A History -Telling-Project by and with 24 Berlin based choreographers and dancers

Three choreographers each think back to a contemporary dance performance they saw in the last 25 years in Berlin that was of particular import to them. With their eyes closed, moving according to their memory, they recount this performance before the audience. In three following rounds, selected witnesses reproduce what they’ve just seen and heard. Through telling, listening, repeating and imitating, this telephone-game format produces a new piece that’s nothing like how it began.

“The storytelling does not aim to convey the pure essence of the thing. It sinks the thing into the life of the storyteller, in order to bring it out of him again. Thus traces of the storyteller cling to the story the way the handprints of the potter cling to the clay vessel. (…) The storyteller takes what he tells from experience – his own or that reported by others. And he in turn makes it the experience of those who are listening to his tale.” writes Walter Benjamin in his essay “The Storyteller.”

Telling stories is thus primarily the art of transferring them to someone else. That also holds true when recounting dance performances. The “trans” in transferring always indicates the communication of a narrative secret in the direction of the listener. What exactly needs to be passed on? What must be included or necessarily left out of the depiction in order for the recounted image to take root inside of the listeners themselves? Which (dance) history is actually being told?

Silke Bake, curator, dramaturge, and mentor, has worked at TAT Frankfurt, Hebbel Theater and Tanzquartier Vienna, among others, and has conceived art programs for institutions including HKW, Academy of Arts Berlin and Theaterformen Brunswick. She co-curated festivals such as On Hospitality (Tallinn 2011) and performance platform. body affects (Berlin 2012). She is responsible for discursive pro- grams such as Visionärer Widerstreit or Ecologies of Practice. In 2016 and 2018, she was the artistic director of Tanznacht Berlin. In 2018, she was guest professor at HZT Berlin (SoDA).

In his artistic projects, Peter Stamer, director, performer, and mentor, often takes on strategies of story-telling. Aside theatre pieces such as “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense” and performative installations such as “26 Letters To Deleuze,” he regularly collaborates with the Vienna-based theatre group toxic dreams. As curator, Peter was responsible for two editions of the festival Tanznacht Berlin (2008 and 2010). He is co-editor of the art book “How to Collaborate?” peterstamer.com

tanznachtberlin.de

[Source: Tanznacht Magazine]

TFB Nr. 1226