ENGLISH VERSION

Tu cuerpo/ el mío
Karin Elmore


Portraits, performances and writings on working class working women and women immigrants.


Tu cuerpo / el mío proposes the creation of four performances inspired in the lives of working class women or recent women immigrants; the performances count also with their presence in life.
These performances are composed by writings, photographs and short movement sequences; a little poetry of intimacy, charged by delicate subjects like racism, social differences, and struggle of life.

The audience walks through four or five installations discovering the interior of these women who for various reasons have become "invisible" or "hidden" in a society that tends to standardization and the lapidation of diversity. These women become in our project the protagonists and the center of the poetical actions.

Tu cuerpo / el mío, is a collective work, an open manifest of a social problematic, and at the same time, a concrete initiative for social integration and a job opportunity to a group of artists and of recent immigrants.

This project, which is based in the social problematic of each of the cities participating, search to involve artists, immigrants, different public and private institutions, in a reflection and dialogue about the transformations of the societies. It nourishes itself, of the opinions, experience and thoughts of each one of the persons participating in it; that is why, it can vary, according to the exigencies and characteristics of each place.
Tu cuerpo / el mío has been recently produced in Lima with working women in four suburbs and in Madrid with women immigrants in the National Museum Reina Sofía.

Performing spaces

Tu cuerpo / el mío, is designed to be installed at alternatives spaces, like art galleries or to be able to present it in neighborhoods where theatres do not exist; so I propose people to receive the performances in their houses.

Tu cuerpo/ el mío talks about the realities of people who usually do not frequent the theater, is a work about people’s lives and is directed to a new audience, which is co-protagonist of work.

Collaborations

As usual, I collaborate with artists in different disciplines, native or immigrant artists, leaving and working in the cities in Europe, South America and why not Asia.
At the end, the pieces will be performed together, even though they could also be performed separately.


Features / presentation mode
According to the needs and possibilities of each city, Tu cuerpo/ el mío can be presented in the following ways:
1. Production of the entire Project, creating 3 or 4 new pieces, of which one is created by Karin Elmore.
2. Presentation of one or two pieces of Karin Elmore and production of two new pieces.
3. Presentation of the various pieces of Tu Cuerpo/ el mío
4. Presentation of two pieces of Karin Elmore

Workshops and creative process

These pieces are build on a period of work for exploration, which lasts between six months and one year, including workshops and meetings that take place regularly, according to the proposal of each artist. In these workshops we will learn to know each other, and look for a vision through different techniques of approach: intense workshop sessions, work of improvisation, brainstorming sessions and discussion group, among others.

Karin Elmore leads the meetings and workshops.


Performances available for a tournée :

"The Visit"
"Eva, muse of the Jungle" and
"Triple Agent"
“Souvenir”

Descriptions bellow

Production
The production of the project is handled by the non profit organisation La Oveja Negra from Lima in collaboration with L'Autre Monde association of Sète, France.




Tu cuerpo/ el mío in Lima

The Project was held in Lima in February and March 2010. In the Peruvian version, Karin Elmore worked in a decentralized way by presenting each piece in a different neighborhood. Neighborhoods chosen after a period of research are: Puerto Nuevo (Callao), Los Olivos, San Martín de Porres and Villa El Salvador. The project was realized in collaboration with visual artist Susana Torres and Otero Marisol choreographer who created the part of Villa El Salvador.


The pieces produced in Lima are:

Set (d) polvo: instalación escénica
Direction: Marisol Otero
Art Director: Susan Torres
Light design: Mariano Márquez
Video: Elisa Arca
With: Ana Huallpayunca, Carmen Rosa Ayma, Ana Rosa Amaro Condor Zenaida and Kelly Medrano
"Eva, musa de la selva" and "La triple agente"
Direction, texts and choreography: Karin Elmore
Art Director: Susan Torres
Light design: Mariano Márquez
With: Evita Gaviria, Monica Cordova, Wilma Sanchez and Evelyn Azabache
Singers: Jacqueline Mariche and Jazmin Avila
Theremin and vocals: Veronik
Duration: 40 minutes

“Eva, musa de la selva” / ”Eve, muse of the jungle”

This installation-performance is a tour through the interior of a woman’s house, Wilma. The living room and the kitchen as the places of the senses and the memory. Each space is involved; each room contains objects representing the memory of a woman. Guided by women singing bird whispers of the jungle as ayaymama, we enter into a mythical world, the one of the original woman Eve.

Work on Eve is a work on all the Eves and the sequence goes from instinct to reason, from childhood to maturity, from wildness to the domination of nature.



“La triple agente “ / “The triple agent”
A woman born in Lima, the daughter of a man who works as a plumber and as a painter.
She leaves in a slum.
She developed two passions: God and knowledge. The father dies ill.
She, our triple agent, has the ability to change every time according to the reality and the circumstances of life requests; she travels freely through the three levels: the flesh, the body, God and philosophy.
That's why it in this piece, she goes like a chameleon by the three states: Eros, God and Philosophy.

