Performance by MQ Artist-in-Residence Thamsanqa Majela: ENCOUNTER/KOPANO
with Sarai Vangelli de Cresci & Eva Lucia Schmölzer

Tue 12.08., 18h | MQ Main Courtyard (next to Gonflable sculpture by Hans Kupelwieser)
Free entry

Kopano is a contemporary work which looks into the marriage of African dance (sePedi,seTswana,isiZulu) and classical music. The performer(s) come to a place/space where they communicate in different mediums of traditional dance and classic music to encounter something different in interpretation to finally reach a point of harmony in traditional music and dance through time signature.
Our intention with the collaboration is to identify and find bridges of harmony and similarities in different cultures. Through different traditional dances and their music, we seek to identify the similarities of time-signature in their music and the essense grounding found in their dance. Our intention is to create a performance that highlights the presence and possibilities of unity within a complex structure/world. We hope to continue the collaboration through a deeper research in tradition and electronic music, and more choreographic exploration to create a longer body of work/performance.

Thamsanqa (Thami) Majela is an award winning artist from South Africa. He is a dancer, teacher and choreographer. Thami is a graduate from P.A.R.T.S (Performing Arts, Research and Training Studios) in Belgium.
He has collaborated with international and local artists through dance, film and has participated in many international residencies and has choreographed many dance performances that speaks about socio-political issues, LGBTQIA+ related issues particularly related to healing trauma. Thami also shares his Movement Studies workshops internationally in the hopes of making dance training more accessible and possibly free for dancers and non-dancers.
He is currently an Artist-in-Residence at MQ, through the Focus International, a new program of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport where he is working at the Vienna International Dance Festival, ImPulstanz, as part of his artistic journey to gain work experience.

Sarai Vangelli de Cresci (1994) is an Italian-Japanese composer born in Rome and based in Vienna (Austria). She started to study classical piano as a child as an autodidact and she received an artistic formation on visual art, such as drawing, oil painting, fashion design and engraving with her father (painter, graphic designer, architect ). At the age of 24 she finished the Bachelor of piano at “Istituto Musicale L.Boccherini” of Lucca obtaining the highest mark (110). Soon after she attended a Master of piano at “Conservatorio E.dall’Abaco” in Verona and graduated again with the highest mark (110).

Eva Lucia Schmölzer is a violinist.With her extensive solo and chamber music repertoire, she has performed across Austria in renowned venues such as the Musikverein Graz, Altes Rathaus Wien, Minoritensaal Graz, Konzerthaus Wien, Orpheum Wien, Mozarthaus Wien, Muth, and many more. Her concert activity has taken her around the globe, including appearances at the Summit Music Festival in New York, the New England Conservatory in Boston, the Crans-Montana Classics Festival in Switzerland (as a soloist with Shlomo Mintz), the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, and the Musiktage at Lake Starnberg in Germany, among others.

Photo Credits: © Val Adamson | IMvelo