Vitamin S

Vitamin S is a free improvisation collective founded in 2000 in Auckland, New Zealand. It engages in performance, workshops, and community outreach and education, and facilitates such improvised music festivals as the annual Sound Invention Convention and other events. The non-profit collective is supported by grants from Creative New Zealandand the Auckland City Council.

Vitamin S presents regular weekly random trios. These trios, usually two per night, are drawn in advance from the Vitamin S pool using a customised interface that is part of the Vitamin S website. The pool currently contains over 100 improvisers and just over 50 non-performing interested parties. Often the participants may not have met before their performance. Regular participants include musicians, dancers, actors, poets, sound artists and a puppeteer. Each trio generally performs a set of between 30 and 45 minutes, which may be made up of several short improvisations or a single longer work.

There are few rules or constraints regarding the form that an improvisation will take. The open nature of Vitamin S enables musicians and performers from widely different backgrounds, genres and art-forms to perform together. Although rehearsal is discouraged for regular pool nights, pre-performance discussions of concept or approach are encouraged.

The group offers regular workshops for improvisers. These are facilitated by experienced local improvising musicians such as Phil Dadson (From Scratch), Paul Buckton and James McCarthy or dancers such as Kristian Larsen, as well as performers from other parts of New Zealand, such as Anthony Donaldson and Jeff Henderson (Wellington). Whenever the opportunity arises Vitamin S also hosts workshops with international improvisers such as Susie Ibarra (New York), Eric Boeren (Netherlands), Manon-Liu Winter, Heinz-Peter Lindshalm/Petra Stump (Vienna), DJ Olive (NY), Mathieu Werchowski (France), The Necks (Australia/Europe), Mark Trayle (USA), The Thing and Experimenta (Argentina).

Vitamin S is involved in curating festivals and events.

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