Dancer | Maker | Researcher | Teacher

Sylvia Rijmer is an interdisciplinary dance artist, maker & researcher. She is deeply interested in collaborative creations which bridge the gap between the arts and sciences to encounter alternative possibilities for experiencing dance as an evolutionary art form.

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• Research

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Dancer | Maker | Researcher | Teacher

• Biography

• Curriculum vitae

• Choreography

• Research

• Technology & Dance Visualisations

• Teaching

• Feedback Kolectiv

• CALENDAR

• CONTACT

Choreography

Glitched

A dance & technology dance piece inspired by the digital Glitch. Motion data captured using Motion Capture, Captury and the XSens Body Suit.
Concept & Choreography: Sylvia Rijmer

Created in technical and artistic collaboration with Moving Digits Collaborative Dance Artists: Teresa Alves da Silva & Maria Pyatkova
Original Music: Miguel Lucas Mendes
Premiere: NRW Tanzhaus, DE (2019)

Pop Up

A gathering of three contemporary dancers and four classical musicians, desiring to choreographically and musically play without the pressure of creating a piece.

Choreography: Sylvia Rijmer
Dancers & Artistic Collaborators: Inês Pedrucco, André Campos & Bruno Alves Musicians: Tera Shimizu (violin), Maria José Laginha (violin), Augusta(viola), Martin Henneken (cello)
Creative Advisor: Paulo Reis
Teaser Film & Editing: Luís Marrafa
Creative Residency: CAL - Centro de Artes de Lisboa, PT (2018)

Anatomization

All visible, bio-mechanical motion begins somewhere within the body. This performance wishes to show the visual dissection of bio-mechanical motion, highlighting the birth of a relatively simple movement - like a bend in the wrist, to a complex execution of a dance phrase - as a choreography.

Choreographic Concept: Sylvia Rijmer
Dancer & collaborator: Marco da Silva Ferreira
Concept & original music: Miguel Lucas Mendes
Light Design: Nuno Salsinha / Tela Negra, Lda
Light Operator: Margarida Moreira
Photography & Morphing Film: Hugo Alves
Production: Tânia Guerreiro / Produções Independentes
Premiere: Centro Cultural de Belém, PT (2012)

Every.Body.Hunts

A dance piece based on hidden inner states of battle.

Concept: Sylvia Rijmer
In collaboration with dancers: Teresa Alves da Silva, André Mesquita, Sylvia Rijmer
Live music & Original Composition: Miguel Lucas Mendes
Light Design: Nuno Salsinha, Tela Negra.
Texts: Ray Bradbury, Sylvia Rijmer
Dramaturgical Support: Paulo Reis
Photography: Guzmán Rosado
Video Editing: Guzmán Rosado
Co-Productiont: Company Olga Roriz, Tok'art, Teatro Extremo, Pro Dança Premiere: Centro Cultural de Cartaxo, PT (2011)

Hunting

Do we create a world in our own image or does the world create and impose and image onto you?
A dance solo highlighting the hardships which undergo an act of change. How does one go about change? What may trigger the need or desire to change? What might be the result of that change? Is it worth to change?

Concept & Interpretation: Sylvia Rijmer
Created under the guidance of Ivo Dimchev & performed at ImpulsTanz, AUT (2010)

Body Memory 2009

A danced piece, based on personal reflections upon the paradoxes of entertainment and performance within an ageing, and per definition, altering body.

Concept/Voice/Performer/Choreographer: Sylvia Rijmer
Live musical performance by composer: Silas Bieri
Text: Adré Lepecki & Sylvia Rijmer
Video Editing: Akira Lucas
Costumes: Maria Ribeiro & Sylvia Rijmer
Photography: Kai Perini
Film: João Salaviza
Co-Production & Premiere: Centro Cultural de Belém, PT (2009)

