News

Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg, continuing the commitment of the Fonds culturel national to its partners, has taken over the Choreographic Research Residency at the Uferstudios in Berlin Research and Research and creative residency for architects, architectural researchers, illustrators and authors at Academia Belgica in Roma (I).

Following the calls for applications launched in December 2021 by Kultur | lx, two juries designated as laureates Saeed Hani for the Uferstudios Berlin and Anne Simon for Academia Belgica in Roma.

Choreographic research residency at the Uferstudios Berlin (D)

Following a call for applications, the jury, made up of Ainhoa Achutegui (neimënster), William Cardoso (choreographer and 2021 laureate of the residency), Mathis Junet (TROIS C-L – Centre de Création Chorégraphique Luxembourgeois) and Carole Lorang (Escher Theater), decided unanimously to grant the residency to Saeed Hani for his project entitled Inlet.

Statement of the Jury
The jury considered that at this point in his career Saeed Hani’s work would benefit from a long period of time dedicated to research. This would enable him to deepen his choreographic approach to his own themes of power and individual freedom and the relationship with the body and with others. The Uferstudios will offer him the space and time he needs for his research, in the heart of Berlin, a city whose history and sociology resonate with Saeed Hani’s work.

About Saeed Hani
Saeed Hani was born and raised in Syria and received his early training at the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in Damascus. After his graduation, he joins the prestigious Caracalla Dance Company in Beirut, Lebanon, and toured the Middle East, Asia and Europe. In 2015, he moved to Trier, Germany, where he performed with various dance companies, such as Theatre Münster, Sommer Ulrickson Company, Hannah Ma Dance Company and Z-Art Dance Company (LUX) and toured in Luxembourg, Belgium, France, Finland and Germany. As a dancer and choreographer, he created the solo Jerusalem (2018) for the Full Moon Dance Festival in Finland and A man by the sea (2919) with the Battery Dance Company, New York (USA). In 2020, he was invited as choreographer to create his short piece Float for the ART DSP Professional Dance Program in Berlin.
Saeed founded his own company HANI DANCE in 2016 and moved to Luxembourg in 2021 and became a member of the TROIS C-L – Centre de Création Chorégraphique Luxembourgeois platform. He loves to work with international dancers from all over the world to combine different cultural perspectives and believes in sharing intercultural ideas and viewpoints to create organic and innovative dance pieces. He essentially explores concepts such as power, dynamism, spirit and mind by using tools such as nude art, contemporary dance and visual art.

Details of the call for applications HERE

Research and creative residency for architects, architectural researchers, illustrators and authors at Academia Belgica in Roma (I)

Following a call for applications, the jury, made up of Prof. Florian Hertweck (Architect dplg, Université de Luxembourg), Claude Kremer (Centre national de littérature) and Christine Muller (Playwright and director, 2021 laureate), preselected and presented two applications to the Academia Belgica, which awarded its residency to Anne Simon for her project: Well-behaved Women seldom make history.

Statemenf of the jury
The jury praised both Anne Simon’s career and her project for Rome. Addressing and challenging traditional representations of power, gender roles and expectations in all her plays, Anne Simon is putting forward a theatre project on the complex and magnetic character of Agrippina. As the mother of Nero and wife of the Emperor Claudius, she is remembered in collective history as a ‘difficult’, incestuous and murderous woman. Anne Simon questions the very fact that her story was written by men and based on prejudices that stereotypical education may have triggered. Through interviews with sociologists and historians, she wishes to revisit Agrippina’s status as a “victim of story-telling”. Being immersed in the Roman environment, following her heroine’s footsteps would certainly be beneficial for her play writing. Moreover, Anne Simon wishes to use the opportunity of staying in Rome to connect both with the academic world, to deepen her knowledge on her chosen topic, and with the world of live performance, in order to encourage new collaborations with a view to staging her play. The stay at the Academia Belgica seems to have come at the right time for Anne Simon who could fully benefit her play project and her work in general.

About Anne Simon
Anne Simon has studied Drama and Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London. She then continued her professional training at Théâtre National du Luxembourg and the Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen as assistant director and stage manager.
With her first directing work, she won a competition for emerging directors (Champ Libre, 2007). Anne Simon has since established herself as a regular in most of Luxembourg’s theatres and has been working internationally since 2009. International destinations include Barcelona, Hanoi, Salzburg and the UK. She is a regular collaborator and member of Luxembourg-based Independent Little Lies and Volleksbühn as well as The Circle Theater of New York, Simon’s work is characterised by strong visuals, pop-culture references, elaborate kinetics and a constant tension between realism and abstraction. She challenges the audience radically in suspending their disbelief and always works with multiple narrative layers of possible worlds and coexisting readings.
During the lockdowns, she has been experimenting with virtual live theatre with her collective Volleksbühn. In recent years, she has developed more and more original pieces: devised, immersive, multi-narrative, multi-leveled experiences reaffirming theatre’s innate augmented reality, immediacy and tactility. The theme of power and its depending gender and social structures constitutes her current personal middle-term research and exploration focus.

Detail of the call for applications HERE