Petra is a solo dance piece on Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972). The film is a triangle melodrama about a successful fashion designer’s tragic love affair with her younger model and protégée, Karin, under the constant observation of her dutiful and servile assistant, Marlene. The solo deals with the nar­rative of the figure of Petra von Kant: a peculiar and complex personage from the Fassbinder universe, formed through the embodiment of poses and gestures from Hollywood stars, Greek nymphs and fashion models — »deine Figur ist dein Kapital« Petra advises Karin — filtered through film history’s male gaze as well as the director’s queer­leaning lens.

Petra employs improvisational and experiential somatic tasks that allow to dissect, embody and stage the entangled images, gestures and ste­reotypes that compose von Kant’s performance of femininity. Through a physical translation of Fassbinder’s character, the solo interrogates the reasons why one may maintain the performance of the figura; probes the ways in which it may also be construed as a plastic, dynamic and living form; and explores the possibilities of resistance to its incessant molding. In a long­term creation process investigating everyday rituals, crisis and spectacle, Berit Einemo Frøysland has invested her body in the performance of the labour involved in incorporating, maintaining, slipping in and out of constructions of femininity.

Berit Einemo Frøysland is a Norwegian dancer based in Berlin. She graduated from Balettakademien in Stockholm in 2016 and has worked with Deborah Hay, Marina Abramovic, Satoshi Kudo, Katrina Bastian, Siciliano Contemporary Ballet and Jeff Pedersen Produksjonar. She has made dance pieces and films funded and supported by the Arts Council Norway and The Fund for Performing Artists Norway and is a recipient of numerous scholarships and awards, among them the Cultural Exchange Scholarship from the Berlin Senate (Tokyo). She fre­quently collaborates with her twin sister Anna Einemo Frøysland and their most recent duet, A study in the language games of Wittgenstein, will premiere in October 2020. Her writing, an important part of her artistic prac­tice, has been featured in
Norsk Shakespearetidsskrift and Journal for ny dans.
beritfroysland.com

Philipp Rhensius is a musician, sound artist, writer, label founder (Arcane Patterns), radio host (Noods), and dj based in Berlin. His work is driven by the idea that “feeling the chains” is the moment when emancipation begins. While his projects Kl.ne, aphtc and INRA explore kinetic polyrhythms and sonic fiction, his “spoken word project” Alienationist connects visceral dub sounds with sardonic poetry. He notably contributed to the soundtrack for the perfor­mance Transcultural Protocol by Admire Kamudzengere and Rachel Monosov at the 2017 Venice Biennale, and recently collaborated with Rachel Monosov during her residency at Villa Massimo (Rome), creating a live soundtrack for the performance Olympia at Palazzo delle Esposizioni. His latest sound installation on populism, P++, was shown in the framework of the Berlin happening Bring In Weight in 2019.

Belle Santos is a stage­ and costume designer based in Berlin. She holds an MA in Performance Studies from Goldsmiths College London and completed a diploma in stage­ and costume design at the Academy of Fine Arts Berlin Weißensee. She has collaborated with theatre­makers RIMINI PROTOKOLL, Damian Rebgetz, Samara Hersch, Tilman Hecker and Ran Chai Bar­zvi among others; with film­makers Oliver Adam Kusio and Jan­Peter Horstmann; and recently styled the performance Remain Calm by Nile Koetting at the Centre Pompidou in Shanghai. She is co­artistic director of the perfor­mance collective THE AGENCY, whose work has been shown at the Athens Biennial, Donau Festival Krems, Tanz im August and Pact Zollverein. She has been awarded with the Deutsch­ land Stipendium (Ministry of Education and Research, Ger­ many) and the Kunstförderung Friedrichshafen. She was a resident at the Nemetski Theatre Almaty (2019) and the Saison Foundation in Tokyo (2018).

Andreas Harder is a light and set designer based in Berlin. He works internation­ally and has for several years collaborated with the contempo­rary music ensemble Zeitkratzer, as well as with choreographers and directors including Jeremy Wade, Angela Schubot and Jared Gradinger, Wilhelm Groener, Sebastian Matthias, Sasha Waltz, Adam Linder, Ligia Lewis and Thorsten Lensing. In parallel, he provides support for students’ works at the Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz (HZT) Berlin and proposes lectures and work­ shops at HFS­Hochschule für Schauspielkunst and UdK­ Uni­versität der Künste Berlin.

Anna Leon is a dance historian and theorist based in Vienna. She studied Psychology and Philosophy in Bristol and Philosophy of Art in Paris, before completing a PhD in the Dance Studies depart­ment of the University of Salz­ burg. Her doctoral research, titled Multiple Stories. Expanded Choreography and Choreographic History, was supported by the NEON Foundation (Greece), the Leventis Founda­tion (Switzerland/Cyprus) and the Marie Andessner Stipen­dium of the University of Salz­ burg. Since 2015, she teaches practice­oriented dance history and theory in regular classes (University of Salzburg, University of Vienna, SEAD — Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance, Institut Français) and workshops (e.g. Tanzhouse, PNEU, Som­merszene festivals). In parallel, she works as a dramaturg and was part of the Tanzbüro Berlin 2019 – 20 tandem programme.

[Source: play bill]

TFB Nr. 1422