…ALBUM, the muse at work, by dancer-choreographer Naïma Mazic with percussionist-vibraphonist Evi Filippou and a record player, is based on nine of countless songs named after romantic partners of jazz musicians or written by female composers. Hear and now: polyrhythmic choreographies of care and inspiration. Informed by the divine figure of the muse, ALBUM manipulates her position, questioning the patriarchal utilization of reproductive labor. n ï m company shares a record of nine love stories by co-musing with Carla Bley, Moki Cherry, Mary Lou Williams and more. Being named after a jazz ballad, having grown up in a jazz club and a BigBand, dancer/choreographer Naïma Mazic started to investigate songs that she felt drawn to dance to – endless tunes named after women, dedicated to romantic partners that are managers, producers, mothers, artists. ALBUM is an interaction between these songs and music written by female composers. Shared polyrhythmic choreographies between dance and music, together with percussionist/vibraphonist Evi Filippou and a record player, tell stories of creative and reproductive labor and the patriarchal structures that distort them. The performers’ bodies, movements, and musicality shift from tune to tune, from A side to B side, to contain a relationship that swings from intimate to professional and inspiring to possessive. The piece unfolds like a concert – between nine tracks, narratives emerge, passing through New York Jazz clubs, Viennese bedrooms, and your living room. Communing with the goddess, arranging scores of text, biography, and feminist utopias, and honoring the legacy of displacement, labor, and fragmentation* within the historically Black American jazz tradition, ALBUM proposes co-musing as a politic of care. We celebrate the women that have been lazily mythologized**, just as the nine divine muses.

*Fred Moten
**Daphne Brooks: Liner Notes for the Revolutio

CREDITS

Director, concept, choreography, dance Naïma Mazic

Vibraphone, drums, percussion & musical arrangements Evi Filippou

Music by Mary Lou Williams, Carla Bley, Charlie Haden, Alice Coltrane, Bill Evans, John Coltrane, mathias rüegg, Lil‘ Hardin Armstrong Dramaturgy, co-concept Maeve Johnson

Text Maeve Johnson & Naïma Mazic

Stage Design, research Hanna Naske

Concept development, poster design Is Ali

Costume design Naïma Mazic

Costumes Tamara Yael

Dance coaching Cat Paz Jimenez

Outside eyes Sara Ostertag, Vera Rivas, Alaa Alkurdi Musicologist Harald Kisiedu 

Production more2rhythm, Naïma Mazic & Senem Kahraman

Co-production brut Wien

Thanks to Gabriela Reyna, Mael Blau, Golnar Shahyar, Andrej Prozorov, Imani Rameses, Makisig Akin,Anya Cloud, Robyn Schulkowsky, Marcela Giesche, Meg Stuart, Doug Weiss, Klara Kostal,Julian Schönfeld, Elisabeth Naske, Miro Wahba, Ingrid Oberkanins

Supported by the Federal Ministry of Art, Culture, Civil Service and Sport, the City of Vienna’s Department of Cultural Affairs, Porgy & Bess – Jazz & Music Club, Vienna, Bears in the Park, Vienna, LAKE Studios Berlin.

Photos: Naima Maleika