The DaMu Collective- Explorations in the Printing Press

The interdisciplinary DaMu  Collective blends music, dance, performance art, visual art, and film, and recently started a project with Victorine Van Alphen set in the printing press, De Raadraaier Amsterdam.

DaMu (short for Dance and Music) began with a workshop with Mary Oliver and Michael Schumacher on dance and music improvisation, but quickly developed its own individual approach, in which space and movement becomes part of the musical performance.  The performers are just as likely to move, speak, sing, or play with objects as they are to play their instruments.
Interacting in the moment with each other and with the environment, they merge sound, gesture, colour, and light, into an unpredictable gesamtkunstwerk. 

Printed information is seen from many perspectives, over a wide geographical area and a wide time spectrum. It becomes available in different types, different formats, and is translated. The art of the video is also that of perspective, of seeing an action from different angles, of putting interpretations on an action, so that musicians appear as actors in an unknown drama that was never intended to have a story. The interconnected spaces, unusual decor not normally associated with music, and objects specific to printing which could be used in musical improvisation, offer limitless possibilities of engaging in a dialogue with the place.

A short taster of what is to come:

Featuring Victorine van Alphen (video) Camille Verhaak (clarinet) Enric
Sans (bass clarinet) Pieter de Koe (cello) James Hewitt (violin) Krists
Auznieks (performance).
Location: De Raddraaier Amsterdam

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