The performer feels her way along inner unevenness and geological unrest into landscapes. They encounter sediments and begin to reshape the physical relief. This relief is (also) the body. A body read as female, embarking on a process of excavation and detachment. The performer, carefully pushing, brings their figure to the ground. Along fine lines between poses and socially constructed movement patterns, the performer beats clefts and begins to wash their body with her movement. She settles into poses, arrives there to pause and stand firm, overturns, takes position to free from internalised male/sexualized-gazing by exhibiting gazes with her gaze, embodying body with her body. The body becomes a sensor, a seismograph, a strategy, an emancipation, a language, a joyous force.

verena herterich (*1994) lives and works as a dancer, performer and choreographer in Vienna. In a radical devotion to physicality, she explores the construction of (social) spaces and seeks for detachment from categories and attributions. She studied Contemporary and Classical Dance at MUK Vienna and AHK Amsterdam and is currently completing an MA in Social Design at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Her work has been shown at Tanzquartier Wien Studios, Brut Wien imagetanz (handle with care), WUK Vienna and Dock11 Berlin, among others. Her artistic practice was supported by a BMKOES Startstioendium in 2021, the Huggy Bears Vienna residency programme in 2022 and a LifeLongBurning Research Residency at ICI-CCN Montpellier-Occitanie in 2024. As a dancer/performer, she worked with artists such as Guy Weizman & Roni Haver (Club Guy & Roni’s Poetic Disasters Club), Ingri Fiksdal, Linda Samaraweerová, Claudia Bosse, Christine Gaigg and Liquid Loft/Chris Haring.

[Source: PR-Info]

TFB Nr. 1952