BIO

Simona Deaconescu (Sept 10 1987) is a Romanian choreographer and experimental filmmaker, working across genres and formats. Her work explores future scenarios of the body and the crisis of perception in contemporary society. She often likes to have a dual approach, thinking about the balance between nature and technology, individuality and collectivity, the big history and counter-histories. She founded Tangaj Collective, a company that collaborates with visual artists, performers and researchers in order to understand how the body can mediate reality. She has presented her works in conventional stages, but also in unconventional spaces, galleries and museums, architectural sites, family houses and cinemas reaching audiences from Europe, Canada and USA.  Deaconescu’s hybrid aesthetic and efforts to promote symbiosis of dance, film and technology, were recognized with The National Center for Dance Awardin 2016. She has received the danceWEB scholarship in 2014, is an Aerowaves Twenty18 Artist and an Emerging Choreographer with Springboard Danse Montreal ’19. She is a resident of Moving Digits European Project for 2019 and 2020, with research on how a technological setting can alter the memory and presence of a performer on stage.

Vanessa Goodman the artistic director and choreographer of Action at a Distance dance society respectfully acknowledge that she lives and works on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations. Vanessa is attracted to art that has a weight and meaning beyond the purely aesthetic and uses her choreography as an opportunity to explore the human condition. Her works and commissions have been presented throughout Canada, the United States and South America, with recent highlights including Bienal Internacional de Dança do Caerà (Brazil), On the Boards (Seattle), and The Dance Made in Canada Festival (Toronto). In 2013 Vanessa received the Iris Garland Choreographer Award from The Dance Centre, and is a participant in their inaugural Yulanda M. Faris Program. She holds a BFA from Simon Fraser University (SFU) and has been commissioned by Lamon Dance, Warehaus Collective, Modus Operandi and The SFU rep class.

 

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

BLOT – Body Line of Thought

Conceived and performed by dance artists Simona Deaconescu and Vanessa Goodman, BLOT – Body Line of Thought is an interdisciplinary project that addresses the influence of microbiology on human behaviour.

BLOT focuses on the layers of bacteria on a person’s skin, as a unique fingerprint, a medium through which the act of contamination happens. Through sweat, we “infect” one another with bacteria. Salt is a restructuring, cleaning and binding agent. The human body can not survive without sodium. In BLOT our salts function as a conductor for creativity, electricity, and infection. Simona Deaconescu and Vanessa Goodman explore transferability and continuous oscillations. Their bodies are an acoustic event in reverberation.

The project is co-produced by Tangaj Collective (RO) and Action at a Distance (CA), in partnership with Plastic Orchid Factory (CA), The National Center for Dance Bucharest (RO) and STL – Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava (EE), co-funded by The Administration of the National Cultural Fund (RO).

 

Simona and Vanessa are Biofriction’s artists in residence and within the Biofriction project, they take part in several activities such as the premiere of BLOT, Biofrction Radio and the exhibition of Biofriction.