Dance in August 2011 / Tanz im August 2011
Press release
For the 23rd time, TANZ IM AUGUST – INTERNATIONAL DANCE FESTIVAL BERLIN will be presenting over 20 productions from 12 countries between August 12th and 28th. As in past years, the program includes – in addition to newcomers and frequent guests – big names such as Lucinda Childs and Édouard Lock. This time, a focus is placed on contemporary dance from African countries (Andréya Ouamba and Gregory Maqoma) as well as formal crossovers between classical ballet, urban and contemporary dance.
“New Work”, the highly acclaimed new piece by Canadian choreographer Édouard Lock and his company La La La Human Steps, is one of these crossovers. Breathtaking pas-de-deux, turns so fast that you won’t believe your eyes… Lock celebrates, exaggerates and deconstructs the art of classical ballet. His expert dancers seem simultaneously robot-like, disembodied and animalistic. The hot and cold choreography hardly leaves time for emotions and contrasts with the live compositions by Gavin Bryars based on the Baroque operas “Dido and Aeneas” by Purcell and Gluck’s “Orpheus and Eurydice”; they serve as Lock’s thematic references as well.
Hiroaki Umeda also connects contemporary elements with ballet or hip hop. Since the founding of his company S20 in 2000, the Japanese dancer and choreographer has primarily been developing abstract and technologically influenced solos with impressive soundscapes and video animation; here he created an extreme tension between real physicality and media-based disembodiment. For Umeda, classical ballet represents the archetype of European dance; its style of movement differs greatly to his own vocabulary. At TANZ IM AUGUST he will show his new trio “3.isolation” with three ballet dancers as the third part of a long-term project begun in 2009. This work will be complemented by “2.repulsion”, the second part of the series with three hip hop dancers.
The Brazilian choreographer Guilherme Botelho creates an entire universe of formal variations with his Alias company from Geneva. In “Sideways Rain”, the 14 dancers move ceaselessly from left to right over the stage – they walk, fall, crawl, stop, run, stop and start over, without pause, as though they were hunted or caught in an invisible tidal undertow. They weave a web over the stage, move among it with an increasingly hermetic feeling for their body and time; in the end, they are naked – literally and metaphorically. Botelho sees this hypnotic action as a fascinating – above all a fascinatingly simple and inspiring – allegory for the human condition as such: the flow of life.
In addition to the supporting program with talks, workshops, lectures, discussions and films, TANZ IM AUGUST’s new series in-progress shows selected works by local and international choreographers that are now being created. The “LangeTanzFilmNacht” will also take place for the first time in the framework of the festival as a cooperation with zdf.kultur, the Yorck film theater group and k3 berlin. And the sommer.bar, the non-stop meeting point for the dance scene and visitors, will once again offer free performances by festival artists, films and concerts.
At our press conference on Thursday, June 23rd 2011, we will offer you a detailed introduction to the festival and the participating artists. You will receive a special invitation to this event in due time.
The entire program can also be found at www.tanzimaugust.de in late June.
Presscontact:
k3 berlin
Tel.: +49 30 695 695 24
k3berlin.de
