Rósa Ómarsdóttir
wpZimmer resident in 2019
Rósa Ómarsdóttir is an award winning Icelandic dancer and choreographer. She studied at the Icelandic University of the Arts as well as P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels.
Rósa’s artistic practice explores human and non-human encounters, in search for non-anthropocentric narratives. This ongoing research aims at finding a rich ecosystem that combines humans, objects and invisible forces, exploring and expounding on the power dynamics that reveal themselves in these encounters.
Her work, interdisciplinary by nature, weaves together interests in choreography, live sound-production, a feminist approach to dramaturgy incorporating vulnerability and flux, as well as a decentralization of the dominant masculine tendencies in contemporary performance.
Rósa has made several works in collaboration with Inga Huld Hákonardóttir: Wilhelm Scream (2014), The Valley (2015), and Da Da Dans (2016). Her solo work includes: Traces (2017) Spills (2019) and Collaborative Contaminations (2021). Her work has been presented internationally at festivals and venues such as, Kunstencentrum Buda, Beursschouwburg, Brakke Grond, Rosendal Theater, MDT Stockholm, Julidans, and Reykjavík Dance Festival to name just a few. Her work has received numerous nominations for the Icelandic Theater Awards and received three awards for Choreography of the Year and Best Soundscape.
Along with her choreographic practice Rósa has been leading the research project Secondhand Knowledge since 2016. Through this project she focuses on peripheral dance communities, their relation to dance history and the notion of secondhand knowledge. The project is consolidated through series of workshops and interviews and presented locally.
This project has travelled to Cyprus, Greece, Croatia, Latvia, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Tehran and Cairo. This project is still ongoing and a podcast series about is is on the horizon.
projects
Traces
“Maybe it is worth running the risks associated with anthropomorphism (superstition, devinization of nature, romanticism) because it, oddly enough, works against anthropocentrism: a chord is stuck between person and a thing, and I am no longer above or outside a nonhuman environment.” – Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter
During her residency at wpZimmer, Rósa Ómarsdóttir will work on her new creation Traces, together with Katie Vickers, Inga Huld Hákonardóttir, Tiran Willemse and Kinga Jaczewska, and along with musician Sveinbjörn Thorarensen and scenographer Ragna Ragnarsdóttir.
Rósa and the group explore different anthropomorphic practices through pagan rituals like witchcraft and animism as means to relate to and affect their surroundings. They build a scenography resembling different landscapes and explore how they can use these practices in order to influence the state of the it and to give it anthropomorphic qualities. They strive to create a magical, dynamic and ever-changing environment in which an interplay between the scenography and the dancers takes place until it is not so clear anymore who is influencing whom: the dancers or the scenography.
credits
Choreography: Rósa Ómarsdóttir
Dancers: Tiran Willemse, Kathryn Vickers, Inga Huld Hákonardóttir & Kinga Jaczewska
Scenography: Ragna Þórunn Ragnarsdóttir
Music: Sveinbjörn Thorarensen
Light design & technical support: Michael Janssens
Production: Kunstenwerkplaats Pianofabriek
Co-production: BUDA, Beursschouwburg, wpZimmer, MDT & Avant Garden
Supported by Reykjavík Dance Atelier & STUK
With financial support of the Flemish Community, Nordic Culture Point, Nordisk Kultur Fond, the Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie & Reykjavík Culture Fund