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Research

Negotiation Deliberate Choice-Making within an artistic practice

I am interested in how today’s choreographers and dancers make artistic dance choices.As a dance maker, I often consider what inherently drives movement.The beginning, or the point of entry into a “working” Body as a place of experiential work often drives the rest of my practice. Metaphorically speaking, the clearer my authentic “key” to (into) my Body, the more lucid a conversation I can have with it.I am interested in the dancer as the primary source from which movement is generated and performed, in an inherited Body through which the choreographic ideas are authentically translated, transpired and exposed, and in awakening active internal gazing as a key to artistic choice making. I am interested in the process of dance making, whereby cognitive constraints within a choreographic and movement-research practice, require specific attention-direction to engage the dancer in habitual pattern recognition, and the cultivation of alternative modes within, and beyond it.I seek to highlight the prominence of dancing Bodies, and their subsequent idiosyncratic Body Logics as a choreographic platform onto which most contemporary works are built and sustained. In doing so, one recognises the imminent importance of the dancer as its fundamental artistic object and subject.My practice-led research in collaboration with three extraordinary professional contemporary dancers (Teresa Alves da Silva, Allan Falieri and Elson Ferreira) and the generous team of interdisciplinary and multimodal scientists of the BlackBox Arts & Cognition team based at the Nova University in Lisbon, focused on encouraging deliberate choice making in the generation of personalised movements according to each dancers personally acquired and inherited Body Logic. Using an invented Body Logic Method (BLM) as a practical studio methodology to build body typologies, I hoped to engage myself and the dancers as co-creative agents in the making of a dance. Through the BlackBox platform I was able to have technical access to Virtual Reality, Motion Capture (Kinect) and Stereoscopic Imaging for my (and BlackBox’s) research purposes.Much thanks to the entire team at BlackBox for all of their incredible work in this research!This collaborative Arts & Science research project took place from 2018 - 2019.

• BlackBox

Body Logic Method Movement Generating Tools

The Body Logic Method (BLM) is a methodological framework which consists of the Dodging and Scanning Modes, which are at the basis of BLM.All copyright works, including but not limited to glossary and definitions, was created by Sylvia Rijmer. Much thanks to cognitive-linguist Vito Evola for his keen observations and academic guidance in the construction and clarification of these concepts.

• BLM

Body Logic in Virtual Reality / A VR Dance Study

From September to October 2018, the BlackBox team invited choreographer Sylvia Rijmer and three professional dancers to work together in order to "illustrate" concepts and elements of her Body Logic Method, creating a Virtual Reality visualisation of Cornelius Cardew's score "Treatise" (1967) in Unity 3D, by using a Vive headset to enhance the dancers' experience while they were creating compositional material. This documentary accompanies a single day of that creative process.

“I see something and I like it”: the choreographer’s decision

Dance-making is a multi-layered phenomenon that involves the interaction between cultural, social, technological and biological forces. From the perspective of the brain, creating a dance piece is a complex cognitive task: generating new movement units, remembering sequences of movement phrases, or choosing between movement phrases that are to be improved or not. Nevertheless, very few studies have characterized the process of dance-making from this perspective, while most of them have focused solely on the metaphors or aesthetics conveyed. - Text written by neuroscientists Ana Rita Fonseca & Rodrigo Abril de Abreu.

Choice Negotiation in Dance Making / Finding Body Logic through
Transdisciplinary & Multimodal Practices

I hope to bring to light the often hidden process of studio dance making and the idiosyncratic manner in which each (choreographer & dancer) make their choices. This as the frame from which the final performance is built. Being able to experiment within a trans-disciplinary and multi-modal process (cognition, dance & technology) with the BlackBox Team in Lisbon, I could start a practical and theoretical studio conversation which in essence questions habits and personal preference.

Body Logic I - Short Choreographic Excerpts

These movements were generated using the Body Logic Methodology to stimulate cognitive induced choice negotiation within the making of a dance.

Moving Digits

I am a research participant as a choreographer in the Moving Digits: Augmented Dance for Engaged Audience Project which aims to enhance audience understanding and engagement in contemporary dance performances, and to allow to experience dance in an augmented way (even after the performance). The project also aims to empower dancers, choreographers and technicians with further tools for expression, archival and analysis. The project is a partnership between Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute (M-ITI, Portugal – Lead Partner), Hochschule Düsseldorf (HSD, Germany) and Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava (STL, Estonia). Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT, Portugal), Plux (Portugal), Tanzhaus NRW (Germany) and University of Greenwich (UK) are associated partners. The project has a duration of 2 years, starting 1st October 2018.

My personal research in this project:

