OILinity
“Kat Válastur, is currently one of the most exciting choreographers in the Berlin dance scene. She is always able to combine the archaic and contemporary elements. The choreographer, however, does not only dive into old myths, but she also reflects through her works the social conditions of our times.” – Sandra Luzina, Der Tagesspiegel
„I felt my body motorized, burning oil, burning fuel as if my blood was replaced by oil. I was circulating oil. I was circulating economy.“ – Kat Válastur on her stay in the oil metropolis Baku
Kat Válastur’s production is a choreographic essay on crude oil dependence by Western societies. The Berlin choreographer places three dancers into an adventurous game called OILinity, letting them wander through a landscape animated by petroleum, and situated in a sculptural obstacle course. Its core is the “spinning melancholy”, a cylindrical object that has nothing more in mind than preserving its own system.
With forceful movements, meticulous choreography, and black humour, OILinity confronts the audience with a dance work that reveals the hidden human traits as well as those of petroleum, finding a vocabulary of movement in which forces and speeds culminate in the crude beauty of dripping oil.
choreographies create highly intense atmospheres. Fiction and reality merge into speculative notions, challenging the senses and the rules of ordinary perception. As part of her creative process she utilises personal diagrams, scores drawings and texts that she creates for each dance piece. In 2016 she was acclaimed as a promising talent for dance by the magazine tanz.
Her works are presented nationally and internationally at theatres and festivals. She studied dance at the Hellenic School of Dance, at the Trisha Brown Studios in New York on a Fulbright scholarship, and received a Master Degree from the (SODA) Master Program at the Inter-University Center for Dance in Berlin.
Credits
On 16 March the performance will be followed by an Artist Talk with Kat Válastur and Liz King.
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