Deleted Scenes tackles the idea of intangible archives. In times when the syntagm “contemporary dance” represents a blank signifier, history becomes a powerful and appealing aesthetic load. Choreographer Sergiu Matis, however, starts from the negative space of historicity. He asks the question about undanced dances, lost grooves, and deep, dark water rhythms. His archive is the other archive, a shadow archive and anarchive that once exposed to light burns in stormy, virtuosic speed. The materiality of found artefacts is influenced by the different navigating tools that stir the archives. These archives preserve history that has never been history – that has been destroyed, deleted before becoming history. An archive of that which has not been and could have been at the same time.

The stage is used as a plastic place – a place where these procedures of falsification are possible and allowed. Deleted Scenes doesn’t try to interpret history – instead, it tries to create situations in the performative space for the one that doesn’t exist. The question is: what remains after the storm? The answer is rather simple. “What remains, remains.”

Sergiu Matis, born in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, has lived in Germany since 1999. He began his career in dance at Tanztheater Nuremberg under the direction of Daniela Kurz. Since 2008 he has been living and working in Berlin, collaborating with choreographers such as Colette Sadler, Yossi Berg, Daniel Kok, and Jee-Ae Lim. He also dances and works in several choreographies of Sasha Waltz & Guests. In 2014 he completed his Master’s degree Solo / Dance / Authorship (SODA) at HZT Berlin and received a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation. His choreographies have been shown internationally, including Tanzfabrik, Radialsystem and Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin; National Dance Center and eXplore Dance Festival in Bucharest; and ImPulsTanz in Vienna. In 2015 his play Simuliert, a co-production of the National Dance Center Bucharest and the German State Theatre Timisoara, premiered in Romania.

Maria Walser began her studies at the Heinz-Bosl in Munich and graduated in 2004 from the Palucca School, Dresden. She started her carrier at the Tanztheater Nuremberg with Daniela Kurz, as well as with Rui Horta and Andre Gingras. She subsequently worked for the Tanztheater Oldenburg with Jan Pusch, where she also worked with Tero Saarinen, Club Guy & Roni, Ingun Bjørnsgaard, Rami Beer, and Ina Christel Johannessen. Since 2011 she has worked as a freelancer. As a dancer she has worked with companies such as Kopergietery in Ghent, MS Schrittmacher, costa compagnie, co>labs, and Sergiu Matis. As an actress she has worked with directors including Alexander Müller-Elmau, Herbert Fritsch, Prinzip Gonzo and Ekat Cordes. She has choreographed for the collective Zeitgeist Gruppe and for several works of Niklaus Helbling.

Originally from Washington DC, Corey Scott-Gilbert began his dance training at Baltimore School for the Arts, going on to attend Juilliard School in New York under the direction of Harkarvy and Rhodes. After graduating with a BFA in 2005, Corey accepted an invitation from France to be a soloist with Lyon Opéra Ballet. In 2007, Corey joined Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet, where he was a 2009 recipient of the Princess Grace Award. In 2010, he joined Cirque du Soleil to create and be featured in Iris. Through this, he performed at the Oscars 2012. In 2013 he returned to Europe to explore work as a freelance artist abroad. Currently Corey is working and collaborating with Sasha Waltz, Richard Siegal, and Eszter Salamon.

8GG is a new media duo composed of Fu Yu and Jia Haiqing. Their works include music, video, installation, drama, and web art. Their works challenge our habitual interactions to the outside world, and demonstrate new possibilities of engaging with media in both public and gallery space. 8GG has shown in Ars Electronica Austria, EXCESS new media festival in Australia, VELOCITY Festival of Digital Culture in the UK, FILE in Brazil, Shanghai Biennial, Kunstmuseum Bern, Centre Pompidou, ICA London, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center New York, among other occasions.

A typical Lotic track balances on the edge between agony and ecstasy, sweetness and malevolence; its rhythms lurch and shudder like dope-sick automata across a landscape strewn with jagged metal and broken glass. Echoes of ball culture’s heady version of house music collide with melancholy strains reminiscent of mid-’90s IDM, while Lotic’s mixes throw in shards of contemporary R&B, as though pointing a way through the chaos, back to the known world. The producer grew up in Houston, Texas, and studied computer music and composition in Austin, but the real catalyst for Lotic was his move to Berlin in 2012.

Mila Pavićević holds an MA in Performance Dramaturgy from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb. She is a member of Centre of Drama Art and a part of the editorial board for the performing arts magazine Frakcija. As a dramaturge and as an author she has worked both in institutional theatres and the freelance scene. Her primary field of interest is dance dramaturgy and materialist philosophy. She collaborates with many artists including Zrinka Užbinec, Sergiu Matis, SIMKA, and Goran Sergej Pristaš.