DOLORES HULAN

BIO

Dolores Hulan is a performer, dancer and choreographer working and living in Brussels/Belgium. For her artistic practice she considers both working for and with other artists/makers/choreographers as well as continuing her own research and practice and teaching important if not essential.
In Vienna/ Austria she works with Willi Dorner and Milli Bitterli, from 2002 to 2006 she joins the company Contiuum – Brice Leroux (“Gravitataions” and “Quasar” as well as “Flocking” in 2012).
Since then she has worked with Mette Ingvartsen (“Giant City”), Vincent Dunoyer (“Encore”), Eleanor Bauer (“A Dance For The Newest Age”), Ariel Efraim Ashbel (“All White People Look The Same To Me”), Heine Afdal&Yukiko Shinozaki/fienldworks (“Borrowed Landscapes” and “the 7th Floor of the World”) and An Kaler (“Learning To Look Sideways” and “Contingencies”, premiered in 2014 ).
She performs in January 2015 for Ivo Dimchev in his piece “FEST” in NYC and Philadelphia.
2015 also finds her working with Hans van den Broeck on the piece “Celestial Commute” (Premiere in June 2015 in Brussels) as well as with Mette Ingvartsen on the new creation “7 Pleasures” , to be premiered in September 2015 in Graz/Austria.
Her own pieces include “No Sweet Conclusions” (2001), “(Blind) I walk”(2002), “Gudrun,” (2003) and “White Spaces” – together with Joanna Bailie and Christoph Ragg (2005).
In 2007 she starts her collaboration with Carl de Smet/noumenon which results in the pieces “Performing Qualia |1| & |2| “.
“Redefine” has been her latest solo work – in collaboration with Eugénie Poste (costume) and Jerry Killick (dramaturgy).
Currently she is starting a new work under the title “Residue_s” having residencies in Zsenne Art Laboratory and Les Bains Connective.
She has been teaching contemporary classes and improvisation in Brussels, Leuven and Konstanz.

FRAME OF RESEARCH

RESIDUE_S

How can we yield towards a/our future in a manner of reduction or quieting things down as opposed to speeding things up and multiplying them?
In this moment we call the present, in this moment where past and future meet, how can this moment be used to consciously make some sort of shift, or at least rise an awareness?
How could we value and take time to stop and witness and through this simple witnessing pause instead of adding on?
Could we then maybe carve out and discover the residues and more subtle traces of events?

Linking this chain of thought to my artistic/movement practice  (and the fact that the paradoxical need to continue doing work is evident) what I would like to examine in my current research is the question of what remains, what are the traces, what are the residues of actions, more precisely I am interested in the residues of both sound and movement, and possibly also language/voice.

One concrete tool for working I am interested in, is using a deck of cards: the “OBLIQUE STRATEGIES” – Over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas”.
These cards were developed by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt over a number of years working – when at first each of them created their own set (Peter Schmidt created cards he called “The Thoughts behind the Thoughts” while Eno worked on cards he gave the name “Oblique Strategies”) – they eventually understood there was a significant overlap between both projects, and ended up combing them into one single deck of cards.
From the introduction to the 2001 edition:
“These cards evolved from separate observations of the principles underlying what we were doing. Sometimes they were recognised in retrospect (intellect catching up with intuition), sometimes they were identified as they were happening, sometimes they were formulated. They can be used as a pack, or by drawing a single card from the shuffled pack when a dilemma occurs in a working situation. In this case the card is trusted even if its appropriateness is quite unclear. They are not final, as new ideas will present themselves, and others will become self-evident.”

I would like to apply (some of the) words/phrases/remarks, these ‘traces’ of work that Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt created, throughout the process – they are seen as residues of words, residues of thoughts.

Tackling the paradox of trying to reduce rather than add by using principle of chance – using the deck of cards as one example.
What does the notion “reducing rather than producing” mean, and is that even possible? How can i rather ‘take away’ than ‘add on’ – and, again: is that even possible? And can that be expressed through the body, through movement, through language/voice?