Attakkalari India Biennial 2024

Residency at Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts with Johanna Heusser & Aseng Borang

The Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts is delighted to announce a residency program with Aseng Borang and Johanna Heusser, proudly presented as part of the Attakkalari India Biennial 2024, and supported by Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia as part of their tandems for Co-creation.

This collaborative effort brings Aseng Borang, a movement artist based out of Arunachal Pradesh, and Basel-based dancer Johanna Heusser, who have been together working towards creating their new piece. The course of the residency, starting 17 January 2024, hosted at the state-of-the-art studios of Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts, Bangalore, is delineated into a collaborative co-creation as well as a movement-based Intensive. Along with holding space for a rigorous collaborative co-creation of Aseng & Johanna’s new piece, the Attakkalari India Biennial Residency will give an opportunity for professional dance students who are enrolled as part of Attakkalari’s Diploma in Movement Arts & Pedagogy, to engage during the Intensive with the two artists, have discussions and have a firsthand insight into the creative processes of Aseng and Johanna.

The three weeks residency will culminate in a showcase on 12 January 2024 where Aseng & Johanna will present their work, and will be in conversation about their process of co-creating their new piece. Along with their own work, the piece they will have created during the Intensive with the students during the course of the residency will also be staged.

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Profile of Artists

Johanna Heusser & Aseng Borang

PC: Federica Summereder

Johanna

Since her graduation at the HF für zeitgenössischen und urbanen Bühnentanz in Zürich, Basel based dancer Johanna Heusser *1994 has been working with different companies and choreographers around Switzerland. She has been teaching dance and yoga internationally on a regular basis. Since 2016 Johanna has been creating her own works, which are shown at theaters and dance festivals around Europe. Johanna is winner of Atelier Mondial in 2018 and the winner of Double Tanz 2020 by Migros KulturProzent. With her first solo piece How To Do a Downward Facing Dog?, she was chosen in the pre-selection of the Swiss dance Days 2021 and selected to be in one of eight Salon d Artistes. She is Semi Finalist of PREMIO Switzerland 2021 and graduated from the Master Expanded Theater at HKB in Bern. She was working at Schauspielhaus Vienna, choreographing the Piece COMA, and at the Münchner Volkstheater, working as a choreographer for the piece Alles ist aus, aber wir haben ja uns, directed by Bonn Park. Her latest work about Swiss Wrestling was invited for the Schweizer Theatertreffen 2022. She was part of the ATLAS Programme at ImpulsTanz Vienna in 2022. Johanna was nominated for best emerging artist in the Theater Heute Kritiker:innen Umfrage 2022. She holds the multiple year grant for her company for the years 2024-2026 by the Kanton Basel, and works as a director for Zirkus Chnopf for the next production 2024 in Zürich.

Aseng

As a movement practitioner, Aseng Borang is attracted towards the vastness of the meanings/interpretations that our physical body/bodies produce in a space. She attempts to challenge those meanings but sometimes adheres to the same. More recently, she has been investigating the body in the realm of resistance, time, archives, proximity and anarchy. She was the winner of Prakriti Excellence Contemporary Dance Award (PECDA) 2018, for her work, The Chinky Express Comes To Town– a collaborative work with visual artist, Venas Thokchom. She also received the Residency Travel Grant (Performing Arts – Choreography) from Serendipity Grants 2019-20. Aseng participated and presented her work Terms and Conditions Apply in the Tanzplan Dance Education Biennale 2020 in KAMP NAGEL, Hamburg, Germany. She was one of the participants for the Body-in-Movement Laboratory curated by Mandeep Raikhy, Serendipity Arts Virtual 2021. She also participated in the INDENT LAB 2022. She has worked with Amitesh Grover for the NSD student production, A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen. Aseng has also worked in another NSD production with Atul Kumar, a play on Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett. Recently, she was in London for an artist residency hosted by Delfina Foundation, Performance as Practice Residency, which was sponsored by Charles Wallace Trust India, INLAKS and Emami Foundation. During the residency, she engaged with Land Politics and experimented with text and imagery. Aseng has a Master’s degree in Performance Practice (Dance) from Ambedkar University Delhi. She is from Roing, Arunachal Pradesh where she recently started STUDIO YINGKO and shuttles between her hometown and New Delhi. Rock climbing, Pole dancing, Aerial hoop, Yoga, Writing and Shaolin Kung Fu are some of the other things she likes to dabble on.

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Residency at Attakkalari Centre

is supported by

in collaboration with