Freie Universitaet Berlin: “A Journey of Objects”- A new film now available online

French choreographer Anne Collod is the current Valeska Gert Visiting Professor at Freie Universität. During the past summer semester, she held an online seminar titled “Disruptive Constellations” for students in Freie Universität’s dance studies master’s program. British-German filmmaker Mara Louise Atkins has created a film based on the seminar centered on the question of how performers are influenced by objects. “A Journey of Objects,” now available for viewing online, focuses on Anne Collod’s response to “Parades and Changes,” a seminal piece from 1965 choreographed by the American dancer Anna Halprin. In the film, dancers experiment within the framework of led improvisations, exploring new perspectives on everyday movements. Atkins, a dance student and one of the participants in Collod’s seminar, not only directed the film but was also responsible for camera, editing, and sound.

During her visiting professorship, Anne Collod has been investigating processes of choreographic re-creation in an online seminar titled “Disruptive Constellations – Practices of Reinterpretation” that explores new methods and practices. In the seminar, Collod references the time she spent working with the iconic American choreographer Anna Halprin (1920–2021), who strongly influenced Collod’s approach to dance.

The French dancer and choreographer Anne Collod was a co-founder of the group Quatuor Albrecht Knust, known in the 1990s for its reenactments of early modern dance pieces. Inspired in part by her time with Anna Halprin, Anne Collod’s creative work explores the idea of collective utopias and of “being together” in the different contexts of dance.

The Valeska Gert Visiting Professorship is a joint initiative of Freie Universität Berlin’s Institute of Theater Studies, the German Academic Exchange Service, and the Akademie der Künste.