A PIECE YOU REMEMBER TO TELL - A PIECE YOU TELL TO REMEMBER

A project on dance-history-telling by Silke Bake and Peter Stamer with 24 choreographers, dancers and performers from Vienna

FRIDAY SESSION
with Milli Bitterli, Thomas Kasebacher, Barbara Kraus and Claudia Bosse, Magdalena Chowaniec, Deborah
Hazler, Radek Hewelt, Sara Lanner, Anna Mendelssohn, Michael O’Connor, Frans Poelstra, Yosi Wanunu

SATURDAY SESSION
with Christine Gaigg, Amanda Piña, Philippe Riéra and Ewa Bankowska, Stephanie Cumming, Claudia Heu,
Sabina Holzer, Michikazu Matsune, Oleg Soulimenko, Florian Tröbinger, Doris Uhlich

What do we remember when we talk to someone else about dance performances? Three choreographers of different ages and artistic styles remember a contemporary dance performance that they have seen in the Tanzquartier Wien in the last 15 years. Standing in the room with their eyes closed, moving in accordance with the memory, they talk about these remembered performance to the audience – among which there is a witness. Together with the spectators, these witnesses attentively follow their stories in order to reproduce what they have just heard and seen in the next round. These witnesses and their retellings are also subject to other witnesses, who subsequently again retell what they have heard and seen from them. Over four rounds of recounting, listening, retelling and imitating, on the Chinese-whispers principle a new piece thus emerges that was not being talked about at the beginning: because it had never existed before in this form.
When talking to someone else about dance performances, one often realizes that the description does not correspond with the experiences of what was seen. So what do we remember, when we talk about dance performances? Standing or moving about in the room, three choreographers of different artistic styles, eyes closed, describe to another person a contemporary dance performance they remember and that was important for them. In the next round, ‘witnesses’ then relate what they just heard and saw. In four rounds of narrating, listening, and passing on, a new piece emerges according to the whisper-down-the-lane principle, a piece that was not talked about in the beginning, because it never existed before.
»Narrative lines and movement qualities change as a result of forgetting, imaginative invention and pure coincidence. One may conclude that there are as many pieces as there are spectators in a room. And presumably as many possibilities to understand stories as there are people in the world.« (Eva-Maria Steinel, Mannheimer Morgen)
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CONCEPT: Silke Bake and Peter Stamer
PRODUCTION: Garage e.V. and Tanzkongress 2016.
WITH THANKS TO Katharina von Wilcke.
Silke Bake lives in Berlin and works as a dramaturge, curator and mentor. Together with colleagues, artists and institutions she develops thematic programmes and discussion and research formats in the field of contemporary performing arts. Her focus is on the artistic, structural and geographic conditions of contemporary art production. In 2016 she was and in 2018 she will be responsible for the biennial Tanznacht festival in Berlin.
Peter Stamer works as a director, dramaturge, author and mentor in the field of contemporary performing and installative arts. In his projects he is mostly interested in the field of tension between bodily empowerment and the grasping of language in performative, social and narrative dispositifs. Alongside theatre works and teaching throughout Europe, in previous years his performance and theatre projects have taken him to China, the US and Egypt. His recent works include the Nietzsche adaptation On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense, for which he was also responsible for the stage set as well as for direction.