On the 10th of May Dansateliers presents a double bill in Theater Rotterdam – Schouwburg, consisting of the performances the pleasure of stepping off a horse while it’s moving at full speed by Courtney May Robertson and Cold Hawaii by Sigrid Stigsdatter Mathiassen.
Courtney May Robertson – the pleasure of stepping off a horse when it’s moving at full speed
As a starting point for this short solo, Courtney takes a metaphor for self-control; a rider taming a wild horse. She looks at the struggle between embracing one’s primitive desires, and regulating behaviour in accordance with societal pressures. Visual projections encapsulate Courtney within an octagon spanning 3.5m in diameter. Through a combination of poetry, dance, and song, she travels across landscapes of personal desires, memories, and conflicts. The space acts like a time capsule; intimate home videos are spliced with samples from YouTube, documentaries and old films. the pleasure of stepping off a horse when it’s moving at full speed is Courtney’s attempt to embrace the, sometimes messy, contradictions that make up a multifaceted human.
Sigrid Stigsdatter Mathiassen – Cold Hawaii
In Cold Hawaii, dance artist Sigrid Stigsdatter Mathiassen retreats on the island of heart-breaks. She explores the vast emptiness, the territory of pleasure and the realm of pause and silence after something breaking down. Like a heartbreak that builds up only to break down again, she creates a character that rises only to disappear afterwards. Through movement, sound and words she moves between the harsh reality, and the soft, worlds of her imagination.
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About the artists
Courtney May Robertson (Scotland, 1992) is a performer and maker based in Rotterdam. Upon graduating in 2013, she joined Club Guy & Roni’s Poetic Disasters Club and has since worked with Jan Martens, Connor Schumacher and Florentina Holzinger, amongst others. She began creating her own small-scale / DIY produced work in 2015 and since 2020 is an artist in residence at ICK Artist Space. Her recent work has also been supported by Dansateliers, CAMPO, Dans Brabant, Stimuleringsfonds and Gemeente Rotterdam. As a trained dancer Courtney’s work starts with the body, but spans various disciplines including video, generative art and writing.
Sigrid Stigsdatter Mathiassen (Denmark, 1990) is a choreographer, performer and vocalist. She completed her studies at the SNDO (School for New Dance Development – AHK) in 2017 and has been based in Amsterdam since. In 2017 Sigrid won the jury price of Moving Forward with her solo REMEMBRANE. This resulted in a new work Hope and Heavy Metal, that premiered in 2019.