The Beautiful Glitch

For this particular research project, I have been interested in the digitally filtered image of a human body moving.Considering Oskar Schlemmer’s conception of the KunstFigur, as an idyllic figure freed from the bondage of biological and biomechanical limitations, in tension with the current discourse of the Post-Dance body, digital technology and dance become relevant explorative platforms with which to re-consider normative expectations. In this work, I seek alternative artistic propositions of the image of the human body, and its kinetic capacity, which can feed and highlight different readings of the human form otherwise unseen or hidden from the conventional eye. Uncovering a selection of alternative performative visualisations of the human body triggered by the accidental digital glitch which was discovered in collaboration with the Moving Digits Team and the dancers, Perhaps we can re-consider the digitally filtered and de-subjectified (or simply altered) Body form, as beautiful glimpses into the less familiar.By learning how to purposefully “hack” the motion capture system, so as to force the glitch by manipulating the biological input (choreographic movement patterns) and non-biological affectations (lights, clothes, colors) as hacking methods, I encountered (im)possible variations of the possible, enabled through the digital filter. Hence the Digi-logic of the system. Seeing these glitches as a positive and creative input for performance and the generation of alternative movement patterns, I have been able to reconsider the strange, awkward and uncomfortable as something aesthetically enticing, theoretically interesting, and viscerally inviting. These performative experiments, are a Digimorphed hybrid, borne of a biological nature (human dancers), whereby all of the output images are translated, adulterated and glitched through the digital system of motion capture, and some technological effect-filters. I call these performance an experiential demonstration interlinking the bio-logical Body, and its Body-Logic input of the human dancer/persons, into a digital realm. By providing a variation of three perspectives: the Latent Steps video Installation, the interdisciplinary performance demonstration, and a digitally choreographed dance film, I essentially seek to enhance and ultimately celebrate the strange, and biologically impossible Body solutions that the collaborative dialogue between technology and human intervention has proposed. The Glitch is beautiful. Concept and choreography: Sylvia Rijmer.Visuals, sound and interaction by, respectively: Stephan Jürgens, Raul Masu and Jochen Feitsch, with additional interaction by William Primett

• Moving Digits Website

Glitched

A dance & technology dance piece inspired by the digital Glitch.
Motion data captured using Motion Capture, Captury and the XSens Body Suit.

Concept & Choreography: Sylvia Rijmer
Collaborative Dance Artists: Teresa Alves da Silva & Maria Pyatkova Original Music: Miguel Lucas Mendes
Performed at: NRW Tanzhaus 2019
Created in technical and artistic collaboration with Moving Digits

A Beautiful Glitch (Excerpt): a choreographic film study II

Skeletal Glitch (Excerpt) : a choreographic film study I

A Beautiful Glitch

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Technology
& Dance Visualisation

Dance in Virtual Reality / deconstructing choreographic objects
through different mediums

“Dance in Virtual Reality - deconstructs choreographic objects in different media”. A Virtual Reality installation that resulted from the convergence between the choreographer Sylvia Rijmer’s impulse to formalise her compositional and choreographic methodologies, and BlackBox Project scientific drive to frame, analyse and make an artistic process more tangible. This installation allows visitors to experience in an immersive way alternative perspectives on a dance creation process using new media: 3D point clouds, stereoscopic and high–speed photography, and animated inforgraphics.Creation and DevelopmentThis work is a result from the collaboration between several researchers of the BlackBox Arts & Cognition project. Cláudia Ribeiro, one of the researchers, conducts on–site demonstrations that allow the audience immersive visualizations on dance creation processes. She holds a PhD in Computer Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico and works on the frontier between Art & Science, focusing on the intersections between generative art, virtual reality, interaction and video mapping.Creation and Development: Rafael Kuffner, Cláudia Ribeiro, Sylvia Rijmer, Stephan Jürgens, Francisco Henriques
Technical Assistence: Sara Ribeiro / Artistic Production and Consulting: Carla Fernandes

• A VR Dance Study with Sylvia Rijmer – Body Logic in Virtual Real

Dance in Virtual Reality / deconstructing choreographic objects through different mediums

Exploring the Digital Glitch

A Beautiful Glitch (Excerpt): a choreographic film study II

Skeletal Glitch (Excerpt) : a choreographic film study I

A Beautiful Glitch

In these short sketches, I re-consider the digitally filtered, and de-subjectified (or simply altered) Body form, as beautiful glimpses into the less familiar.
Seeing these glitches as a positive and creative data for performance and the generation of alternative movement patterns, I have been able to reconsider
the strange, awkward and uncomfortable as something aesthetically enticing, theoretically interesting, and viscerally inviting.

Movement Data captured using Motion Capture (Captury) & three contemporary dancers
Artistic and technical collaboration with the Moving Digits TeamFilm data edited and re-choreographerd by Sylvia Rijmer
Dancers: Liis Vares, Hanna Junti, Sylvia Rijmer
Original Soundscape by Miguel Lucas Mendes
Tallin, 2019 Artistic and technical collaboration with the Moving Digits Team

Morphing - A Video Installation

A filmed demonstration of human ways of walking - our most functional, stylistic and idiosyncratic dance.

