Tomáš Danielis, Marek Godovič / Radical Empathy: CUSTOM VIEW
“Custom view”, an assisted solo by Tomáš Danielis and Marek Godovic, is a contemplation of how people make decisions and look at the world through the prism of Danielis’ own life. By questioning interpretations of reality, issues of freedom, perception of relationships, and even basic human behaviour itself in (not so) different cultures this work poetically examines the society in which we live together. Based on Danielis’ life and career as a pretext and life Godovič’s dramaturgy presents a mixture of different dance languages and virtuosity squared off by sociology and Wittgenstein’s philosophy on stage.
“Custom View is an honest statement and summing-up of a mature dancer and choreographer Tomáš Danielis, who has worked for more than twenty years in diverse artistic and cultural environments. This gives him a mandate to compare and evaluate, yet he goes beyond mere naming of the positives and negatives. Danielis’ performance offers us, through the balanced presence of text and movement, a glimpse into the intimate space of his own work and life, at times indulgent, at others dramatically precise and ironic. He contextualizes the vocation of the artist in our society, raising many fundamental questions about the meaning and necessity of art itself.”
(Petra Fornayová)
Performing: Tomáš Danielis, Marek Godovič
Dance, text, light design: Tomáš Danielis
Life dramaturgy, text, stage manipulation: Marek Godovič
Music: Vladimír Godár, Anthony Rouchier, Ľubomír Panák, Gioachino Rossini, David Bowie, Pat Metheny
Assitent: Soňa Kúdeľová
Graphic design: Matej Lacko
Production: Biela Noc / White Nights, Zuzana Pacakova, Veronika Malgot
Choreographer and media artist Tomas Danielis (Banska Bystrica, Slovakia, 1980) is known for creating artworks founded on the totality of perception aiming at integral arts. Member of the outstanding generation of Slovak dancers[2] and choreographers born in the 80ties, he is often nicked as a black sheep of the Slovak contemporary dance scene due to his uncompromising approach to arts and reflection of transformative processes in post-communistic Slovakia. He is considered one of the foremost Slovak dance artists. His choreography engages in a type of dramaturgy overruling the primacy of music and libretto in dance, engaging in exploring sociological works on stage. After working on questions of mechanics of power he founded in 2021 collective Radical Empathy, in which along with his colleagues explores topics of empathy, fundamentals of human perceptions and interactions and their impact on creating sociological structures. His work had been “characterised by high intensity of movement expressiveness, defined intellectual concept and uncompromising dramaturgical stylisation. Choreography made of extraordinary images expressed in a rich physical language complemented by spare poignant and often ironically funny texts in total as comprehensible as music, sculpture, painting or architecture. ”His works had been presented in over 20 countries on 3 continents. His most notable works are 21&counting, Mainly Love, Equilibrium and most recent production Custom view. In 2016 and 2017 Danielis were the head teacher and resident choreographer of Ballet Moskva, where he also created performance Equilibrium based on game theory research as a part of a series about mechanics of power with a particular accent on abuse of power. From 2007 to 2009 he was art director of Int. Bühnenwerkstatt Tanztheater Festival Graz. Tomas Danielis is laureate of a number of prizes for performing art and choreography, such as the 2007 Contest – TanzRat Wien, a special prize for choreography and performing art at the 2007 Theatre Arts Festival in Rybnik, Poland, and the prize for choreography at the same event in 2009. His performing activities also saw him in the Reumert Award-winning productions “Men and Mahler” (2013) and “Rite of Spring – Extended” (2014) as a member of Danish ensemble Granhøj Dans. As a performer, he collaborated with cie.W.Dorner, director Olivier Py, Sasha Waltz and guests (as a guest), cie. F.Ruckert, Freyer Ensemble, Granhoj Dans. Danielis also ventured for 4 years in ballet. He was a soloist of Croatian national Ballet in Rijeka, guest soloist of Ballet Graz and member of the ballet ensemble of Slovak National Theatre. His pedagogical work brought him to Charleroi Dans, Henny Jurriens Amsterdam, NRW Düsseldorf, CODARTS,TQW Wien, Hot Summer Kyoto, Dansehallerne Copenhagen, Bora Bora Arhus, Ballet Moscow, Danceworx New Delhi, Tsekh, Ukrainian Contemporary Dance platform, Int. Bühnenwerkstatt Tanztheater Festival, Anton Bruckner university Linz, Terrence Lewis academy and others.
Radical Empathy is an art group created in Autumn 2021 by Tomáš Danielis as a reaction to contemporary events. Its main goal is to support creating and distributing contemporary art pieces as sociological probes. Radical Empathy focuses primarily on creating performative art (dance and stand-up), original texts (mainly for performing arts), photography and media work. It does that without geographical restriction, but with (critical to) the European region and events in mind. The first art pieces created by the group had been Mainly Love inter-media performance (21st October 2021,Nuit Blanche Festival), Custom View – a dance performance performed in Moyzes Hall Bratislava (3rd May 2022), followed by the photographic exhibition Entelechiea in Artezka Detva (11th May 2022). People, whom participated on this 2 events are Tomáš Danielis, Marek Godovič, Soňa Kúdeľová, Zuzana Husárová, Lenka Sršnová Ľubomír Panák, Anthony Rouchier, Samuel Velebný (as curator of exhibition). In their work together they used, re-used and recycled besides documentary materials also works of David Bowie, Pat Matheny, Vladimír Godár, Gioachino Rossini and others.