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.

“This work is dedicated to those that have the courage to move, to those who’s  bodies carry borders.” — Amanda Piña

DANZA Y FRONTERA is the latest work in the series Endangered Human Movements and it is based on a dance that arises at the border between Mexico and the US. The dance from the neighbourhood of El Ejido Veinte of Matamoros, Tamaulipas (Mexico), is performed today in a context of extreme violence related to a border where narcotraffic, militarization, and cheap labour industries meet. The dance has its roots in an ancient pre-hispanic dance form that was later used by the Spanish Crown (Casa de Austria/Habsburg) to develop the conquest of Mexico as a “danza de conquista”, a conquest dance. It continued to transform itself till today and it can be understood as a form of resistance to colonial and later neoliberal forces. A contemporary pop-cultural appropriation in which indigenous practices, colonial narratives, Hip Hop culture and indigenous mysticism resonate.

DANZA Y FRONTERA explores this border choreography and brings its protagonists to Vienna in the context of the advancement of “Fortress Europe”. As border subjects, the performers inhabit a place in between, understanding its power and limitations, moving beyond all notions of borders be they cultural, national or aesthetic.