PROJECT

RECESS: the Ritual Experience Concept Event Spa Show

RECESS is a site-responsive installation and situation for performance, offering a restorative and contemplative time away from the outside world. Physiological comforts and curiosities are indulged in an otherwise austere environment as the RECESS host welcomes and engages visitors with a variety of wellness technologies and ideologies. Immersive spectacles emerge in relation to the public body as the performance hosts modulate amongst a co-curation of aestheticized ceremonial events and ritualistic experiences. Visitors may simply enjoy the ambiance from around the edges of this hybrid spa-theater-exhibition space, or might find their way into the center of an intense sensual experience or thought experiment. Through its reconstitution of wellness clichés with an aim to foster extra-luxurious states of embodiment and esoteric mindscapes, RECESS brings us closer to our own bodily centers of perception to help recalibrate the senses and make greater sense of the world around us.

Michael Helland

VS, BE

https://michaelhelland.com

Michael Helland is a Bessie Award-winning, Brussels-based dance artist appearing in the works of Maria Hassabi, Cecilia Lisa Eliceche, Tino Sehgal, and Daniel Linehan. Previous projects include performances and exhibitions with Xavier Le Roy, Katy Pyle, Alexandra Bachzetsis, Karl Van Welden, Eleanor Bauer, Faye Driscoll, Marina Abramović, robbinschilds, Big Art Group, and RoseAnne Spradlin, among others. Helland received a 2010 Jardin d’Europe danceWEB scholarship to ImPulsTanz in Vienna and was a 2012 Jardin d’Europe Wild Card resident at ex.e.r.ce. in Montpellier. In 2013 he was invited by Chrysa Parkinson to participate in the Dancer as Agent conference at DOCH in Stockholm, resulting in the publication of their Curating Your Moves conversation in the 2014 Dancer as Agent Collection. Helland’s choreographic installations and events for the stage have been presented in New York and Brussels, and he frequently works as a performance advisor and in creative collaborations. His 2013 Vita Activa, with Daniel Linehan, has been presented across Belgium and in France, and his choreography for Yan Duyvendak’s 2015 Sound of Music has been presented across Switzerland, France, and Italy. Helland holds degrees in Dance and in Community, Environment, and Planning from the University of Washington in Seattle.