Monday, April 15, 2013

The house improvisation sessions

So, this post is a kind of summary and explanation of a project that I have been doing the past months.
It's a little story and I will take it from the beginning.

It started when my friends Aris and Vincent from London visited me in The Hague.We were playing music and improvising almost everyday in different places with all kinds of objects.Inspired by our sessions and especially by one we did with (my dear current housemate) Sivan I had the idea of organising some improvisation sessions in houses.

I started by doing one at my place in The Hague, then two in Belgium -Waregem and Gent- then another two in Alkmaar and Wageningen.Every time it is something different but more or less this is how it went.

I contacted a person usually through couchsurfing which is a site through which you can host people or
'surf' other people's couches. So I looked for people in cities close to The Hague and proposed them to organise these sessions together. This means that they hosted me for a couple days, they invited 10-15 friends to join the session and then we cooked together made some instruments out of objects in the house and some decorations for the space. For the actual session I have some games, most of them with words and language but the whole thing is driven by the input of the people, their reactions and ideas. That's why every session is a surprise for me too.

The idea behind this project is to try to invite and motivate people to play as they did when they were kids. It is way to let people be free to discover sound and the relationships between them by playing together. I also believe in the nature of human to want to play and discover any kind of instrument or object and not in playing "good" or "bad". Everyone can play if they want to.

This project is about expressing freely and spontaneously and I would like to keep on doing it in different places with different people and in new forms. It could also involve more theatre or dancing more than speaking and language. 

So please send me an e-mail (dimitrisathanas@hotmail.com) if you would like to organise some session together. It can also be in other places like a small bar, on the street, a kindergarden, a squat or any place where people can get together. If you have ideas about how to develop it or do it in a different way please let me know. Anywhere in Europe is negotiable and now I am based in The Hague. I would like very much to visit smaller places and villages more than cities so even if you live in the middle of nowhere don't hesitate to contact me!

So that was the story and here is some sound and pictures from the past sessions.

DEN HAAG 24 February 2013















WAREGEM 26 February 2013















GENT 28 February 2013














ALKMAAR 15 March 2013



















WAGENINGEN 24 March 2013


If you want to be informed about this project and related stuff I am doing, fill in your e-mail on the top right side of the blog and you will receive notifications for new posts.

Bye for now!
Dimitris

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