Handle with care featuring Huggy Bears

Sara-Lisa Bals – POEMS DON’T ALWAYS HAVE TO RHYME, YOU KNOW

A cross-section of Vienna’s young performance scene is presented in two parts at Bears in the Park in the context of imagetanz 2022. In this special edition of brut’s Handle with care series, the audience gets exclusive insights into three different projects in their respective development phases. First up in Part 1 is Sara-Lisa Bals with POEMS DON’T ALWAYS HAVE TO RHYME, YOU KNOW and a series of four performative poems.

The performance POEMS DON’T ALWAYS HAVE TO RHYME, YOU KNOW creates a performative book out of four poems. They are, respectively, about a cowboy’s relationship with his horse, queerness, a visit to the bathhouse, and love. This immersive performance between tension and attention and in different tempos is chaotic and beautiful as it unfolds in a sensually absorbing space installation that is almost a theatrical space.

Sara-Lisa Bals, born in Vorarlberg in 1993, is an interdisciplinary artist in the fields of performance, set design, and media. As a graduate of the University of Applied Arts Vienna in the classes on stage and film design and transmedia Art, she currently lives and works in Vienna. CUMERNUSTAG by Sara-Lisa Bals was shown at imagetanz 2021 as part of Handle with care selected by BEATE.

HUGGY BEARS is a support platform by artists for artists founded by Caroline Madl and Philippe Riéra. It provides mentoring in various fields for emerging artists to help develop their work. The selected upcoming artists receive seven-month-long support that includes studio space as often as needed, workshops, artistic and administrative support, networking, public showing, sharing, and eventually premiering under professional conditions. As part of brut’s Handle with care series, the currently supported artists give the audience a showing of their works in progress, which will eventually premiere at WUK in the autumn of 2022.
The Handle with care series grants sneak peeks into processes of artistic creation, experimenting with new formats and creating spaces for talking and the exchanging of views. Artists get the chance to try out parts of their work in front of a small audience, to receive feedback, and to turn spectators into accomplices.