Tanzquartier Wien

In diesem Workshop zeigt Livia Kojo Alour, wie sie in ihren Arbeiten zwischen klassischer Unterhaltung, Zirkus und Theater die Stimme erhebt, um Stereotypen und institutionellem Rassismus an der Schnittstelle von klassenbedingter und sexistischer Ausgrenzung zu trotzen. Obwohl sie von einer Hochschulbildung im künstlerischen Bereich – insbesondere im Tanz – ausgeschlossen war, hat Livia Kojo Alour eine erfolgreiche Karriere als schwarze queere Performerin aufgebaut. Alour teilt nicht nur ihre persönlichen Erfahrungen, sie stellt auch ihre Arbeitstechniken vor und spricht über die Bedeutung der fortschreitenden Dekolonisierung der darstellenden Künste.

Katie Beswick
Embodiment and the working class: habitus and infrapoltics 

Societies such as the USA and UK operate through both explicit and implicit semiotics of class, in which class stratification serves as a powerful means of social control. In these contexts, notions of class perform through structures of relation as well as within the symbolic and material realm. In this way, class intersects with raced and gendered positionalities and can efface the importance of class as a lens for understanding inequalities, and demanding justice. Classed subjects are often aware of their own positions within an overarching structure of inequality, but also subject to classed interpellations (that might be expressed through raced or gendered language), which studies have demonstrated have damaging effects on the well-being of those classed subjects who experience upward social mobility (Crew 2020). In this paper, I want to think about how embodied movement practices might contribute to a semiotics of class, and, when leveraged in certain contexts, bring about moments of social justice. To do so, I apply two theoretical lenses, Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and Scott’s infrapolitics to think about the movement practices of working-class Litefeet dancers in New York City’s subway system, and working-class beatboxers in London’s Battersea Arts Centre. In both cases, I analyse the ways in which physical spaces (the subway and the theatre) are effectively disrupted through movement in order to stage a working-class politics, which draws from a repertoire that might be framed as habitus but might also be understood within the frame of infrapolitics.

Alice Baldock
Butoh Bodies in postwar Japan: Self-annihilation, becoming nothing, and the erasure of the socially marked body  

This presentation is an example of how attention to class, and to how class intersects with both gender and dis/ability and illness, can lead to dance which can reimagine social possibilities. This presentation bridges the historical and the contemporary, by charting the trajectory of ankoku butoh – the ‘dance of utter darkness’ – from its conception by women dancers in the early postwar Tokyo, to its manifestation around the world in the 21st century.  These dancers’ shared idea of the body began in the early postwar context, known as the ‘age of the flesh’, in which male intellectuals from elite institutions postulated that the only source of knowledge one could trust was nikutai, or the flesh body. I show how these ideas were also taken up by a group of women dancers to show that the body was the source of knowledge about the world, but that this knowledge came from paying attention to every-body. The dance that these women created, butoh, developed by incorporating bodies which had become outcast in the social context of postwar Japan. The presentation will demonstrate how the simultaneous attention to, and erasure of these marginalised categories produced a new aesthetic style and consider the potential applications of this style to ways of living for everybody.

Hannes Bohne
(Historical) intersections of class and race in contemporary dance 

This lecture performance explores traces of how social constructs of class and race are possibly intertwined with and present in contemporary dance practices. It will ask who is able to experience and practice contemporary dance as meaningful and artistic, if (and how) social constructs of class and race are still present in contemporary dance. Do teaching and performances of contemporary dance exclude dancers and audiences with certain backgrounds systematically? Based on a historiographic perspective on the beginnings of modern dance in the 1920s in Germany and the influences of ‘Körperkultur’ and ‘Lebensreform’ (including e.g. Yoga practices, ideals of the ‘natural’ body and ‘appropriate’ ways of life), I will argue that some practices of contemporary dance reproduce deeply rooted constructions of class and race. These considerations will be explored in a short experimental and participatory dance practice to question and experience possible constructs of class and race in contemporary dance technique. 

Wie hängen Sex, Kunst, Arbeit und Rechte zusammen? Was können wir in der öffentlichen Debatte zur Sexarbeit über Klassenbeziehungen, Arbeitsrechte und Kapitalismus lernen? Alina-Michelle Seiler and Trajche Janushev sind Vertreter*innen von Red Edition, einer lokalen, von Sexarbeiter*innen geführten Community Organisation. Mit der Künstlerin Julischka Stengele sprechen sie über Heuchlerei, „Whorearchy“ und die Kunst des Hustle und Hustle als Kunst.

Dieser Workshop bietet Raum, um komplexe und manchmal auch unsichtbare Klassenstrukturen gemeinsam zu verhandeln. Ausgangspunkt ist ein gemeinsames Lesen von Mark Fishers Good for Nothing (in englischer Sprache) und Tanja Abous Prololesben und Arbeiter*innentöchter (in deutscher Sprache), das Klären von Verständnisfragen zu den Texten und der Austausch von Erfahrungen. Der zweite Teil des Workshops ist Körper- und Entspannungsübungen gewidmet, um verkörperte Aspekte von Klassenungleichheiten in den Blick zu nehmen. Der Fokus liegt dabei auf verschiedenen physischen Strukturen, wie zum Beispiel dem Skelett und der Muskulatur. Inwieweit ist Klasse eine körperliche Erfahrung? Wie manifestieren sich Klassenungleichheiten in Körpern?