For this film, the walkers were asked to walk on a treadmill. Each person adapted relatively easily to the task, and were able to reconstruct a “natural” flow to their walk, whilst being observed/filmed. Reminiscent of the critical observations of the Judson Church dance movement of the 1960s, with special mention to the teachings of Steve Paxton, indeed what becomes beautiful to note are the incredibly unique ways in which each person dances their way through life.- Sylvia Rijmer (Choreographer)This piece has the aims to depict and compare different walking patterns between humans. I wanted to place the walkers inside a void or a container-like atmosphere, as if their lives where being held in suspense in an old natural history museum. It establishes a dialogue with the show itself which is also about the human body. In the original installation the image was split into three different screens, one for each side of the body. - Hugo Alves (Video Art)The challenge of building the soundscape for Morphing was to transform the intrinsic characteristics of a person walking, and to join it with a computational and electronic mood. The presence of machines is more and more a constant in our everyday lives. The robotic and monotonous voiceover in Morphing simulates a human voice, as if the machines are the ones who now tell us who and how we are. - Miguel Lucas Mendes (Musical Composer)

Creative research | Concept: Sylvia Rijmer
Video Art | Video concept: Hugo Alves Music
Concept & Musical Composition : Miguel Lucas Mendes

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Teaching

Dancers' movements are based on choices and learned habits - in the form of poses, forms, patterns -, which have been accumulated along each unique dance journey. From pre-professional dance training, to professional dancing, each unique dancer/person has had to build a performative body and identity reflective of their learning contexts and personal preference. Sustaining these personalised movement choices and habits have become challenging, especially within a constantly evolving art-form with growing demands, we know today as contemporary dance.Within this dynamic contemporary dance landscape, these choices and habits can inhibit alternative movement potentials highly necessary within an environment which demands of its dancers to be dynamic co-creative participants.As a dance teacher, Sylvia currently highlights contemporary dance concepts as practical tools to re-think learned movement habits and patterns. The aim is for the dance student to become aware of alternative movement possibilities using organised dance sequences as practical structures for personal movement research.As a method towards active deliberation within one’s dancing, her SCANNING Method directs the cognitive attention inward (inward towards the self) by inducing the bio-mechanicity (function) of the body to generate movement which is both efficient and choreographically stylistic (form). The redirection of the attention through (cognitive-physical) reorientation allows new movements (gestures, forms, patterns) to emerge for self-awareness and compositional purposes.Sylvia's dance classes promote self-awareness strategies within a shared and collaborative learning environment, encouraging each dancer to creatively rediscover and re-engage in unique body-solutions which are organically organised and ultimately, pleasurable to dance.

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Feedback Kolectiv

The Feedback project was born to fill a cultural gap which lay below the hierarchically dominant theatres/galleries and stages, by providing a performative platform, whereby any person/artist with or without much performance experience could exhibit their works in progress and process. Our artistic and political aim was to remove elitist cultural stigma from an ever demanding audience, and bring back to life those who are creating without the political pressures for survival within the closely guarded theatre and production circles. Our aim was to bring back to life raw and crude ideas, coming from a persons creative heart, and uncensored by socio-cultural sales. Our only dogma was to ensure that the person lived a creative passion which they wanted and needed to share.
Both Feedback Projects consisted of Lisbon based artists from varying media: live musical performance/photography/poetry readings/dance/theatre/sound & video installations/dance & theatre on film and the visual arts.Thank you to the artists who participated and generously shared their works in both Feedback’s!
Ismael Roots and Natty Fred | Dub Poets, André Louro and Eduardo Jordão| Louro& Lima, Carlos Mendes, Sofia Pimentão, Maria Ribeiro, Olga Roriz, Ana Borralho & João Galante, Blasted Mechanism/Valdjiu, Paulina Santos, Ricardo Ferreira and Ana Filipa Fernandes | Comichão Filmes, Rafaela Salvador, João Raposo, Laura Moura, Miguel Mendes, Fernando Fádigas, João Mendes, Marco Ferreira, Chanelle Moore, Sandra Ferreira, Catarina Sequeira,Tiago Jonatás| Surya Duo -featuring Nuno Mar, Sofia Pimentão, Maria Ribeiro,Nuno Viana, ILLEGALCREATIONS2, André Santos and Marco Leao, João Salaviza, Hugo Alves and Joana Villaverde.

Artistic Directors: Sylvia Rijmer / Miguel Lucas Mendes / Paulo Reis
Feedback Film & Editing: Guzmán Rosado
Performance Space kindly granted by Olga Roriz, in her ex-dance studios in Rua da Prata, Lisbon, Portugal

#FEEDBACK1

#FEEDBACK2

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CONTACT