DRIVER (DK) 2023-2024
DRIVER is a choreographic project developed by Lara Vejrup Ostan (SLO/DK) in collaboration with Yeong Ran Suh (KOR).
DRIVER materializes and discusses speed as a sensuous, individual, but also common and socio-political experience. It questions who has the agency and ability to influence speed and who has to abide by the speed of others, or alternatively, fall behind. In DRIVER we delve into a universe of truck drivers; escapist wanderlust, tenacious asphalt-romance and idealized loneliness. We speculate about truck drivers – as solitary heroes, perhaps shaped by external forces, as well as a place for us to imagine a different world. The project will (amongst other things) become a choreographic performance, created with and by dancers Johanna Eva Forsehag (SE), Ruth Rebekka Hansen (DK), sound designer Moritz Nahold (AT), light designer Thora Eriksen, scenographer Max Schwidlinski (DE), dramaturg / truck driver Bush Hartshorn (SCT) and co-produced by Dansehallerne (DK).
Parcitipating artists
Lara Ostan (DK)
Lara is a choreographer/dancer currently based in Copenhagen. In her work she investigates how (new) sensuous paradigms and our entanglement with them inform the constitution of perceived and shared realities. She explores how aesthetic narratives of process and change inform actual change, and how our experience of motion shapes contemporary mythologies. Lara works with dancing and embodiment processes, other mediums, such as film and text, are used in her artistic practice to mold and carry, or further develop logics of dancing. Her major works include THE SWIMMER (2022), HIKE (2022) and Body Maintenance (2021- present). She is co-founder of KOMMA Performance Productions, a member driven and collective association, supporting the development and production of dance works, based in Copenhagen. Lara holds a BA in Dance and Choreography from the Danish National School of Performing Arts, and is currently being educated as a somatic movement practitioner in BMC®.
Yeong Ran Suh (DK)
Ran is a choreographer and artist-researcher who resides in Copenhagen and partly in Seoul. Based on her autoethnography, she has created multidisciplinary performances upon shamanism and traditional dances from post-colonial perspectives. After relocating to Denmark, she engaged in a climate activism performance group, Becoming Species. She sees the potential in intertwined narratives of decentralized collective activism, multispecies practices, and relearning indigenous cosmology & ancestral tradition. Her current practice is participating in and writing these movements and regenerating everyday communal rituals. She studied MFA in Choreography at KNUA and MA in Religious Studies at KU. Her major works include I Confess My Faith (2012), The God of the Earth Comes Up Imperfectly (2013), The Death of Vagina (2015), Floating Bottle Project (2016–2019) and most recently ‘We/Re Confess Our Faith (2023).
Taken residency at
UP
The purpose of UP is to develop and upskill the independent performing arts throughout Denmark. We define the free and independent performing arts as individuals, collectives and companies who work professionally with performance and primarily for and with independent performance groups, project supported companies, and lesser established theatres. Often without permanent access to a stage or a venue.
Nau Ivanow
Nau Ivanow is a space of welcome, accompaniment, research and innovation; a haven where companies will find the warmth needed to work unhurriedly and in good conditions. Residencies are the main focus of what we do. Our aim is to provide decent working conditions, always accompanying the artists and providing them with the resources they need. Nau Ivanow’s projects are underpinned by three major working axes: creation, accompaniment and work with the territory. And all of them with one common denominator: internationalization, which permeates each and every one of our projects.
Davvi – Centre for Performing Arts
Davvi – Centre for Performing Arts is a hub and a gathering point in Northern Norway for the professional independent Performing Arts community. The organization is a laboratory for new ideas, artistic research, and an open space where different cultures are cared for. We challenge hegemonic thinking and support cross-sectorial artistic working and thinking. We are staff of 11 curios people, we are placed in Hammerfest, Tromsø and Bodø and we are a space that offers residency, laboratories and producer services.
Who is Driver?
Lara: Driver is a choreographic research project dealing with the work of truck drivers.
I had been thinking about Driver since summer 2022, and probably even before that. I wanted to engage with and look into the work reality of drivers, also in comparison to working as a dancer/choreographer. The perceived physical passivity in the work of drivers – sitting down for long periods of time, whilst also being in motion. Through a lot of reading, I got curious about truck drivers and the myths and fictions surrounding their work. Romantic imagery stemming from the USA, stories of adventure and freedom, but also, or perhaps even more so, bleak realities of long days, underpayment and loneliness.
While being on social media I stumbled upon Ran, who had been working with a mutual friend and colleague – I looked at her website and saw she had worked as an artist-researcher within anthropological research. I asked her if she would want to meet up and speak about Driver, and it turned out we had a lot to talk about! Driver is other artists as well – in Copenhagen we were joined by dancer and choreographer Johanna Forsehag (SE), light designer Thora Eriksen (DK) and scenographer Max Schwidlinski (DE). Moritz Nahold (AS) is the sound designer and composer of the project and Bush Hartshorn (SCT) is our truck-driver consultant and mentor.
Photo Credit: Hjorth_ + Burojantzen
What is your aim with Moving Identities?
Ran: Through Moving Identities, we have wider opportunities to meet truck drivers from different regions in Europe. Truck driving can be a very international form of work, as well as local. It might look the same but elaborate bureaucratic structures shape and form the way this form of work is practised. Moving Identities gives us a chance to look into the local/global geography of this transport industry, comparing drivers’ practices parallel.
Photo Credit: Hjorth_ + Burojantzen
Which method(s) will you use to achieve this aim?
Ran: For now, we are developing methods of inquiry and figuring out how the knowledge gained from interviews as well as other sources informs performative material. We are conducting casual meetings and interviews with truck drivers inspired by an ethnographic approach, which will lead to corporeal and somatic interpretation or embodiment of the research.
Photo Credit: Hjorth_ + Burojantzen
How does your current project relate to your previous/other works? Is it similar or different?
Ran: I created several auto-ethnography-based performances or documentary performances in the past. From this experience, I feel familiar with this project regarding artists’ ethnography. Simultaneously, group fieldwork as a team and translating this fieldwork experience to abstract, metaphoric, somatic, or audiovisual stage work is always unexpectable, new, and exciting.
Lara: For me the way we are shaping our research through fieldwork – interviews etc is new. Thinking about movement and motion, how it is being practised and perceived in the world in subtle, everyday manners is something I have been curious about and implemented in other works for a long time e.g. in THE SWIMMER (2022) and HIKE (2022).
Photo Credit: Marthe Nyvoll
What are you most excited about in this programme ahead of you?
Ran: I am so excited to work in the studios of two different cities. Different energies, people, and cultural aspects will definitely affect our process.
Lara: Agreed! The format of a local and two international residencies as a “bundle” gives a sense of longevity and continuity to our work as well.
Photo Credit: Marthe Nyvoll