Miriam Althammer
Movements of labour: On the interweaving of dance practices and work environments in modernity  

Using the example of the Loheland women’s settlement, my contribution deals with the construction of new physicality in the interweaving of gymnastics and agricultural-craft practices in German modernity. This dance-educational approach pursued a decidedly sociopolitical aim of shaping the bodies of women – mostly from bourgeois backgrounds – through labour: Dance education did not only take place in the gymnastics hall but was also situated in everyday work activities in the countryside, such as field work, basket weaving and furniture making. This gave rise to a new androgynous, muscular type of woman, which was sometimes heavily criticised as ‘Amazonian’.  In this context, modern settlement projects such as Loheland served as an escape from the big city characterised by industrialisation and urbanisation and at the same time, they brought bourgeois bodies closer to a rural body perceived as natural and primal – and thus closer to a type of working body differentiating itself from working-class bodies in factories. Following this interweaving of dance practices with work environments, the following questions arise: How did agricultural and craft activities, with their focus on physical challenge and exertion, inform women’s perceptions of their bodies and their artistic practice? To what extent did this change not only their physicality but also their attitude as women and citizens of the Weimar Republic? And can these forms of labour be understood as subversive body-based practices in the sense of shifting and questioning the social realities of the time? 

Anna Chwialkowska
Returning to words: Classist exclusions in dance practice through language 

By the age of 33, I decided to overcome my existential anxieties, leave my full-time job, and enrol in an intensive contemporary dance program that took ten months and 3.400 Euros. I now understand that the reason I hadn’t been able to take this step earlier wasn’t solely due to financial reasons. For a person with a working-class migrant background in Germany, in order to dance, the barriers seem higher than those one encounters if aspiring for an academic career. Not only does it require a distinct cultural capital (for example, the way arts are valued in one’s family), but also a different understanding of the body (beyond solely functional), as well as a specific verbal vocabulary. All of these are dispositions that people with working-class backgrounds, haunted by imposter syndrome, have to acquire laboriously. In this talk, I will focus on the subjectivation of individuals in the dance environment, which I will analyse through the lens of my own becoming in the Berlin dance scene, at the intersection of a specific concept of the body and verbal language. I will argue that these are essential to contemporary dance knowledge production. Where does specific verbal knowledge demarcate class distinctions and exclusions in dance? And how do these interfere with embodied practices? Through autoethnographic field research in workshops, dance classes as well as intensive programmes in German-speaking countries, I will highlight cases that depict class struggles appearing in situations such as workshop descriptions, instructions and conversations in the studio, and ultimately in application writing processes.

Ellen Jeffrey
The After-Hours: labour and repetition in (un)conscious bodies

A dancing body holds within itself numerous patternings of movement; sequences of motion that are choreographed, performed, improvised; sequences of motion that are also gestures of labour – serving coffee, making beds, inputting data; sequences of motion that are described as ‘stimming’ – a neurodiverse habit of tapping, rubbing, shaking. And when this body sleeps, the hours of its doing overspill into the hours of its rest, generating a night-time choreography of the body unconscious. Here, a dancing body re-encounters the repetitions of its day. Here, the movement sequences that a dancing body holds begin to seep and merge into one another, generating a blurred rhetoric of concealed mobilities and stilted gestures. There is a hierarchy to the patternings of movement that a dancing body holds: those that are shared (with a public), those that serve (a public), and those that are repressed (in/by a public). What happens when such hierarchies begin to be dismantled – how might this alter ideas of validity placed upon movement and ideas of validity placed upon a dancing body? What parallels might exist between movement performed unseen (after the hours of performance or labour) and movement performed in dream? This short performative lecture will seek to explore the entanglement of such movement patterns and the seeping that exists between them. It will investigate the ways of moving – and the ways of perceiving moving – that are made possible by drawing parallels between the movement that exists in doing and the dancing that exist in dreaming. 

Towards Race, Class and Hoe Tags: The Pedagogy of a Bitch verhandelt sowohl den offensichtlichen als auch den verborgenen Klassismus in Kunst und Kultur und die Tatsache, dass Klassismus nicht entkoppelt von Rassismus und Misogynie gedacht werden kann. Durch den Archetyp der Bitch formuliert Myassa Krait mit ihrem Performance-Projekt KDM Königin der Macht eine Kritik an den subtilen Auswirkungen des Kapitalismus: Wie schreibt sich Leistungsdruck, als Anpassungsdruck in Körper und Haut ein? Und welches Potenzial wohnt künstlerischen Ausdrucksformen inne, um den „Excellence“-Gedanken herauszufordern? Diese Auseinandersetzung entlarvt Herabwürdigungen und Deklassierungen, um die versteckten Ausschlussmechanismen zu benennen.

