The time of reception in contemporary dance sets a duration of the bodily co-presence, a materialisation of the physical relationship between the viewer and the viewed. This direct body-contact is abstracted as a movement, through the context in which it is placed and through its updated references, comes to signify much more than it indicates, to give the visibility of the body a deep content.
Contemporary body is convulsive movement and fall out of motion; the disruption of the movement, temporary escape from its area, an abandonment of motion. It is a rhythmic bomb and perfect calm. It is excess of power, ideology of the artificial, social intervention in the genuine daily living and sublimation of impotence.
Sasha Waltz was born on March 8, 1963 in Karlsruhe. At the age of five he took his first dance lessons with Waltraud Kornhas, a student of Mary Wigman. During 1983-1986 he studied at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam, followed by a year of internship in New York. He collaborated with visual major artists, musicians and choreographers, including Frans Poelstra, Mark Tompkins and David Zambrano.
Jan Fabre is a sprawling creator. A visual artist, choreographer, director, and writer, Fabre transfers from one field of research to the other working methods and representations that broaden the areas of reflection and make them impossible to be labelled under a notion. Fabre blows up the limits of aesthetic genders and proposes installation performance on the theme of the turmoiled ending-state.
Fruhlingsopher, a three parts play values the German tradition of the Ausdruckstanz stronger than any other work of the choreographer. Shortly after the premiere, the third part was presented separately, under the title Le Sacre du Printemps, introduced in the repertory of the dance theatre in Wuppertal and became one of the most played performances in the repertoire of the company.
She was brought up in her parent’s café, where she played under tables, an emotional space that she reconstructs in Café Muller. In 1955 she went to Folkwang, in Essen, where she studied with one of the most significant promoters of modern dance - Kurt Joos. After graduating Folkwang, she continued her studies at Julliard, New York, where she get familiarised with the performance techniques and concepts of the school creators – Martha Graham and José Limon.
When she took over, in the season 1973-1974, the dance group of the Wuppertal Theatre, Pina Bausch started to experiment a performance dramaturgy which generated a perception gap in the dance culture at the time and divided the contemporary critical discourses. Pina Bausch introduced the concept and the practice of dance theatre, which extended the area of analysis for both fields and overturned the performance and reception language, by inserting new references.
Mihai Mihalcea, performer, choreographer and director of the National Centre of Dance Bucharest, pulls a Lebanese out of his hat, sets his residence in Bucharest, and questions the double status of the artist-manager. Mihai Mihalcea puts up a double performance.
“I live, thus I provoke.” is the slogan of a woman artist that overturned the performance of contemporary bodies. In Orlan’s vision: “the skin throws you of the scent…in life you have nothing but your skin…there is a flaw in inter-human relationships, because you never really know what you have…do I have an angel skin, or am I a she-devil…
Politics is the show. The political discourse transfers a spectacular rhetoric, with all its emotional and persuasive thresholds activated, into the public medium of emersion. The public appearances from within the political frame of reference have a dramaturgy with evolutionary levels that are clearly determined.
