Production Details / Press Releases
WHERE IS THE LINE between betrayal, non-conformism and disobedience? In her solo piece, Venuri Perera undertakes a daring tightrope walk. She plays with the multiple existences of the body, which carries political and symbolic orders and is at the same time the locus of resistance. Perera’s body moves and warps, it disappears and reappears, disintegrates and is put back together again. It evokes images reminiscent of work by Hans Bellmer and Hannah Höch, and simultaneously suggests the excluded, invisible and unsaid.
VENURI PERERA is a choreographer and actor who lives in Colombo, Sri Lanka. She trained in Kandyan Dance with Chitrasena Vajira Kalayathanaya, one of Sri Lanka’s leading dance companies, before studying at the Laban Centre in London. Along with her training as a dancer, she also has a master’s degree in psychology. Perera belongs to a small group of choreographers trying to establish contemporary approaches to dance in Sri Lanka without leaving behind their own dance and cultural backgrounds. In her work, she is especially interested in the body as a political ‘provocateur’ and frequently explores the relationship between practices of the body, gender and national identity. Venuri Perera has shown her work at numerous international festivals and theatres, for example at the Zürcher Theaterspektakel, the Gati Dance Forum and at Colomboscope Festival 2014.
Cast & Credits
CHOREOGRAPHY, PERFORMANCE: Venuri Perera
SOUND: Ghostape, Chinthaka Jayakody
VISUALS: Lalindra Amarasekera
LIGHT, TECHNICAL DEVICE: Jochen Haker
SOUND RECORDINGS: Sara Mikolai
Supported by Gati Dance Forum, Delhi and Goethe Institute Sri Lanka as part of the Colombo Dance Platform. The guest performance is supported by the Goethe Institute, Interflugs, Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin and Tanzfabrik Berlin.
TANZTAGE BERLIN 2015
ARTISTIC DIRECTION: Anna Mülter
FESTIVAL MANAGEMENT: Franziska Schrage
COLLABORATION: Cilgia Gadola
MANAGEMENT ASSISTANCE: Raisa Kröger
Technical Management: Walter Freitag, Fabian Lehmann, Eugen Böhmer
The 24th Tanztage Berlin are a production by SOPHIENSÆLE.
Funded by the Governing Mayor of Berlin – Senatskanzlei Cultural Affairs.
Supported by Goethe-Institut, Polnisches Institut Berlin, Tanzfabrik Berlin, Halle Tanzbühne, Mapping Dance.
Sophiensæle
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)