Guy Cools & Lia Haraki
Standup PerformDance

Standup PerformDance Standup PerformDance is a creative research practice developed by the Cypriot choreographer Lia Haraki. It aims at applying principals of Stand Up Comedy to contemporary performance and dance in particular: how to combine voice and movement? How to source the autobiographical? How to navigate between structure and improvisation, using audience interaction? The Coaching Project is open to creative artists and performers from all disciplines, who want to explore the body in their work. The recent research and practice that Lia Haraki has been developing together with her collaborators in the last years, has been named Standup PerformDance. In her own words: "The main characteristic of this practice is that we get to borrow the intimacy created and explored in the Stand Up Comedy format, using any medium needed to communicate material from our biographical/personal life experience or simply performing our history. The Standup PerformDance way, aims at direct communication with the audience and uses the spectators’ reactions to create the next moment. It does not necessarily aim at producing laughter. The material is self-referential and personal, and serves the piece by reproducing a version of the truth. In the end, the performance is partly improvised since the performer uses the information that comes internally and externally, at all moments." For the Coaching Project, Lia Haraki will be joined by the Flemish dance dramaturg Guy Cools, who has been working with her, supporting the development of her practise over the past 10 years. Lia Haraki Born in 1975 in Limassol, Cyprus, Lia Haraki earned her BA Hons in Dance Theatre Studies at the City University of London (Laban Centre for Movement and Dance) in 1996. Her works have been presented all over Europe, in festivals such as the Athens Festival, Aerowaves London, Tanec Praha, Julidans Amsterdam, Kleines Haus Dresden, euro-scene Leipzig, the Kalamata International Festival, Royal Festival Hall London, Unesco Paris and have been produced by organisations such as the Athens festival, Tanzherbst Dresden, Art Stations foundation Poland. Her pieces "Evergreen" and "Pretendance" were in the Aerowaves final list and her solos "Evergreen" and "Eye to I" have won the Cyprus Platform choreography award. Lia is a lecturer in the BA Dance Programme of the University of Nicosia in Cyprus. Through her work with her company .pelma.lia haraki and Dance House Lemesos, which she initiated, and through her active participation in networks such as Aerowaves and danceWEB Europe (as a danceWEB recipient in 2003), Lia Haraki has been providing a vital connection and exchange, between the dance community of Cyprus and the wider European landscape. " ... each new work integrates the qualities of the previous ones – the knowledge of the body, the interdisciplinary collaborations and exchanges and the exploration of (non)theatrical space and time. All throughout the body of work also shows a distinctive, personal signature – a generous love for the human; a preference for the physical as means of expression and a genuine sense of humor and self-relativism." (Guy Cools on Lia Haraki’s work) Guy Cools was born in 1964 in Antwerp (BE). After having trained as a dramaturge, Guy Cools became involved with the new developments in dance in Flanders from the 1980’s, initially as a dance critic and from 1990 onwards as theatre and dance director of Arts Centre Vooruit in Ghent. As vice-president of the Dance Council he contributed to the cultural policy towards dance of the Flemish Community. He curated dance events in Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Venice and Montréal. In 2002, he left Vooruit to dedicate himself fulltime to production dramaturgy with amongst others Koen Augustijnen – Lisi Esteras, Les Ballets C. de la B. (BE), Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (BE), Anabel Schellekens (BE), Lia Haraki (CY), Danièle Desnoyers (CA), Akram Khan (UK), Christopher House, Toronto Dance Theatre (CA). Since 2010, he is the house dramaturge for Danshuis Station Zuid, Tilburg (Holland) and since 2011, associate lector at the Fontys Hogeschool voor de Kunsten. With Lin Snelling and Ginelle Chagnon he developped a series of workshops to support the creative process of artists, choreographers in particular. He regularly gives lectures and publishes in Belgium, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Holland, Greece and Cyprus.