If I Can't Dance Tonight with Yael Davids

Learning To Imitate

Wednesay, 25 November, 20.00 hrs
Frascati, Nes 63, Amsterdam
Bookings: +31 (0)20 626 68 66, tickets €10 (€7,50 discount).

If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution is pleased to announce 'Learning To Imitate', a performance by Yael Davids. By asking the question: "what is a lecture?" and further: "how to give a lecture as an artist?" 'Learning To Imitate' can be positioned in relation to the current reactivation of the genre of the lecture performance as well as its legacies. It is also connected to a recurrent trope in Yael Davids' work namely: the voice.

'Learning To Imitate' forms a pretext for contemplating the idea of 'having a voice'.
The emancipatory connotations are addressed, as well as the relation of the voice to the body and to vision. Divergent examples of the manifestation and affects of the voice in theatre, cinema, literature and law are reviewed and shown in manifold ways.

With the prospect of having to speak and perform herself, Davids decided to approach the lecture as an exercise. She trained herself to learn the text by heart and analysed the lecture in relation to its constitutive parts, such as audience, stage, voice, text and positions in space. Putting 'work' at the core of the action, 'Learning To Imitate' circumvents the lecture and its representational characteristics and instead, articulates both ideas and delivery in their seminal state.
Yael Davids (born in 1968 in Kibbutz Tzuba, Israel) is based in Amsterdam. Recent solo presentations include 'Project Mechelen', organized by MuHKA Antwerp as part of 'All that is Solid', Mechelen (2009), 'Learning to Imitate' in Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp (2008), Laura Bartlett Gallery, London and 'End on Mouth in Absentia', Galerie Akinci, Amsterdam (2007). She participated in 'Democratic Acts', Bolzano, in the '2nd Herzliya Biennial', Tel Aviv, in 'Place Beyond Borders', Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella (2009), in 'Here We Dance', Tate Modern, London (2008), 'Playground' Festival, STUK, Leuven, 'Hapzura', The Israeli Center of Digital Art, Holon, 'Artempo: Where Time Becomes Art', Palazzo Fortuny, The 52nd Venice Biennale, Venice, and 'Memorial to the Iraq War', ICA, London (2007).

As part of the workshop on the theme of masquerade If I Can't Dance... together with critic and curator Lars Bang Larsen is currently tutoring at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, Yael Davids will reflect on the performance in a conversation with Vanessa Desclaux, curator at Bloomberg Space in London, on the 26th of November. On the 17th of November at 19.30. Lars Bang Larsen will present the first public lecture in a series of three, also part of this workshop. For more information, please visit: pzwart.wdka.hro.nl

For further information, please contact Marcel van den Berg, or call +31 (0)20 3378711.
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If I Can't Dance Tonight is dedicated to the exploration of current developments in performance and focuses on the notion of masquerade. So far, twelve ‘Tonights’ have taken place featuring Jon Mikel Euba, Suchan Kinoshita, Joachim Koester, Olivier Foulon, Sarah Pierce, Keren Cytter, Emma Hedditch, Maria Pask, Jimmy Robert, Ivana Müller, Stefanie Seibold & Teresa Maria Diaz Nerio, and Rutch Buchanan. Upcoming ‘Tonights’ feature The Otolith Group, Aurélien Froment & Youri Dirkx and Luca Frei. From its inception in 2005, If I Can't Dance.. has explored performative practices in visual art, both within the context of the white cube and the black box. The collaboration with Frascati Theatre in Amsterdam offers the exciting opportunity to stimulate discourse between visual arts and theatre by articulating specific approaches within visual arts towards the discipline of performance and other performative media, testing mutual and conflicting strategies. If I Can't Dance Tonight is curated by Frederique Bergholtz in collaboration with Maaike Gouwenberg.

If I Can't Dance Tonight is generously supported by the Mondriaan Foundation, SNS Reaalfonds, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds.