG together with Taneční aktuality.cz, took part of Korespondance (Žďár nad Sázavou) in the Czech Republic, and Oktoberdans (Bergen) in Norway with different workshops and open talks. The different activities is listed below:
Open talk: Working Slow, on Octoberdans in Bergen, 21. 10. 2022
Workshop: Playing Dance Writing, on Octoberdans in Bergen, 20. - 22. 10. 2022
Workshop: Writing About Dance (On Body And Mobility), on Korespondance in Žďár nad Sázavou, 16.-18.07.2022
Open talk: Reflection on Dance Writing - Czech Dance Platform festival, Prague, 24.04.2022
Open talk: Collective Critical Writing on Dance, CODA Dancefest 2021, Oslo, Norway, 23.10.2021
Workshop: Writing about dance (Alternative Formats), on Movefest in Ostrava/online, 28. 9. – 3. 10. 2021
Online event: Dance and Words - Online Talks on Alternative Formats, 28.9.2021
Workshop: Writing about dance (in the time of Corona), online event 5. - 8. 7. 2021
Online event: Dance Criticism in the Time of Corona, 15.6 2021
Open call: Writing about dance (in the time of Corona), online event 5.-8.7 2021
Other activity:
CANCELLED: Reading group at Ravnedans, Norway 29.-30.6 2021
Reading Group: Solitude and Assembly - Reading group at Stamsund Theater Festival, Norway 28.-29.5 2021
Open talk: - about Solitude and Assembly, Oslo, Norway 24.11. 2021
Reading Group: Solitude and Assembly - Reading group in Trondheim, Norway 30. - 31.10.2021
Reading Group: for performing arts critics, Oslo, Norway 19.-20.9 2020
PCG at CODA Oslo International Dance Festival, Oslo, Norway October 2019
PCG at Tanz im August, Berlin, Germany August 2019
PCG at Oktoberdans, Bergen, Norway October 2018
PCG at Ravnedans, Kristiansand, Norway July 2018
PCG at Artic Arts Festival, Harstad, Norway June 2018
Published
workshop: PLAYING DANCE WRITING (2022)
The below texts were written as part of an international writing workshop entitled Playing Dance Writing, which took place at Oktoberdans Festival in Bergen. The workshop was a collaboration between Taneční aktuality and Performing Criticism Globally, kindly supported by EEA Grants:
Parvathi Ramanathan (DE): A Room by the Sea - A coffer full of sighs
Rania Broud (NO): Dark Dynamite – A landscape of wonder and hidden pain
Elisa Frasson (IT): Monument 0.10: The Living Monument – Furiously Slow Journey into the Darkness of Colour
Marina Srnka (RS): Ensaio para uma cartografia - Is this Feminism?
Elisa Frasson (IT): La Caresse du Coma ft. Yolo – A Performative Search for a Kind of Happiness
Robin Lamothe (FR): Carol Stampone & Rita Maria Muñoz Farias – Gemini or the dream catcher
Marina Srnka (RS): J’ai pleuré avec les chiens – A Cry for Communal Transformation
WORKSHOP: On Body and Mobility (2022)
The below texts were written as part of an international writing workshop entitled Writing About Dance (On Body And Mobility). The workshop was a collaboration between Taneční aktuality and Performing Criticism Globally, kindly supported by EEA Grants, and the resulting texts were written in response to productions at this festival:
Emma Meerschaert (BE): Regarding the unforeseen - On the dramaturgy of the unpredictable during KoresponDance
Kateřina Šilhová (CZ): KoresponDance, Where Performing Corresponds with Participating
Marina Dubia (DK): Heart Connection: a letter to Maria Nurmela
Juta Ance Ķirķis (LV): Going with the flow
Dora Durkesac (HR): The body confirms: you are here. The mind wants to travel
workshop: WRITING ABOUT DANCE (IN THE TIME OF CORONA) (2021)
The below texts were written as part of an international writing workshop reflecting the corona times. The workshop was a collaboration between Taneční aktuality and Performing Criticism Globally and took place online in July 2021, kindly supported by EEA Grants (project Dance and Performing Arts Criticism in Europe):
Richard Pettifer (AUS/GER) on Tereza Vejvodová’s debut film
Ivana Balabanova (MKD) on Pite/Youngs performance The Statement
Mónica Jaramillo Sanjuán (COL) on Pocková / Bočkovás show The Lion’s Den
Salome Jishkariani (GE) on Masako Matsushita’s performance UN/DRESS
Eva Galatsanou (GR) on Kartellet and the performance Kan du komme ned å hente meg igjen? / Can you come down and fetch me again? Snow edition
Blanca Siles Romero (ES) on Hofesh Shechter’s Clowns
Diana Cristina De Fex on Etta Ermini Dance Theatre and Oqda
Isabel Hernández-Gil Crespo (ES) on Geyr Hytten and his different versions of hello brother
workshop: ALTERNATIVE FORMATS (2021)
The below texts were written as part of an international writing workshop entitled Alternative Formats, aimed at developing alternative ways of writing about dance. The workshop was a collaboration between Taneční aktuality and Performing Criticism Globally and took place during Move Fest Ostrava, October 2021, kindly supported by EEA Grants, and the resulting texts were written in response to productions at this festival:
Marija Saveiko (LV) on the performance Passing / Station
Regina Janzen (BE) on Crows
Lorraine Vaney (FR) on Karásek’s performance Living room / Obývací pokoj
Marianna Panourgia (GR) on Treatment of Remembering by Pocková / Bočková
Tereza Cigánková on the performance Hang-out, by Eliška Brtnická
Silvia Hristova (BG) on Treatment of Remembering by Pocková / Bočková
Freda Fiala (AT) on Crows (Vrány), a performance conceptualised by Andrea Vykysalá and Karolína Křížková
People
Anette Therese Pettersen is a performing arts critic, curator, editor and writer, and currently a ph.d. research candidate at the University of Agder. She has an MA in theatre research from the University of Oslo, and writes reviews for Morgenbladet, Scenekunst.no, and Norsk Shakespeare- og Teatertidsskrift. She has worked as a producer within the performing arts, and still works with choreographer Henriette Pedersen. She is one of the co-founders of Writingshop, a long term collaborative project with theree European critics (Diana Damian Martin, Sergio Lo Gatto, Karl Svantesson) examining the processes and politics of contemporary critical practice.
