©Jan Buteijn
Niels Weijer (1988, NL) is a dancer and choreographer whose work exists in the niche between dance and visual art. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Modern Dance from Codarts Rotterdam and a Master's in Choreography from HZT Berlin. His work has been showcased at Bauhaus Dessau, Museum Quartier Vienna, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Uferstudios Berlin, Kunstquartier Bethanien Berlin, and Lobe Block.
Choreographic-Sculpting
a form of sensingNiels creates his choreographies through his method of Choreographic-Sculpting(CS). CS embraces the negotiation between body and object—entering into a dance of mutual sensing—where the object and the self are in continuous, silent dialogue. It is an ongoing exploration of how we come into relation with what surrounds us, and how that relation reveals something about who we are. It is a dance about sensing oneself in relation to an object.
An object, in this practice, is not just a thing—a cup, a chair, something we wear. An object can be a forest, a city, a landscape. An object may be a space, a sound, a situation. An object is anything that invites a felt response in the body—anything with presence and form. For me, objects include environments, surroundings, textures of experience that hold us, move us, and ask something of us.
His work is about forming a notion of the self through this relational field—how the felt sense of self responds to things. How the outer world meets the inner world. And it is also about presence—how our being, our aliveness, shapes the object in return. How we affect what we touch, move with, and attend to.
His practice is a form of sensing. A dancing through the senses. It is an exercise in tuning the body into a receptive, open, and calm state—into a state of listening. It explores how objects invite movement, stillness, comfort, alertness, responsiveness. It is a way of attuning to the world. A way of making visible the invisible space in between things.
Through systems of seeing and hearing, through the touch of skin, through proximity and distance, his work invites a sensing of interconnectedness—between people, between bodies and objects, and between body-object-and-others. It is a poetic method of restating how body and object are inherently intertwined.
It is a choreography of relation. A sculpting of presence. A dance of sensing.
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Choreographic-sculpting (CS) combines dancing with sculpting. His dances are presented as immersive moving sculptures that oscillate through task-driven choreographic scores. The moving sculptures are three-dimensional and hold the full content of their concept in their movement material, which he calls navigators. Navigators are piece-specific sets of task-driven guides through which the dancers oscillate, creating the idea of a rotating sculpture with a circular narrative.
The dance in CS is created through a listening-based exchange with objects. By channeling awareness through and with the object, he allows the objects to influence the movements of the body and the concepts of his pieces. The concept and different movement qualities together form the navigators of the work. The navigators are situations, tools, and qualities.
Situations are agreements in which the dancers are in for a longer period of time (an example of a situation in daily life could be “a picnic in the park with friends”).
Tools are the instructions for how to interact in the situation (in the example of the picnic: chatting with friends, playing a game, etc.). Tools crossover between situations, but could sometimes be situation-specific.
Qualities are the moods that can give a “color” to the situations and tools. The choreography that unfolds out of this oscillates from one situation to the other and back again. This gives clear distinction between parts of the work but allows for them to be chosen at will.
The core of this way of working is that work can stay improvised and is shaped through the interaction with the navigators, the object,, and the other dancers. The dancers are always responding to someone or something but have the freedom to decide within the rules what this would be.
This interplay between situations, tools, and qualities can be seen as a kaleidoscope, where shifting patterns emerge from layered elements constantly evolving and interacting. Just like with a turning kaleidoscope, the viewer's perspective continually shifts, revealing new combinations and arrangements, offering a transformative viewing experience.