Der moderne Tanz als Kunstform entstand an der Wende zum 20. Jahrhundert inmitten des sich konsolidierenden Industriekapitalismus und der imperialen Landnahme. Indem er sich von Gesellschaftstänzen abgrenzte, in denen Körper und Bewegungen der kommerziellen Unterhaltung untergeordnet waren, und von der Sphäre der Fabrikproduktion, in der Körper und Bewegungen den Maschinen untergeordnet waren, konstituierte sich der moderne Tanz um die choreografische Erforschung von Körpern und Bewegungen, die von diesen Zwängen befreit waren. Dieser Workshop untersucht auf spekulative Art und Weise die konstitutive Beziehung des Tanzes zu den historischen Transformationen der Arbeit. Wie seine sich verändernden Ausdrucks- und Organisationsformen die Postindustrialisierung integriert haben und wie sie in der Gegenwart die vernetzte Welt der Arbeit auf Abruf integrieren. Dies wird ein Ausgangspunkt für eine Diskussion darüber sein, wie die Arbeitsbeziehungen die Bedingungen für das Feld verändern, und ein Versuch, choreografische Vorschläge zu entwickeln, die auf dieser Erfahrung fußen.

Susie Crow
Defined by Class: the social status of ballet dancers in Britain today 

In Britain, social class is seen to have particular influence; but as a ballet professional, I find it hard to define what social ‘class’ I might be considered part of.  Does this matter? Or might focused consideration of ballet’s perceived class characteristics as an occupation help to identify and address deeply rooted challenges for the art form? Classic definitions of social class and status reveal the ambiguous and contradictory position of professional dancers, the changing social roles and representation of ballet’s dancers over time; from courtiers to professionals, from ‘petits rats’ to respectable middle-class girls, from popular entertainers to avant-garde artists, from institutional employees to precarious self-employed independents, from fashionable elite performers to outdated and derided stereotypes.  How do such embedded perceptions persist in Britain, to what extent do they affect the practice of ballet in the studio, on stage and as portrayed on social media?  Britain’s dance ecology now embraces multiple forms alongside ballet; despite dance’s vestigial presence in general education, academic qualifications in dance have developed at all levels, from graded vocational examinations provided by teaching organisations outside the state curriculum to higher education to doctoral level.  Has this raised the social, economic and cultural status of dance as a profession?  Updating sociological models in response to cultural and social phenomena in the 21st century might help better reflect the changing situation in which dancers strive to maintain careers and make a life in ballet. 

Elena Novakovits
Dear institutions, dear collaborators: am I (t)here? 

Recently, I started identifying myself as a cultural worker in the performing arts field, as it can embrace the multiplicity of positions in which I have been operating throughout my professional trajectory. All of them are situated on the periphery – in and beyond – of the creative process, their labour remaining mostly invisible. Even if one could write a job description for each one of them, always hidden tasks, non-computable working hours, unpredictable needs, and unspoken paradoxes remain. This presentation, in the form of a letter, seeks to uncover how the invisible agency and labour of all ‘peripheral partners’ can generate wider layers of precarity within troubled socio-political contexts and non-transparent institutional models. Keeping a playful format that blends personal experiences, observations, thoughts, testimonies, images and tunes, I will share reflections from my personal journey on this labour that could be reconsidered. How might we deliberate on how the institutions and the central figures of each artistic project shape and enhance the precarious status of these peripheral voices? How, if we enact feminist practices and principles in our field of work, could we revalidate the position and endeavour of every contributor?

Joyraj Bhattacharjee, Srabanti Bhattacherjee, Sandra Chatterjee, Arko Mukhaerjee
Zoom-in from Priyonnath Manna Bustee Community Kitchen, Howrah, India 

Howrah, India, the heart of an iron industry in West Bengal, is home to 4.5 million people, a huge number of whom come from a working-class background. The district has witnessed severe poverty, racial discrimination, marginalisation and factory lockouts in the last four decades. Priyonnath Manna Bustee Community Kitchen, a labour canteen in Bajeshibpur, Howrah, was started in early 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown to feed people living in the nearby slums who are from working class families of the area. It was funded, for example, through online performances. Since then, volunteers and trustees have been running the initiative, finally buying the bit of land necessary and beginning to construct a new building with a fully equipped kitchen, from which the canteen is running, combined with an independent art space. In this hybrid online and video presentation, we will present this independent labour canteen and art space live from Priyonnath Manna Bustee Community Kitchen in Howrah, West Bengal, India. 

Sheezus H. Christin, La Terre’ und Susie Flowers gestalten einen unvergesslichen Abend. Die drei Künstler*innen, die schon oft die Bühne geteilt haben, sind eng mit der lokalen, queeren Performance-Szene verwoben und haben ein vielseitiges Repertoire an Performances und DJ-Sets in petto. Zur Abschlussparty der Winter School laden sie zum Zuschauen, Trinken, Entspannen und Tanzen ein. Mit den Sounds von La Terre’ and Susie Flowers und Überraschungsperformances bringen sie queere Wiener Welt des Drag ein Stückchen näher ans Tanzquartier: Let them eat bourgeoiss!!!

In Kooperation mit der Akadamie der bildenden Künste Wien – Performative Kunst