Tanz

TANZ is the third part of the trilogy: Recovery, Apollon, TANZ. The trilogy deals with notions of practice through training of different physical disciplines on stage- focusing on investigations of how the body is cultivated, shaped and transformed and on the transmission of experience. TANZ takes early 19th century romantic ballet as a starting point. It uses the frame of a ballet class guided by Beatrice Cordua, the first ballerina who danced the Sacre de Printemps naked (John Neumeier, 1972).

The performers undergo a rigorous training in action ballet, the so called sylphidic studies. Learning how to use their skills in a genre of spectacle that deals with supernatural creatures, they use the articulation of the dancer’s body as a tool to penetrate space in order to gain knowledge about flying.

Through techniques of restraint, they collectively practice to govern the body and mind. An ephemeral world – provoking an imminent possibility of perfection by transforming the gross into the sublime and making the functional more than functional.

In an operatic set up brutal parodies of established images of excitement found in ballet, comedy and pornography are made in order to be watched from afar and close. This industry of gaze finds its translation in the work of a porn producer who documents the performance from within.
With an all-female cast of twenty to eighty years old performers who represent different dance backgrounds, TANZ poses the question what ‘dancing the lineage’ means and how to reconcile with tradition in the territory of the nonverbal and its relationship to beauty.

Prosthetic, mask: Students of Wigs, Make-up and Special Make-up Effects for Stage and Screen, Theaterakademie August Everding (Munich), Marianne Meinl
Stunt support: Haeger Stunt & Wireworks
Stunt instructors: Stunt Cloud GmbH (Leo Plank, Phong Giang, Sandra Barger)
Management & International Distribution: Katharina Wallisch & Giulia Messia – neon lobster

Co-produced by: Tanzquartier Wien (Vienna – AT), Spring Festival (Utrecht – NL), Theatre Rotterdam (Rotterdam – NL), Mousonturm (Frankfurt – DE), Arsenic (Lausanne – CH), Münchner Kammerspiele (Munich – DE), Take Me Somewhere (Glasgow – UK), Beursschouwburg (Brussels, BE) deSingel (Antwerp – BE), Sophiensaele (Berlin – DE), Frascati Productions (Amsterdam -NL), Theater im Pumpenhaus (Muenster – DE), asphalt Festival (Düsseldorf – DE)

Supported by: O Espaço do Tempo (PT), Fondation LUMA (FR) and De Châtel Award (NL)

Thanks to: CAMPO Gent, ImPulsTanz – Vienna International Dance Festival, Eva Beresin, Stefanie Leitner, Tanz-Archiv MUK Wien, Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie, Mochi Catering Vienna, Andres Stirn

Funded by: Cultural Department of the City of Vienna, Arts and Culture Division of the Federal Chancellery of Austria, Performing Arts Fund NL and Norma fonds NL

With the support of the Republic Austria Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport, Section IV – Arts and Culture