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deutsch
liebetodundteufel.blogspot.com – Weblog and interactive online plattform for the series
LOVE, DEATH AND THE DEVIL
Premiere of "LOVE, DEATH AND THE DEVIL - Image 4: The White Chamber" on Friday, November 14, at 8 pm, Kunst- und Künstlerhaus Schwankhalle Bremen
Performances |
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14. Nov. 2008 |
Premiere Image 4: The White Chamber, Bremen, steptext dance project |
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15. Nov. 2008 |
Image 4: The White Chamber, Bremen, steptext dance project |
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12., 13. + 14. March 2009 |
Image 5: Labyrinth, tanzhaus nrw, Duesseldorf |
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Love, Death and the Devil
Campaign: practise seeing beauty
Creating images and situations, where everyday perception is transformed into artistic experience is the starting point of the dance performance series “Practise seeing beauty” by Ben J. Riepe.
By developing a series of “images” over an extended period of time (five images in one year), the choreographer searches new forms of artistic creation and presentation. The individual images will be developed in a short period of time, thereby prioritising intuitive and elusive elements.
The Company opens the series in a surreal Chessboard Room. The production with two dancers, two actors and a music composer takes the spectator to rooms filled with abysmal beauty.
In Image 2: The Dark Chamber the choreographer creates an eerie world, a locus terribilis of melancholy and death wish. The production plays with light and shadow, and with a black humour that fails to provide relief for the three dancers that meander towards a rendezvous with devil and death.
“The Dark Chamber” too follows the series’ credo “Campaign: practise seeing beauty”: immersed in white light and deep shadow the sadistic joy for the daemonic shines in gloomy fascination.
In the third episode, Love, Sex and Vanity, Ben J. Riepe dismantles the first concept of his series' title. After the deadly complot in the Chessboard Room (image 1) and a meeting with the devil in the Dark Chamber (image 2), the third image shows the abysms and profanities of love. The series' subtitle, "Campaign: practise seeing beauty", is program: the production evokes powerful images, confronts our strongest passions and, with a sinister smile, comments on a love that is trapped between sex and vanity.
The matrix of the series, the concentrated perspective on the basic questions of human existence within the laboratory of hyperreal spaces of art, leads to a dense scenario of physical and mental states of emergency in Image 4: The White Chamber. The dancers embody elusive as well as shocking, comical, melancholy and explosive states with intense presence, dance, voice and language. Breakdowns and violent fits are being broken by comical laughter, the white chamber being a symbol of space that needs to be filled. The pace is fast, process and effect instantaneous; irony lurks behind drama, everyday life is being transformed into art scenes and vice versa. After the deadly complot in the Chessboard Room (image 1), a meeting with the devil in the Dark Chamber (image 2), the abysms and profanities of love in Image 3, the fourth image now shows clash of these elements in The White Chamber.
All five images are thematically interwoven. The pace is fast, process and effect are instantaneous. This way the audience is presented with a new and unspent experience of art, and will be implicated into this campaign of beauty beyond the boundaries of contemporary dance. It is possible to join this artistic process over the period of a full year – the spectators chance to be part of an experience, where topics and motifs are being developed and presented in different art forms and media continuously.
Additionally a very different view and insight into the artistic project and the company’s work is the series' Weblog. This open online platform is where the artists will post and comment on various aspects of the production – an invitation for virtual interaction with the audience.
Choreography/Concept: Ben J. Riepe; With: Fa-Hsuan Chen, Deborah Gassmann, Swanhild Kruckelmann, Linda Nordström, Evgeny Pankratov, Julian Stierle, Alex Alves Tolkmitt, Helge Vögler, Lukas Vögler, Justin Yep; Lighting: Dimitar Evtimov; Music: Alex Alves Tokmitt; Costumes: Anna Kleihues.
Supported by the NATIONALE PERFORMANCE NETZ with funds of the Tanzplans Deutschland of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes, the Kulturamt Düsseldorf, the Kunststiftung NRW, the steptext dance project, Bremen, the tanzhaus nrw, Productiehuis Brabant, Musiklab Brabant, Station Zuid, Tillburg, the van Meeteren Stiftung and Artsite.
Guest performances: amour espace