Hild Borchgrevink is a writer, artist, and editor, and currently a ph.d. research candidate at the Norwegian Academy of Music. She writes on music and music theatre for the daily Dagsavisen and Scenekunst.no. She holds an MFA in art and public spaces from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, an MA in musicology, and an equivalent to a BA in creative writing and performative criticism. 2012-2017 she was the editor of Scenekunst.no. She has experience as a project leader for contemporary music festivals such as Nordic Music Days and Ultima.
Geir Lindahl is an Adviser at Performing Arts Hub Norway (PAHN), where Geir manage small and large industry initiatives. He works to strengthen the producer environment by offering support programs, competence building, facilitation of networking arenas and counseling for the Performing Arts. Geir has worked as a Press Coordinator for Hovefestivalen, Booking agent for the artist Moddi, Administrator for Zero Visibility Corp. and as Producer at Dansehallerne in Copenhagen and Tou Scene as part of the Stavanger2008 European Capital of Culture.
Partners and speakers with PCG
Taneční aktuality (CZ) is a non-profit organisation, currently shielding multiple projects. Its core activities include managing an established Internet portal Taneční aktuality.cz and publishing a print magazine called the Special Edition of Taneční aktuality. Since 2016 it has administered a countrywide on-line dance database which is available for free on www.databazetance.cz.
Axel Andersson (SE) is a writer and critic from Sweden. Until June 2018 he was the editor of Kritiklabbet.se, a 2-year collaboration between a group of critics and one of Sweden’s largest publishing houses, aimed at experimenting with forms of writing and models of financing of contemporary criticism. Andersson holds a PhD in history from the European University Institute in Florence and his work often deals with the intersection of media, postcolonial history, and critical theory. He also writes on contemporary art and cinema. He is currently working on a project investigating the techniques of the body, media technology, and concepts of race and is the author of A Hero for the Atomic Age: Thor Heyerdahl and the Kon-Tiki Expedition (2010).
Critical Interruptions (Diana Damian Martin and Bojana Janković) is a Serbo-Romanian critical cooperative exploring performance criticism. With little regards for review, we search for critical forms and strategies in dialogue with performance, wonder how to develop rigorous and relevant critical writing, and lure new writers into thinking about radical and experimental work. Collectively, we have occupied galleries, museums, studios, theatres, universities, digital spaces and streets, to talk, perform, write, and think about (amongst other things) migration and Eastern European identities and diasporic cultures. DANCE & DARE is initiated by the performing arts scene DansBrabant, in cooperation with Domein voor Kunstkritiek (Domain for Art Criticism).
Mette Garfield (DK) is the Editor in Chief of Bastard.blog. She has previously been the editor of ISCENE, a Danish magazine for performing arts funded by the Danish Ministry of Culture. Garfield heads the main Danish daily newspaper Politiken’s education project for new performing arts critics. Garfield is based in Copenhagen an freelances for various websites, e.g. thetheatretimes.com, Peripeti and Kunsten.Nu, as performance, theatre and contemporary art critic, journalist and editor. She holds a M.A. in Literature and Culture journalism and is a freelance writer on performance art, photography and video art.
Thomas Irmer (DE)
Thomas Irmer is a scholar and critic regularly contributing to Theater der Zeit, Theater heute and Shakespeare (Norway). He has also worked for various international festivals, e.g. 2003-2006 as dramaturge for spielzeit europa / Berliner Festspiele. His recent books include “Andrzej Wirth. Flucht nach vorn. Erzählte Autobiographie und Materialien“(2013) and “Maria Steinfeldt. Das Bild des Theaters“(2015). His recent academic research covered the new phenomenon of internationalization of German theater with teaching a class on this subject at the University of Osnabrück 2014/15. He also made documentary films on theatre and theatre history, among them the prize-winning “The Staged Republic – Theatre in the G.D.R.” (2004). He lives in Berlin