Khao Sok Dance Retreat

Renan Martins

1st Residency Session: "NO CATEGORY PRACTICE"

"No Category Practice" is a mix of various movement practices. Rather than exploring their individual potential, we place the emphasis on how they interrelate. We consider their complementary and conflicting natures and how they might broaden our spectrum of possibilities as movers, performers, dancers, and people. Our starting proposition is that such practices are the basic tools by which we know ourselves and make sense of the world around us. We then confront the categories by bringing them to the forefront of our consciousness. In so doing, we can observe that their creation is linked to identity formation and, as such, they limit our possibilities for connection (to both ourselves and others). We open our minds to the power of images, analogies, comparisons, and symbols. The dance unfolds through the creation of metaphors that serve as mechanisms for escaping the rigidities of categorization.

Renan Martins.

biography

Renan Martins (aka DJ Bamboo) is a queer and POC Brazilian choreographer and performer based between Porto and Heidelberg. He started his artistic path as a young actor in Rio de Janeiro and at the age of 17 moved to Europe to study contemporary dance. He graduated from both SEAD (Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance) and P.A.R.T.S (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios) where he started developing his choreographic work. His very first full evening piece “Let Me Die In My Footsteps” was chosen by Aerowaves as one of the top works of 2016. Since then he has been making work, performing and touring in various cities in Europe and Brazil.

Parallel to his choreographic practice, he has also been a performer for Iztok Kovac, Marysia Stoklosa, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Alexandra Waierstall, Ceren Oran, Daniel Linehan and Peter Savel.

Renan Martins is an active teacher sharing his work in various dance schools, festivals and companies around Europe and Brazil such as Impulstanz, B12, Danish National School of Performing Arts, Antwerp Royal Conservatory, Centro de Artes da Maré/Lia Rodrigues, PARTS, Dance Theatre Heidelberg, TanzBielefeld, Saarlandisches Staatstheater, Gartnerplatztheater, to name a few.

Since 2013 he has been a member of Damaged Goods/Meg Stuart performing in “Violet”, “Atelier III”, “Projecting [Space[“ and most recently “CASCADE”. In 2021 he became part of a research project on diversity and inclusion together with the faculty of P.A.R.T.S. (BE), Manufacture (CH) and SKH (SK).