Making Dances
Cunningham, Monnier & Dance On Ensemble

Photos: Jubal Battisti

The radically experimental dance piece “Story” (1963) by Merce Cunningham is one of the most memorable works in modern dance history. In the historical work, the dancers were able to make decisions about space, time and the sequence of their movements. In the first part of the evening MAKING DANCES at Kampnagel, this historical masterpiece of postmodern dance is reimagined by the Dance On Ensemble. Based on fragmentary archive material (a single film recording, choreographic notations, anecdotal reports), the dancers integrate new elements into the indeterminate structure of the piece. At each venue, a local artist now takes on the historical role of Robert Rauschenberg, whose décor at the time consisted of objects he found near the theatre. In Hamburg, the work of Hamburg-based visual artist Anik Lazar will be part of the stage choreography. The second part of the evening is a contemporary, choreographic response to “Story”: French choreographer Mathilde Monnier responds to Cunningham’s work with “never ending (Story)”, using the poetry of David Antin, a contemporary of Cunningham/ Cage, as a starting point.

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Constellation Lucinda Childs

Images: Lucinda Childs

An expanded season of programming on the work of Lucinda Childs, encompassing performances, film screenings, lectures, talks and an exhibition of her scores.

Born in New York, Lucinda Childs started her career at the Judson Dance Theatre in 1963. In 1973, she formed her own company, with which she has created over 50 works. Since 1981, she has choreographed more than 30 works for major companies, such as the Ballet de l’Opéra national de Paris, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, the Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, the Berlin State Ballet or Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Company, and for theatres such as the Los Angeles Opera, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein or La Monnaie in Brussels. Her choreographies are known for their minimalist movements and complex transitions, transforming the slightest movements into intricate choreographic masterpieces.

 

28 February:

Screening of the film LA GRANDE FUGUE (2017), by Marie Helène Rebois

2 March:

Lecture Lucinda Childs, Page in Hand, by LOU FORSTER

2-11 March:

Exhibition Lucinda Childs, Nothing Personal 1963-1981.

Curated by Lou Forster, mobile exhibition by CND Paris

2-4 March:

Film screening LUCINDA CHILDS

Written and directed by: Patrick Bensard

2-4 March:

Lucinda Childs and Philip Glass: DANCE

Interpretation BALLET DE L’OPÉRA DE LYON

3 March:

POST-PERFORMANCE CONVERSATION with Lucinda Childs

Moderated by journalist and dance history teacher, Bàrbara Raubert

3-4 March:

Dance On Ensemble, Works in Silence

4 March:

Screening Cèl·lulaLAB – CALICO MINGLING (1973)

Open presentation of the transmission laboratory of the piece by Lucinda Childs for non-stage spaces and for 8 dancers. Led by TY BOOMERSHINE within the programme CÈL·LULA_LAB.

4-5 March:

Ruth Childs, Judson Program: Pastime (1963), Carnation (1964) & Museum piece (1965)

 

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any attempt will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones

Jan Martens/GRIP & Dance On Ensemble

A production about the power that lies in being out of step, performed by a seventeen-strong, atypical corps de ballet made up of unique personalities.

The heterogeneous group of dancers between the ages of 18 and 71, with diverse backgrounds and track records, find and strengthen each other on stage. In any attempt (…) they seek their own voice within the dance and beyond, looking for an idiom that fits them like a glove. One by one they claim their place on stage, without cutting off the others for all that. A horizontal exercise in giving each other the necessary space, while being careful not to steal the limelight. In times of extreme polarization, this group sets social dogmas aside to recognize and embrace a range of distinct identities. Being uninhibitedly themselves – in both life and art – with the stage as their ideological testing ground.

Photo: Phile Deprez

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Mellowing
Christos Papadopoulos & Dance On Ensemble

 

World premiere

 

A body that is outwardly still and inwardly vibrating – what processes does the energy undergo before it breaks through? How does it change when the body matures?

In his new production „MELLOWING“ Greek choreographer Christos Papadopoulos embarks on his inaugural collaboration with the dancers of the Dance On Ensemble. Incorporating their knowledge and experience into the creation, together they explore moments of perception and intensities of the moment that create a lively restlessness, a permanent vibration in which the spectator is inevitably involved.

