Dance work has international appeal

Creative work by an inspirational dance artist and lecturer will be shown in three different countries during March.

Creative work by an inspirational dance artist and lecturer will be shown in three different countries during March.

Heike Salzer, BA (Hons) Dance Programme Leader at Teesside University, has been collaborating with a range of international artists and is set to have work shown in Iceland, America and England.

She was invited for a 10 day artist residency to create original choreography for the Merge Dance Company at Texas State University, in America. The piece, Zefiro, is a choreography based on the Greek God Zefiro, the God of the west wind.

It will be performed at the Patti Strikkel Theatre at Texas State University from 5 to 7 March.

At the same time, Heike has also created the short dance video Beach, a piece that has been shown at festivals all over the world. Beach has now been selected as one of 12 films to be part of the Short Film Festival Örvarpið, the television and film awards of the National Icelandic TV broadcasting station RUV, in Reykjavik, Iceland, which take place on 7 March.

The video presents two dancers who, although in two countries, are dancing together. The dancers are individually filmed on beaches in Iceland and Denmark and edited together to one screen-choreography. Heike collaborated with artists from Iceland, Denmark and the UK to produce Beach.

Closer to home, ‘Extreme Landscapes’ is an international collaborative installation which is currently exhibited at Dance City in Newcastle.

It includes screendances that are created by Mexican/American choreographer Ana Baer, Associate Professor at Texas State University, who filmed on the Great Dunes in Colorado, and Teesside’s BA (Hons) Dance graduate Jessica Smith, who filmed in the caves of North Yorkshire, as well as Heike’s work which was developed in the challenging environment in Iceland.

The installation is running every day at the Dance City Exhibition Space until 27 April.

Heike said: 'My interest lays in the exploration of landscapes and environments and the emotions and associations we have when we are at different spaces such as extreme landscapes. Screendance allows us to capture these experiences for audiences all over the world.

'It is exciting to be able to show my work in other countries and I love collaborating with artists from different places. I feel privileged to be able to travel and work with artists from all over the world - it enriches my art and also allows me to bring work from international collaborations to Teesside.' Heike and Jessica Smith are also Co-Artistic Directors of Tees Dance Film Fest which will take place at mima on Thursday 14 May. The festival focuses on interdisciplinary projects that merge choreography and innovative filmmaking and, besides professional films, has a strong focus on work by young people aged between 14 and 25-years-old.