This year, the dance research platform “bitės’22” updated the format and direction and invited artists to talk about the topic of unending research. Viktorija Ambrazaitė shares her process and experiences during the platform.
Do you have questions/thesis/challenges from which you want to continue the research that you have started?
Through these two months while working within “bites” platform I managed to recognize and select things/questions that for me and my process were (and still are) valuable and important. I’m interested in working with few ideas like “freezed excitement” and with the idea of the body being very huge, strong and vital comparing to barbies (objects that I choose to use in my process). I feel that these ideas have potential to lead me somewhere and it starts to find their ways of existence and physical expressions. I also see that what I discovered could not be fully answered and it makes me feel curious, it makes me want to continue my research.
Which aspects of the platform enabled you? Which aspects were challenging? In order to know: what did you need/what worked for you?
Meeting different artists was very inspiring experience. It motivated me a lot to search for my own way of working and think about this platform more as a beginning of my personal artistic journey. It helped me formalize what “unending research” means for me and what my working methods are or could be. For me, also to have a small group that I could trust was very helpful and special as well as to have my own scheduled time during “Zoom” meetings for sharings (especially when it was timed and related with some kind of tasks that Liza and Grėtė organized).
Most challenging parts were to put everything into words or somehow to frame, understand and verbalize what is going on in my process, how can I talk about it and what kind of information do I want to share with the group and through “bites” platform. I have a feeling that sometimes just more time was needed for me – to organize my process in order to be sure that something what I’m sharing is something that still make sense for me or that it is something that I really want to share. Even though, by trying and struggling a bit, I think I get to know my research better, I became closer to it. Because sharing something with public or group always includes decision making which is the part that I really hate but also a part that could not be skipped probably.
What is the value of having a constant exchange and discussions with the same group of people? How did it influence your thinking?
I think that to have the same group of people was the best thing. It made all the situation lighter – after some time you start to know personalities and I feel that it’s something what is so important and can’t be disconnected from artistic work. It was much more easier to share things, to stay open and present as well as to follow one another’s processes as much as it was possible.
Also, I feel that working within the group could be considered as some kind of source with different perspectives and more objective views. It helped me to take a bit of a distance and see a bigger and brighter picture of my own process.
#bitesdance #unendingresearch