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Choreographic Works

BANSHEE RAGOUT (2017)

by Irina Demina in collaboration with Joshua Rutter

Dance of Death (Totentanz, Danse Macabre) is an artistic genre of late-medieval allegory on the universality of death: no matter one’s station in life, the Dance of Death unites all.

Banshee Ragout is a 75 min long dystopia investigating the concepts that find themselves within the semantic field of death-dances. The medieval figure of a dancing Death embodies a paradox. After all, isn’t it the living who dance? Is dance not often seen, in all its dynamic ephemerality, as an expression and celebration of life itself? What are the connections between dance and death? Banshee Ragout attempts to inhabit the paradox, reflecting on the phantasma of reversibility of life, death and art.

This journey to nowhere weaves together a variety of strategies: the physical enactment of medieval representations of Danse Macabre, an analysis of death choreographies of German expressionist dance pioneers Mary Wigman, Kurt Jooss and Harald Kreutzberg, as well as contemporary doom metal and drone music, somatic exploration of the dying experience, and finally, experimentation with body fictions and cognitive imagery.

These ghosts of the past, fragilities of the present and dystopias of the future float and swirl in the loving embrace of a massive swathe of flowing black plastic, itself machined from the oozing bodies of our ancient forebears. The performers busy themselves channelling these ancestors both material and artistic, attempting to embody the paradox of a dancing death.

What are the connections between dance and death?
Who knows, maybe our death is dancing with us already.

Choreography & Dance: Joshua Rutter, Irina Demina
Composition& Live music: Pelle Buys, Mark Leyrer
Light: Henning Eggers
Dramaturgic assistance: Angela Guerreiro

Visions of Ian Watermann (2014)

by Victoria Hauke in collaboration with Chris Lechner

VISIONS OF IAN WATERMANN brings dance into the water. On the land of the stage and in the water, a field of tension develops that connects micro- and macrocosms, city, nature and the sensory body.

For their research, the Hamburg choreographer Victoria Hauke and the choreographer Chris Lechner immerse themselves in the latest findings about the body and present performative speculations about water apes, weightlessness and fluid states

What if the body was less solid, contained different stories than we always think? The answer could appear in the body of the spectator, in the need to loll or swim

Part I, OrganicFiction (Duo, 55 min.)

Artistic direction: Victoria Hauke
Choreography, Dance / Duo: Victoria Hauke and Chris Lechner
Music: Andreas Otto (www.andiotto.com)
Light: Henning Eggers
Dramaturgic Mentoring: Angela Guerreiro
Coaching Voice: Frank Düwel
Coaching Text: Gabriele Wittmann

Part II, Fascial a-synchronized swimming (8 performers, 30 min.)

8 dancers meet in a large body of water in the city to form a swarming, ancient futuristic water monkey sect, a floating skydiving club. A single coherent, organic and highly sensitive being. No synchronous geometric form is visible, but rather the contradiction between slowing down movement and elastic high-speed power, through which the group communicates.

Artistic Direction: Victoria Hauke
Choreography: Victoria Hauke and Chris Lechner
Stadtparksee Dance/Co-creation: Gianfranco Celestino, Nikos Fragkou, Philip van der Heijden, Michael Hess, Raisa Kroeger, Swanhild Kruckelmann, Katharina Menzel, Lisa Rykena
Music Stadtparksee: Jan Drees
Costumedesign Johanna von Renner
Manufacturing: costumecompany
Production management: Pamela Goroncy, Jessica Buchholz
Co-Stage: Uwe Sinkemat
Assistant: Konstantin Bessonov, Carolin Heller, Simona Knechtli

A very special thanks to Kampnagel Technik.

A production by Victoria Hauke in co-production with Kampnagel Hamburg. With the support of the Hamburg Department of Culture, the Hamburgische Kulturstiftung, in co-production with Kampnagel Hamburg, in cooperation with Bäderland Hamburg GmbH

Presented at Kampnagel and natural swimming pool Stadtparksee/Bäderland Hamburg, 28. 5. – 1.6. 2014

HOOMU NITE. Lost, Found and then Lost again in Translation (2013)

a solo by Ira Demina

“I wanted to create a dance that is more like

swimming nude in the moonlight” (25.04.2012)

“HOOMU NITE: Lost, Found and then Lost again in Translation” is inspired by my University thesis “Translatability of poetry in the context of cultural semiotics. Case study: Japanese haiku” and phenomenon of intersemiotic translation[i]. It is influenced by structural linguistics, “Any movement, no matter how mundane, is potentially a dance movement” (Merce Cunningham), song of Nakajima Miyuki “Hoomu nite”(1977). It investigates the process of meaning-making, poetical vagueness, indirectness, construction and deconstruction of reality, incarnations, transformations, exquisite trips of self-destruction, silence and crazy Japanese advertising.

The issue of intercultural relations, especially between East and West, has always been highly thought-provoking. One of the most intriguing objects of study in this context is the translation of poetry across cultures, investigated in numerous works on semiotics of culture. I take a look at Japanese haiku from another point of view, another system of axes, which becomes physical, visual, audible, theatrical and scenic. My body becomes the medium towards translatability.

“Poetry is what gets lost in translation” (R. Frost)
“We are surely Homo-significans – meaning-makers”(D.Chandler)

Concept, Choreography & Performance, Sound design: Ira Demina
Dramaturgy: Angela Guerreiro
Stage design, installation: Paule Drugonic Payo
Light design: Henning Eggers

Project is funded by:
Kulturbehörde der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg und die Hamburgische Kulturstiftung.

Ira Demina

RUDEL (2013)

by Philipp van der Heijden

a group piece for five dancers under the frame of Tanzlabor_21 am Mousonturm Frankfurt.

Eat, dance, love, fight and play. They enrich themselves, protect themselves and suffocate themselves.

This living organism transforms itself continuously and creates ever new constellations of encounters. Based on the individual resources within our pack, inner-body movements or states were transformed into an external body/space structure. The authorship of the individual finds its place and carries the consequence together with the pack.

Concept and Choreography: Philipp van der Heijden, Lisa Rykena
Dance: Philipp van der Heijden, Sahra Huby, Lili Mihajlović, Lisa Rykena and David Vossen
Mentoring: Angela Guerreiro
Light: Harry Schulz

The PET project inspires and prompts Lisa Rykena and Philipp van der Heijden to extend their theme, which they have so far focused on two people, to a group of dancers.

A production by Tanzlabor_21/Danzbasis Frankfurt_Rhein_Main

-0,57 °Celsius (2011)

by Ira Demina

A Solo piece presented at DanceKiosk-Hamburg Festival 2011

-0,57 °Celsius is the temperature when  the human blood freezes.

No thoughts. No dreams. “Aroundzero” frozen feelings.

At -0,57 °C blood circulation becomes still, brain stops functioning. Sleep turns into death. Slowly. Day by day.

Research about the influence of cold on a human body and metaphorical reflection on the emotional emptiness and grey mediocrity around.

Choreography & Dance:  Ira Demina | Musik Collage: Terry Bozzio, Wimme, Silver Mt Zion, Tiger Lillies, radio France studio 106. | Mentoring: AngelaGuerreiro | Duration: app 20 min

DanceKiosk 2011