Production Details / Press Releases
What does it look and feel like to dance the nonhuman? How to become a body other than our own? Choreographer Jérôme Bel and art historian Estelle Zhong Mengual examine the Western canon of dance history for answers to these seemingly impossible questions. In an exhibition of dances spanning three centuries, they echoe the urgency of the ongoing ecological crisis while simultaneously enriching our sensitivity towards other forms of life. “Non human dances” is a radical return to the equality of all living beings.
Jérôme Bel was born in 1964 in Montpellier, lives in Paris and works worldwide. Since 1994 he has been developing choreographies. Through his use of biography, Jérôme Bel politicizes his questions, aware as he is of the crisis involving the subject in contemporary society and the forms its representation takes on stage. He deals with questions about what the theatre can be in a political sense. In offering the stage to non-traditional performers (amateurs, people with physical and mental handicaps, children…), he shows a preference for the community of differences over the formatted group, and a desire to dance over choreography, and duly applies the methods of a process of emancipation through art. Since 2019, for ecological reasons, Jérôme Bel and his company no longer use airplanes for their travels and it is with this new paradigm that his latest performances have been created, produced and toured. He has been invited to contemporary art biennials and museums, where he has put on performances and shown films. Jérôme Bel is regularly invited to give lectures at universities. Jérôme Bel received awards and prices, e.g. the Bessie Award and the Swiss “present-day dance creation” prize.
www.jeromebel.fr
Estelle Zhong Mengual is an art historian. She teaches in the Master of Experimentation in Art and Politics (SPEAP), created by Bruno Latour, at Sciences Po Paris. She holds the chair Inhabiting the landscape: artistic practices of hospitality for living things at the Beaux-Arts de Paris.
Her current research focuses on the relationship that art, past and present, has with the living world. She is notably working on the elaboration of an environmental history of art, which proposes a new regime of attention to the representation of the living world in art, using the tools of environmental humanities and the most contemporary natural sciences.
She is the author of numerous books, including “Apprendre à voir. Le point de vue du vivant” (Actes Sud, 2021), EcoloObs prize for the best essay in environmental thought of the year 2021, and “Peindre au corps à corps. Flowers and Georgia O’Keeffe” (Actes Sud, 2022).
[Source: tanzimaugust.de]
TFB Nr. 1910
Cast & Credits
Concept: Jérôme Bel, Estelle Zhong Mengual
Assistant: Chiara Gallerani
Texts: Jérôme Bel, Estelle Zhong Mengual, Baptiste Morizot, Andrea Olga Mantovani, “S’enforester” (Paris, Éditions d’une Rive à l’Autre, 2022, S. 28)
With choreographies by: Pina Bausch: “Nelken line”. Music: “West End Blues” composed by Joseph Oliver, performed by Louis Armstrong. Extract of the piece: “Nelken (Les oeillets)” (1982), choreography and stage direction: Pina Bausch, scenography: Peter Pabst, costumes: Marion Cito, dramaturgy: Raimund Hoghe, collaboration: Matthias Burkert, Hans Pop, music: Jones, Lehar, Oliver, Tauber, Tucker and others. Copyrights: Verlag der Autoren, Frankfurt, for Pina Bausch Foundation, Wuppertal
Gaspard Charon: “The entrance of the sun”
Isadora Duncan: “Water study”. Music: Frantz Schubert
Loïe Fuller. Music: Camille Saint Saens
Lev Ivanov & Marius Petipa
Xavier Le Roy: “The lions’ vocabulary”
Sergiu Matis: “The Siberian crane”. Extract of the piece: “Extinction room (Hopeless.)”, concept & choreography: Sergiu Matis, sound composition: Antye Greie-Ripatti, text: Philip Ingman
With: Gaspard Charon, Chiara Gallerani, Elisabeth Schwartz, Estelle Zhong Mengual & more
Costume design: The Dancers
Technical direction: Maxime Kurvers
Executive direction: R.B. Jérôme Bel
Artistic advice: Rebecca Lasselin
Company management: Sandro Grando
Stage technician (HAU): Kristof Meers, Mohammad Nazeri, Tom Sattler, Andrea Schöneich, Şenol Şentürk, Dominik Stillfried
Lighting technician (HAU): Fabian Boldt, Ulrich Kellermann, Boris Meier, Maxi Richter, Marc Zeuske
Sound technician (HAU): Matthias Kirschke, Rozenn Lièvre
Costume: Muriel Kunkel, Aleix Llussà Lòpez
Production: R.B. Jérôme Bel
Co-production: Festival d’Automne à Paris, Musée du Louvre Paris, Centre national de la danse, Fonds de dotation du Quartz – Scène nationale de Brest, Maison de la danse Lyon, Pôle européen de création, R.B. Jérôme Bel Paris
Supported by: Ménagerie de Verre Paris
Thanks to: Sébastien Allard, Cédric Andrieux et Raphaelle Delaunay / CNSMDP, Carolin Brandl / Choreographing Politics at Bode-Museum Berlin, Salomon Bausch, Ismaël Dia & Annette Reschke / Pina Bausch Foundation, Claire Le Gouic, Anne Martin, Baptiste Morizot, Madeline Ritter
R.B. Jérôme Bel receives the help of Direction régionale des affaires culturelles d’Île-de-France – Ministry of Culture.
Jérome Bel is associated artist to Le Quartz – scène nationale de Bres, Centre national de la danse Pantin and Comédie de Caen CDN de Normandie.
For ecological reasons, R.B. Jérôme Bel company doesn’t travel by plane anymore.
www.jeromebel.fr
Tanz im August 2024
Artistic Director: Ricardo Carmona
Executive Producer Festival: Stefan Nagel
Producer & Dramaturge: Alina Lauer
Producer & Team Assistance: Luzie Barzen
Production: Mascha Euchner-Martinez
Production Associates: Carim Sol Al Samarraie, Feli Braun, Arantxa Ciafrino, Sophie Hübner, Lu Yu Zou
Technical Director Festival: Ingo Ruggenthaler
Tanz im August is a festival by HAU Hebbel am Ufer, funded by the Capital Cultural Fund.
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)