Haunt me, haunt me do it again.

Some time ago a person lived and died. We never met this person, nor did we ever see her, not even her grave. We know she existed by what she left behind, the first thing that we learnt about her was her name, Rita Klaus. She was her own archivist, she kept everything ‘safe’, she saved it. Analogue. We found her archive by accident in a desert. »Rita Klaus« is a new contemporary dance work. A piece for performers and ghosts. »Rita Klaus« drags the past to create an affective, illusory and critical take on remembrance, on theatre as a container for remains and what happens in the ruins of collapsed time?

Martin Hansen is a dancer and choreographer. His work investigates economies, politics and the lived experience of time as they operate in the theatre, the body, memory and history, oftentimes with an interest in problematising, creating multiplicities to or alternatives to the status quo. His works Monumental, If It’s All In My Veins, A Queer Kind of Evidence and Bastards have been presented throughout Europe, Asia and Australia, notably at Dance Massive Melbourne, Hong Kong International Arts Festival, Kanal Centre Pompidou Brussels, Rencontre Choregraphique Internationales Paris, Aerowaves, PACT Zollverein, Tanznacht Berlin among others.

As a dancer Martin has performed throughout Europe, Australia, Asia, Russia, USA, New Zealand and Canada with Sergiu Matis, Ligia Lewis, Deufert Plischke, Laurie Young, Christoph Winkler, Tino Sehgal, Alexandra Pirici, Chunky Move among others. Martin was named Dancer of the Year by “tanz” – magazine in 2012 and a Danceweb scholar in 2013.

Gretchen Blegen is an interdisciplinary artist navigating ways of seeing and hearing space, light, sound and image. These boundaries are explored through an ongoing book practice as well as in the real and broader realm of (project–)spaces and theater. Parallel to her own work Blegen is also involved in collective structures supporting artistic thought and alternative forms of learning. Working with visuals, installation, light and sound, her work is putting an emphasis on the creation and intention behind transforming, occupying, hosting and sharing a space with all collaborators and with an audience.

Brandon Johnson is a musician, sound artist and performer based for the last decade between Los Angeles and Berlin. He studied performance and sound design at the Evergreen State College (USA) and literature at the Freie Universität Berlin. His focus is collaboration, contributing sound that structures and energizes spaces for interdisciplinary creation to inhabit. He has collaborated with numerous choreographers and dancers including Meg Stuart, Jasna Layes Vinovriski, Ligia Manuela Lewis, Sonja Pregrad and Martin Hansen.

Evan Loxton is a French / Australian artist, performer and costume designer based in Berlin. His main education is the contemporary Visual Arts degree (BFA) at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne. Loxton aims to aesthetically and conceptually collaborate with queer and interdisciplinary artists to create sensibilities and relationships with their frameworks, costumes, installations and performances. Evan has collaborated with Artists and Choreographers Including Johanna Bruckner, Ivey Wawn and Martin Hansen.

Mila Pavicevic, dramaturg, writer and cultural worker, grew up in Dubrovnik and currently lives in Berlin. She works together with various artists mainly in the fields of dance and choreography. So far she has published various collections of poetry and the collection of stories “Ice girl and other fairy tales”. Her works have been translated and published in Europe and South America. Mila Pavicevic has received several prizes, including the European Union Prize for Literature in 2009 for her book “Ice girl and other fairy tales”. Her critical texts appear in various publications.

Xenia Taniko is choreographer and performer and lives in Berlin. Her artistic practice draws from a culture of collaboration and invests in the creation of alternative creative communities. She works with the physical intensity of the body, sound, stage design and other aesthetic means to speculate on the limits of human embodiment and critically examine the physical inscription of social norms. As a performer, collaborator and assistant, she has worked with international artists such as Jess Curtis, Josefine Mühle, Roni Katz, Simone Aughterlony, Ania Nowak, Julia Gladstone, Hana Erdman, deufert&pliscke, and others. Her solo and collaborative works have been presented in theaters, galleries and festivals in Berlin, Europe and the USA. Since 2019 she has been working as an audio describer of performances in the independent art scene in Berlin, making dance accessible to visually impaired audiences. Taniko studied politics and philosophy in Leipzig and Paris and is a graduate of the HZT Berlin (BA Dance, Context, Choreography, 2016).

Julian Weber is a choreographer and dancer, visual artist and set-designer. He studied sculpture at HBK Brunswick, Academy of Arts Vienna and choreography at HZT Berlin and the Acadamy of Theatre and Dance in Amsterdam. He works intensively on spaces of interaction involving body, material and movement. He collaborates with artists such as Meg Stuart, Boris Charmatz and Tino Sehgal and creates his own work at the intersection of visual and performance art. With his work The Tourist he won the Berlin Art Prize 2015.

[Source: play bill]

TFB Nr. 1427