Ivo Dimchev
Fest
North American Premiere
THURS JAN 8, 10:00 PM
FRI JAN 9, 10:00 PM
SUN JAN 11, 10:30 PM
Run time: 60 minutes
ABRONS ARTS CENTER PLAYHOUSE
466 Grand Street / tickets $20
Fest is set in the context of an imaginary festival in Copenhagen. The main characters are the performer Ivo Dimchev, a curator, a technician, and a critic. What starts off as a realistic piece soon turns into a fantasy about sex and power.
“One day I just realized how bored I was with the conventionality of my everyday professional communications. So I thought that breaking this convention by creating a fictional story would be a good way to go. Fest tells the story of my going to a festival in Copenhagen to present my solo Som Faves. The performance explores and makes visible the subconscious connections between power and desire in any professional relations. Fest is absolute fiction and is not based on any real personal experience. Let’s say it’s inspired by some… But mostly it’s inspired by my guilty love for Theatre in its more ‘conventional’ setting.” – Ivo Dimchev
Fest was produced by Humarts Foundation and Volksroom Brussels with co-production support from ImPulsTanz, Vienna; Kaaitheater, Brussels; Frascati, Amsterdam. This production of Fest was supported by fund from the Bundeskanzleramt Österreich.
photo by Danny Willems
idea, text, direction- Ivo Dimchev
performed by- Dolores Hulan, Sandra Wieser, Mirko Feliziani, Ivo Dimchev
light design: Giacomo Gorini
music: Emilian Gatsov
production of Humarts Foundation and Volksroom Brussels
co-produced by Impulstanz Vienna, Kaaitheater Brussels, Frascati Amsterdam
Ivo Dimchev /1976/ is a choreographer and performer from Bulgaria. His work is extreme and colorful mixture of performance art ,dance, theater, music, drawings and photography. Dimchev is author of more then 30 performances. He has received numerous international awards for dance and theater and has presented his work all over Europe , South and North America.
Besides his artistic work Ivo Dimchev gives master classes in the National theater academy/Budapest , the Royal dance conservatorium of Belgium/Antwerp, Hochschule der Künste/Bern, DanceWeb/Vienna etc. He is founder and director of Humarts foundation in Bulgaria and organizes every year a National competition for contemporary choreography.
Since Oct 2009 after doing his master studies on performing arts at Dasarts academy / Amsterdam , Ivo Dimchev moved to Brussels where he opened a performance space Volksroom which weekly presents international young artists.From Jan 2013 Ivo Dimchev is an Artist in Residence in Kaaitheater / Brussels for 4 years. In 2014 Ivo opened his new place MOZEI in Sofia Bulgaria , an independent space focused on contemporary art and music.
“Mr. Dimchev may push taboos in his work, but his timing, his hushed, whispery asides and the two-way conversations uttered under his breath are virtuosic — even reminiscent of Robin Williams. Animalistic one moment, delicate the next, he meshes darkness and lightness with verbal and physical dexterity.”
By Gia Kourlas, The New York Times, Published September 21st, 2014
“The word on the street is that this Ivo Dimchev guy is unpredictable, even dangerous. You just don’t know what will happen when you enter the auditiorium. Mystery and danger, powerful human aphrodisiacs.”
La Vie Viennoise Blog, Published August 5, 2012
“In that work Mr. Dimchev, a Bulgarian artist who lives in Brussels, transformed himself into an aging transsexual, both ethereal and streetwise, to explore sexual and cultural consumption. By the end of the night he drew his own blood into a vial and auctioned it off to the highest bidder. It was fantastic.”
By Gia Kourlas, The New York Times, Published May 1, 2011
“Dimchev masterfully manipulates the truth with the physical metamorphosis of his trickster character; his carriage and execution sew the fabric of the whole together. I felt all the richer for having been played his fool.”
By Lucy M. May, The Dance Current, Published December 3, 2011