Cie. Willi Dorner: every-one

Around Labour Day, brut will go out into the city and into public space with Willi Dorner’s performance every-one. A group of eight dancers will guide the audience to architectural landmarks in the 10th district, characterised by density, standardisation and uniformity.

The journey of every-one begins in the 1920s, when standardised, serialised, industrial mass production was established and thereby modern urban life was born. Drastic changes in art, science and politics contributed to the emergence of a new concept of humanity informed by standardisation and norm-based thinking. Viennese choreographer Willi Dorner draws a parallel between the 1920s and our present, which looks back on, and ahead to, fast developments and massive upheavals.

The type of dance promoted at the time reflects these developments on a formal level, in revues of considerable production value and girl-group vaudeville dances, in which the dancers with their uniformly shaped bodies became a symbol of a new collective being. These seemingly naïve, entertaining formation dances both hide and visualise a principle of achievement that has altogether economised and internalised life. Willi Dorner picks up on material from various revues and intensifies it into a public-space choreography impressively showcasing the aesthetic idea of serialisation.

Willi Dorner lives and works as a choreographer in Vienna, where he established his company, Cie. Willi Dorner, in 1999. His oeuvre involves stage shows and site-specific performances shown worldwide but also a keen interest in photography, film, animation and installations. Willi Dorner creates projects that grant audiences the opportunity for new experiences, insights and a differentiated perception of everyday life. His interdisciplinary works are created in collaboration with artists and scientists from a great variety of fields. Cie. Willi Dorner has been invited to festivals and venues such as the Vienna Festival, Festival de Marseille, Festival TransAmériques Montreal, Dance Umbrella London, Tanz im August Berlin, Theater der Welt Essen, Crossing the Lines New York, b:om Festival South Korea and, most recently with every-one, the Santiago a Mil festival in Chile.