Animals on the Beach & my choreographed body … revisited
Deborah Hay is known as one of the most influential choreographers of postmodern dance in the 20th and 21st century. She was a founding member of the experimental Judson Dance Theater and toured with the world-renowned Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Her creative energy, her methods and artistic practices are still a source of great inspiration for generations of young dancers today. In late February, this legend of choreography will present two new productions at Tanzquartier Wien.
Animals on the Beach
They look like animals on the beach, thought Deborah Hay as she observed workshop participants and didn’t really know what she was seeing: it was precise, but also poetic and enigmatic. The association led Hay to the title of her new piece, Animals on the Beach, in which she has collaborated with five outstanding dancers familiar with the intimacy and stringency of her performance practice, and who have also contributed their own knowledge. For Deborah Hay is less interested in the movement than the person dancing and the relationships that create this dance.
my choreographed body … revisited
50 years’ practice has deeply choreographed Deborah Hay as an artist. In order to preserve her interest in dance, Hay has continually re-invented how she engages in it. Her new solo, my choreographed body… revisited, a tribute to this wealth of experience – Hay is without the compositional edifice that previously determined one solo from the Other.
was a founding member of the experimental Judson Dance Theater, and toured worldwide in 1964 with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. For the last 50 years, she has written and published while developing her own language for dance practice and choreography, which she applies in her work with both untrained and professional dancers.
Commissioned works were produced by the Forsythe Company, Toronto Dance Theater and Cullberg Ballet, among others. Last year the MoMA opened its major exhibition Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done, which features Hay’s work alongside that of her pioneering dance contemporaries Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Steve Paxton and others. In 2019 Tanz im August presented a RE-Perspective of Hay’s work from 1968 to the present in Berlin. Her books are Lamb at the Altar: The Story of a Dance (1990), My Body, the Buddhist (2000) and Using the Sky (2019).
Credits
75 minutes, no intermission
In case of sold-out performances waiting numbers for remaining tickets are handed out at the evening box office opening one hour before showtime.