Production Details / Press Releases
What is the future of love? In her new HAU co-production, Dragana Bulut explores the commodification of love. Together with the companion robot Harmony, the two performers host the audience in a choreographic speed dating performance for a world in a crisis of intimacy. Alternating between dating and performative scenarios, they explore the dilemmas of connection: How do dating platforms, relationships mediated by algorithms, and love robots change the way we fall in love? If love needs reciprocity, can technology provide it? Or what might we scavenge from its failures? “Beyond Love” is the third part in Dragana Bulut’s trilogy probing the way the emotional spheres are choreographed by the forces of market commodification and technology. After “Happyology” (2018) and “Behind Fear” (2022), this current part deals with love.
Dragana Bulut’s work encompasses choreography and performance. She regards the theater as a public forum: a place of social gathering for critical investigation of the various structures and intersections of aesthetics, economics, and emotions. By appropriating established formats, she creates performances rooted in the tension between the material and the immaterial realms, between tangibility and affect, to explore the space between reality and fiction. These social choreographies bring to light the, often, overlooked shifting processes that choreograph our behaviors as a society. Bulut graduated from the UDK Berlin with a Master’s degree in Solo/Dance/Authorship in 2005, and has worked ever since as a freelance choreographer. Her projects have been presented at major institutions, such as HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Tanzquartier Wien, PACT Zollverein Essen, and Museum Folkwang Essen. Bulut is currently using the medium of social choreography to examine the commodification of emotions.
draganabulut.com
[Source: hebbel-am-ufer.de]
TFB Nr. 1731
Cast & Credits
Concept, artistic direction, choreography, performance: Dragana Bulut
By and with: Caroline Neill Alexander
Dramaturgy: Andrew Hardwidge
Music, Sound Design: Evelyn Saylor
Lighting Design: Fabian Bleisch
Stage design: Dragana Bulut, Jonas Maria Droste
Costume design: Melisa Minca
Research specialists: Dr. Yuefang Shou, Kate Devlin, Heinrich Mellmann
Production Management: Chris Wohlrab (TATWERK)
Assistance: Beatrice Zanesco
Press: Nora Gores
Production: Dragana Bulut
Co-production: HAU Hebbel am Ufer
Supported by: Hauptstadtkulturfonds
In cooperation with: TATWERK | Performative Research
Supported by: PhD research Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Realbotix
The research phase was co-produced by PACT Zollverein Essen.
HAU Hebbel am Ufer (HAU2)
Hallesches Ufer 32
10963 Berlin
Tickets: +49 (0)30 259 004 27
tickets@hebbel-am-ufer.de
Video Documentation
The video documentation is produced on behalf of the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion. The purpose of this contract is to document productions in the field of contemporary dance in Berlin. The master recordings are archived by the University Library of the Berlin University of Arts. Copies of the recordings on DVD are available for viewing exclusively in the reference collections of the following archives (at media desks in these institutions):
University Library of the Berlin University of Arts
Mediathek für Tanz und Theater des Internationalen Theaterinstituts / Mime Centrum Berlin
Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin (HZT)