The Artists Are Present - Dag 1 route A

11 3 8 7 - TREVOGA

An unsettling reality TV show, an estranged dream after cheap melatonin, or just a spilled toy box on a middle-class floor. 

“We found ourselves caught up in an amusing contradiction -- stretched between media’s glamorous promises pouring into our champagne escapism and a grim lack of agency that comes with being reduced to production units in abstracted assembly lines. From targeted ads to tailored content to newsreels, vlogs, and streaming subscriptions, we saw ourselves hectically jumping through screen-sized portals.

Isolated spectators enclosed in our disaffected productive specializations, we sip on images of better lifestyles in search of a momentary escape from the drag of every day. Like a dog chasing its own tail. A feedback loop that gets more delirious with each iteration. The more jaded we become, the more we feast our eyes in hope of liberation.” 

Gheresh Midam - Roshanak Morrowatian

The dancing female body as a form of resistance. Inspired by a scene from the film Gheysar, where actress Sharzad powerfully and captivatingly dances for a predominantly male audience, Roshanak Morrowatian takes a closer look at those performed gestures and explores the subtle ways the body has the capacity to regain power in spaces of inequality. 

About TREVOGA

TREVOGA is a newly-formed dance collective by Amsterdam University of the Arts (AHK)-alumni Neda Ruzheva (BG/1999), Antonina Pushkareva (RU, 2000), and Erikas Žilaitis (LT, 1999). All three members had different backgrounds in dance before entering the AHK to follow the School for New Dance Development, Modern Theatre Dance, and Expanded Contemporary Dance departments. 

They found each other in their shared desire to turn the choreographic process inside out. Growing up in the nebulous socio-political context of post-Soviet countries' "re-construction,'' between the violently enforced moral imperatives of a Soviet ghost and the stupefying hedonism of a newborn capitalist dream, they grow up quite fond of the overlaps between repression and seduction.

This same ambivalence is imprinted in most of Trevoga's work, where flashy tropes from popular media and high culture go hand in hand with a mundane sense of unease. Through this aesthetic juxtaposition, Trevoga gnaws at the mental onslaught of the fast-paced city they inhabit, viewing their bodies as symptoms of its numerous addictions and the stage as means to disentangle its many dissonant processes and conflicting forces. TREVOGA were the winners of the Best of Fringe award 2023. 

About Roshanak Morrowatian

In her work, Roshanak Morrowatian highlights unnoticed details, invisible people and forgotten stories. With her company Rover, she creates interdisciplinary dance performances based on social engagement. As an artist, Roshanak explores the physicality of memories, the fluidity of traditions and the diasporic identity. In 2023, she created House of Strength, in which she reworks an ancient Persian ritual into a contemporary celebration of collectivity. Roshanak is engaged in a New Makers trajectory at ICK, supported by the Dutch Performing Arts Fund and partners Korzo, VIA ZUID and Parkstad Limburg Theaters.