Tanzquartier Wien

„In Rule of Three the combination of dance, music, light, and text is at service of a global audiovisual effect; abstract yet very well defined in its aesthetic agenda.“ — El Balandre

Rule of Three takes as its starting point our ability to zap in a flash from one impression to another. A sequence of scenes echoes the fragmentary experience of reality that is the consequence of this overload of stimuli. Rule of Three positions itself as a danced performance somewhere in between a concert and a short-story collection – written with bodies, light, music, costumes and text. An untamed meditation which, just like these times, builds on contrasts: between stillness and explosion, precision and intuition, heart and reason. On stage, performers Steven Michel, Julien Josse and Courtney May Robertson engage in a dialogue with NAH’s eclectic musical composition and keep driving up the sensory stimulation.

„Like boarded up windows, like stone steps, like the sound of voices from a far away room, like the smell of burning, like the way that condensation forms on windows, like searching for something, like searching through rooms.” — Tim Etchells

Shown and Told is a dynamic but fragile performance collage built from studio improvisation, balancing fixed material and possibilities for free-play. Arising from an exchange between choreographer and dancer Meg Stuart and writer and performance maker Tim Etchells, it exposes the very different practice and sensibilities of these two artists, exploring the relationship between movement, image and performing bodies. Working with vivid and surprising images, some of them physical some of them linguistic, the two performers develop a conversation that is tough, touching and comical by turns.

Willi Dorner is well-known both for his pointed works in public space and his clever play with the world of media. In his latest piece, he lets a real body collide with its virtual reality and makes tangible the dissolutionary tendencies of our selves in the pixel deserts of digital images in an ingenious live performance. many thematises the compulsion for self-mediatisation, the permanent displaying of oneself boosted by social media and the “tyranny of transparency” (Byung-Chul Han) in our society. Does one have to put oneself before the public on the Net to prove one’s existence?

The Disney imperium made Snow White the epitome of the happy girl in films and leisure parks. Audiences from Los Angeles to Hong Kong are enchanted by their waving and smiling princess actresses. Choreographer Eisa Jocson observes this apparently universal performance of happiness from a particular perspective: Disneyland Hong Kong is one of the most important employers of Philippine dancers in the region but, because of their skin colour, they are only cast in nameless supporting roles. Together with performance artist Russ Ligtas, Eisa Jocson hijaks Snow White’s physicality and speech and creates a playing field of identities. By means of mimicry and reproduction they overwrite the entertainment system’s pre-programed narratives and corrupt a closed world with their foreign bodies. In keeping with her previous solo works, Jocson continues in Princess to examine the interrelations of emotional labour, embodiment and the construction of racial and gender identities.

“When I saw the dance for the first time in a youtube video I said to myself, something very strong must happen to this men in order for them to move like this.” — Leonor Maldonado, filmmaker

The starting point for DANZA Y FRONTERA (dance and border) is a choreography that arises at the border between Mexico and the US. The dance from the neighbourhood of El Ejido Veinte of the city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas (Mexico) is performed today only by men, in a context of extreme violence related to the border, narco-traffic and narco-culture. Developed by a group of youngsters from the neighborhood under the direction of Rodrigo de la Torre, twenty years ago, the choreography is an updated form of an ancient dance that exists in Mexico since pre-hispanic times. This dance was later used by the Casa Austria (Habsburg) and the Spanish Crown to drive the conquest of Mexico forward. It continued to transform itself and has survived till today. A contemporary pop-cultural appropriation in which indigenous practices, colonial narratives, Hip Hop culture and mysticism resonate together.

DANZA Y FRONTERA explores this border choreography and brings its protagonists across the borders of Europe, to create a performance about a potent political embodiment of brotherhood, liminality and struggle, whose function goes far beyond stage and representation. As border subjects, the performers inhabit a place in between, understanding its power and limitations, convinced that dance will always go beyond all notions of borders be they cultural, national or aesthetic.

The theory supporting programme with contributions by Nicole Haitzinger, Alma Quintana and Juan Carlos Palma will be published by mid-September on our website.