Christos Papadopoulos’ works are fed by an intensely observant approach to movement and often unfold a lively and meditative power. His attention is focused on the minimal shifts of perception, the perpetual, often unnoticed and yet powerful movements that are ever-present in nature, in everyday life, within physical phenomena and political contexts. His debut “Elvedon” (2016) was inspired by Virginia Woolf’s novel “The Waves” and captures the continuous undulation of the sea. This was followed by “Opus” and his third choreography “ION”, an artistic exploration of the phenomenon of ionization and its underlying forces of attraction and repulsion. In his latest work, “Larsen C”, he turns his attention to the micro-phenomena of movement, this time inspired by the popularised iceberg of the same name, which lost a large part of its surface in 2017.

Production: DANCE ON / Bureau Ritter
Coproduction: ONASSIS STEGI, Athens and Centre chorégraphique national de Rillieux-la-Pape / Direction Yuval PICK, as part of the accueil-studio programme.
Supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.

Photo and trailer: Jubal Battisti  

 

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Radialsystem

Works in Silence at 30CC/Schouwburg

Due to delays in the renovation of our building, this performance cannot take place in STUK. It will be moved to 30CC/Schouwburg.

Works in Silence offers a unique insight into the early work and artistic development of Lucinda Childs, an icon of American modern dance and one of the most important choreographers of the twentieth century. Six dancers, from the 40+ ensemble Dance On, perform a selection of choreographies from Childs’s extensive repertoire: fascinating both for their rarity and undeniable influence on international dance and visual art. These works were performed throughout the 1970s in museums, churches and public spaces, yet most have hardly, if at all, been staged ever since.

In these dances, Childs has left behind props, objects, the spoken word, symbolic movement – all hallmarks of the era of the Judson Dance Theater – and chosen to focus on the passage of the body through space. To zero in on the essence of initial movement, which, for Childs, is the act of walking. From walking to running, to changing direction, to skipping, to leaping: the Works in Silence illustrate the evolution of movement into dance through the choreographic vision of Lucinda Childs.

These works express a fragility and a humanity that is a perfect example of the value of experience, and ideally suited to a group of dancers that bring with them their own abundant histories and knowledge. In the act of stripping away all artifice and theatricality, the beauty and truth of wisdom is confronted, shared, and exposed. A slice of dance history not to be missed.

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Preludes and Fugues
Magdalena Reiter & Mateja Rebolj at Cofestival

In 2003, Magdalena Reiter and Mateja Rebolj created the  intergenerational dance collective Forma Interrogativa. Twenty years later, their second collaboration Preludes and Fugues is a moving inventory of their artistic oeuvres, their dance life and their times.

Dancing to seven preludes and fugues from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Magdalena Reiter and Mateja Rebolj, enter into a dialogue with the time that has settled into their bodies.

“Every body, and especially the woman’s body, is a space where personal experiences, culture, society, collective and private memory collide and intertwine. The juxtaposition of two dancers in two different age periods thematically addresses the question of the body marked by time. Life’s motifs evolve and build on each other through the passage of time and each singularity, but in the end all the bodies play out the same topics.”

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COFESTIVAL 2022
International festival of contemporary dance

 

 

CoFestival 2022 can be divided into three thematic strands. The first one deals with choreographic material through collective or subjective time (Moritz Ostruschnjak, Michiel Vandevelde, Mateja Rebolj and Magdalena Reiter, Alma Söderberg with Cullberg), the second one observes the body and life through the prism of virtual and digital landscapes (Yuske Taninaka, Aleksandar Georgiev with his team, Barbara Matijević and Giuseppe Chico), while the third transforms the contemporary moment into a poetic image that inevitably flows out into the wild (Věra Ondrašíková and her collective, Mala Kline).

This edition of CoFestival will be accompanied by a discursive programme with talks, book presentations, a film programme and the launch of a new publication marking the tenth anniversary of the festival.

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Kondenz Festival
Radical Vulnerability

The 15th Kondenz festival of contemporary dance and performance takes place under the motto of “radical vulnerability”. Through a programme of performances, lectures, presentations and conversations, we want to speak from our position as independent dance artists, as individuals who choose to work on the stage, and as a collective that struggles to maintain and preserve the collective spirit. We are also citizens in a society that is falling apart at all seams. Let’s talk about how radically threatened we all are and how okay it is to show our sensitivity, our weaknesses, but also our passion not to give up.

Are we today as bodies, sentient machines, and as communities, groups, alliances, couples… radically vulnerable, on the edge of survival of this form of sociability? Are we a badly wounded body that needs a look full of love, another touch, a beautiful memory, a kiss, a brace, before it closes its eyes forever?

With this year’s programme, we therefore return to the past by evoking the work of two great female artists, Lucinda Childs and Katalin Ladik. We expose all our weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the works About exhaustion, Vulnerable Bodies, Trança, Why not(?), and rush into a future that is brave and feminist.

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