“Mi vida no es un jardín de rosas”/ "My life is not a rose garden"

Direction, texts, sets and costumes: Karin Elmore
Videos: Elisa Arca, Karin Elmore and women participants.
Light design: Mariano Marquez
With: Guissela Arroyo, Yareli Cisneros, Milagros Gordillo, Josselyn and Astrid Retuerto Villarreyes
Duration: 30 minutes

There is in this work, a significant presence of the inner world of our women and what they their dreams have revealed: the presence of the sea as a threat, the dead, the violence, tenderness, anger, love and the police, which is always present.

With women of Puerto Nuevo, we have worked in a particular way, we wanted to develop the theme of "I observe," and "I observe myself." I wanted to touch some points that have to do with the inner life of women: beauty, pleasure, what we like, what we do not like, family, and other issues that we have launched a debate at all times during the creation process.

This piece is worked in close collaboration with women of Puerto Nuevo, who have learned to use video cameras and handle them in space. The images have to do with their dreams, their desires, are its counterpart or its complement, in any case, belong to their universe, so alive and responsive, as close to death.

In space, they manipulate the action; decide the order of things and the relationship between their bodies and music and image, with his keen sense of rhythm and space.


Tu cuerpo/ el mío in Madrid

The project took place in Madrid with the support of Festival Ellas Crean and the department of Live Arts of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. It was presented on 8 and 9 April 2010 in the Sala de Protocolo of Jean Nouvel Building. After three workshops taken place in one year.
The pieces created in Madrid are:

SET by Paloma Calle
With: Eugenia Adam, Silvia Alegre, Ayelén Cantini, Sarah Kamal, Germania Guerra, and Carmen Rosa Reyes.

It is a choreographic improvisation based in the construction of the standard reality. It is a defy to the stereotypes.

LA VISITA
The visit, by Karin Elmore
With: Laila El Aribiti, Virginia Lazarte, Mayra Montaluisa, Liudmila Vishneuskaya.

The identity and the displacements, the virtual and physical, the body through other bodies, to observe or to be observed.

The visit is like a tour to a museum or visit to an indoor space belonging to someone else, it is an installation built by the public, with objects, pictures and texts of women immigrants, following instructions through headphones.

SOUVENIR, by Amalia Fernández
With: Amalia Fernández and María Fernanda Silva

SOUVENIR is a reflection on topics that build immigrant identity, female identity, national identity.
We play cards, we compose a national hymn, we interview a citizen of a country that is not on the maps because it has not yet been discovered, and we present a beautiful object on exposition: the only one in the museum that people is able to touch, photograph, decorate with writings, drawings or hieroglyphics ... the only one who may even be taken home, if she agrees.

ABIBA, by Mónica Garcia
With: Abiba Tihor

I do not know much Abiba. She is from Senegal; she is 28 years old and lives in Spain for three years. Here was born his son, Mohamed. He is Spanish citizen. To be out of place and find a place to be. Two people who do not know each other, and a time to be. A path between two.

About Karin Elmore,
dancer, choreographer and master in cultural administration

Born in Lima Perú in 1961. She follows her studies in New York at the Merce Cunningham Studio (1981-84), she also studies dance with Hania Holm and Alvin Nikolais, and practices the Tai-chi chuan and the contact improvisation.

Lives in Rome from 1984 until 1992, where she works as a solo dancer with different companies and as a choreographer also, performing in theatres and international festivals such as: Linz Ars Electrónica, Austria; Sala Olimpia, Madrid; Internacionales Tanzwochen Wien; Festival Oriente Occidente, Rovereto (Italy); Galería Nazionale d’Arte Moderno, Rome; Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Roma; Festival de Chateauvallon, France, Centro Nacional de las Artes, Mexico City. ; Dance Theatre Workshop, New York; among others.
She creates in Italy the performances: Vortice Lunare, Contos Leggendarios, el sole Arianna e il Labirinto, Ode alla Fauna, Freeway Etudes (duo with the american composer Alvin Curran) and Nei Giocchi di Artemide.
Goes back to Lima in 1992, where she creates: Luz de Piedra, Rosa Canina, Black-Out, Practicas Dantescas, Un día en el Paraíso, Pasifae and Bellas Durmientes.

She lives in Mexico city from 1995 to 1996, where she danced in different theatres and gave workshops on creation, improvisation and dance technique in the Centro Nacional de las Artes (National Centre of the Arts).

In october 1997, she funds the Centro de Artes Escénicas de la Municipalidad Metropolitana de Lima (Center of Performing Arts of the City of Lima) , from what she has been director until December 2002. During that time, she created the Festival Internacional de Danza y Teatro de Lima, the performing arts school La Cantera de las Artes Escénicas (for the children in two emergent neighbourhoods of Lima: Comas and Villa El Salvador) among others.

She participated as an artistical coordinator of 20 choreographers coming from South America and Europe in the project Colaboratorio, Festival Panorama, Rio de Janeiro 2006. She presented her dance performance Estrella Salvaje at the theatre of the Alianza Francesa of Lima in April 2008, and at the CCN from Montpellier in June.

In 2009 presented the French version "Etoile Sauvage" and her new piece "Quand était le Quartier Haut était habité par des lapins " at the Espace Glandier , Montpellier in the month of february.
She is Master in Cultural Management, Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
Creates the non profit organisation La Oveja Negra in Lima, 2009.

He currently lives in Sete, France.