Dangerous Bodies: a research residency
Im Rampenlicht
A research residency as part of the Full Spin Physical Theatre Festival 2021.
Is the body dangerous? Where does danger live inside your body? And how to access it through movement?
A conversation between dance and writing with myself, author and performer Storm Vogel, musician and disability rights activist Mira Thompson, and ex-pastor Synco Meyburg.
This video is partly in German.
Premiere September 2021 Kulturbunker Köln Mülheim
Artistic direction: Otto Calmeijer Meijburg & Hannah Sampé
With: Johanna von Schönenfeld, Marius Lambertz, Marieke Werner, Jonas Sampé
Design: Hildegard Oehler
A STARLABOR production
Who does the stage belong to? Why do so many dream of fame? What would I say or do if I was suddenly on a large stage? Would I have something to say? Why is it sometimes so difficult to show yourself, and how do we want to be seen by others? Why are we always performing for others and when do we take a break?
And what role does music play in all this?
In 'Im Rampenlicht' four performers ask themselves these and many other questions. While singing, improvising spoken word performances, dancing, acting and playing instruments they explore the spaces between dream and reality. They take the stage, just for tonight.
Het Concert
FOLX
Produced and performed at the inclusive Theater Babel Rotterdam
Performance dates: 12/13, 19/20, 25/26/27 June 2021
Choreography: Otto(line) Calmeijer Meijburg
With: Belinda Thijssen, Corne Bouwmeester, Johan Boekhout, Mitchel Kartowikromo, Remo Schouten, Simone den Haan, Sofie de Klerk
Photography: Judith Boesen
An intimate concert after a long period of physical distance. A playful exploration of collective music making and dance. The audience is invited in through sound, and brought closer to the performers by the projections on the wall. The smallest movements become amplified, every expression made visible. An attempt at breaching the distances, both physical and otherwise.
FOLX
As part of West Off 2020, Not Fabulous presents: FOLX.
Co-production with Studiobühne Köln.
From and by: Otto(line) Calmeijer Meijburg, Igor Meneses, Paula Pau
Dramaturgy: Hannah Sampé
Music: Igor Meneses aka ANDRAS_2020
Photography: Ygor Bahia
In this work, we invite our grandmothers and grandfather onto the stage, both in spirit and on Skype, to take on the role of storytellers during this evening. As children of the coloniser and the colonised, we are searching to find traces of ourselves, of our queerness, in our histories in Malaysia, Brasil, Indonesia and the Netherlands. Where and how shall we start, to find (or create) our stories in either folklore, ritual, proverb or song? By creating a web of dance, music, video interventions, storytelling and listening we move through time together with the audience, leaving no one behind.
PHAEDRA
All performances in spring 2020 cancelled
Performed and created by: Ottoline Calmeijer Meijburg & Johanna Büttler
Music by ANDRAS_2020
Burning Dresses
Premiere 2019 Maschinenhaus Essen
Artistic direction: Elisa Hoffman
Performed and co-created by: Johanna Büttler, Lucy Blasche, Lucy Flournoy, Amelie von Godin, Ottoline Calmeijer Meijburg, Julia Berger, Nina Zorn, Elina Brams
Not Fabulous
Premiere 2018
Directed by: Ottoline Calmeijer Meijburg
Performed and co-created by: Kah Chun Pau, Lucas Lopes, Igor Meneses
"I wear the boy they gave me no more" Lucas Lopes
Femininity as performed and embodied by male assigned individuals is often celebrated and adored in a show context. They are deemed powerful and beautiful and fabulous, as long as they are on stage. But what about the moments before and after the show? What can consciously chosen and performed femininity look like, what shape can it take when the goal is not to entertain? (it is and is not). In this piece the three performers physically explore questions and notions of community, shame, desire and isolation, and invite the audience to take part in this journey.
Costumes by Harrison Rodrigues. Music by Igor Meneses. Developed at Folkwang University of Arts in May 2018, performed in Essen, Cologne (Villa Concha Queer Performance Night), Bochum (Beyond Binary festival Atelier Automatique).
Femme Cyborg
Premiere 2017
Created and performed by: Ottoline Calmeijer Meijburg
“The cyborg skips the step of original unity, of identification with nature in the Western sense. It is a hybrid of machine and organism. Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves. It is an imagination of both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space, stories.
Though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.”
Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Harraway 1991
This piece, inspired by Harraway's Cyborg Manifesto and a personal critique on essentialist discourse, explores the space after failure, after failure to become, to assimilate. Juxtaposed to flashing images of Kate Bush as a symbolic goddess, this cyborg attempts to move and be moved in ways that conform to the norms of heteronormative femininity.
Created and performed at Folkwang UdK , Essen.