Anna Konjetzky & Co

songs of absence // Reviews

songs of absence // Reviews

Anna Konjetzky «Songs of Absence»

Salzburg

der-theaterverlag.de // March 2024 // Author: Carmen Kovacs

Not every loud work is a good work – but this one is. Anna Konjetzky has something to say that must not disappear. In Munich, she and her team have been a ground-breaking institution for many years, actively seeking, facilitating and shaping local and international connections and networking within the dance scene. Songs of Absence”, which premiered at the Munich theater festival “spielart”, can be understood in the context of this exchange, as part of a queer-feminist, socio-politically anchored artistic practice.

While the focus is urgently on making voids visible, on the forgotten and repressed, this content is presented in a charming album structure. Two stand-up microphones are positioned in a semicircle of projection screens, indicating from the outset that there is a lot to say. And indeed, the text, the pronouncing and addressing, the swallowing, mutating and virtuoso morphing of words and sentences into one another play a key role. In an almost symbiotic relationship with the soundtrack (Sergej Maingardt), the phenomenal cast of seven performers leads us through embodied attitudes, personal address, ecstatic speech, rap, slogans, poetry. Some moments of expressing become a difficult birth, the movement a side effect of the meaning.

How all this looks in movement language seems secondary in many moments anyway – and yet the forms of expression are so concrete and specific that the experienced choreographic directive behind them can be clearly felt. Sometimes they are static images, beautiful complications in which the bodies slip in and out of each other, supporting and holding each other. And sometimes they are liberated dance phrases that conjure up the affirmative power of movement. At one moment you see the group obsessively working on itself. And in the next, an electric guitar being worked on by two performers with objects and made to sound in wild ways.

We experience gestures of negation, which in the collective performance become affirmative gestures of togetherness, a sisterly embrace. We watch an ensemble that has its resources under control and understands its self-empowered approach right down to the design of the light. The craftsmanship and dramaturgy are so good that at times you forget what it is actually about. Fortunately, the finale is a caring slap in the face that tells you whether you’re still there.

On the bright side of the shake

Süddeutsche Zeitung, 06.11.2023 // Authors: Yvonne Poppek/Egbert Tholl

In beautiful contrast, there is the world premiere of “songs of absence” by Munich choreographer Anna Konjetzky, conceived like an album, interspersed with strong images, cleverly positioned in a feminist way.

The art of playing

Abendzeitung München, 02.11.2023 // Author: Vesna Mlakar

Songs of absence” is full of lyrics (…) Powerful words, peppered with thoughts that continue to have an effect on her – inwardly – violently moving performance. (…) Emotionally, the whole thing escalates into an increasingly agitated enumeration that culminates in a hiccup of vowels that are merely uttered one by one. Again and again, words get stuck in the throats of the seven dancers. (…)
Anna Konjetzky is well versed in the art of playing with content and form. But the choreographer, who has been regularly staging dance pieces characterized by a socio-political debate in Munich and around the world for 18 years now, is never merely concerned with the formal. Her almost insatiable desire to impulsively and thematically capture an audience seems to be too great. And this is exactly what Konjetzky succeeds in doing thanks to her famous protagonists Sahra Huby, Amie Jammeh, Sotiria Koutsopetrou, Jin Lee, Quindell Orton, Martha Pasakopoulou and Hannah Schillinger.

lighting

lighting

World Premiere 18. + 19.9.2013, Muffathalle Munich

lighting

a dance piece by Anna Konjetzky

“Lighting” – the lighting, the infecting, the igniting – is the title of Anna Konjetzky’s dance piece, which focuses entirely on the bodies of ten dancers in the empty stage space. Ten dancers form a shimmering, pulsating mass in which the pressure seems to swell constantly. Influenced by the countless images of protest movements around the globe, “Lighting” traces the spark, the moment of falling over, the discharge. Conceived as an increase and compression, a mass is gradually building up more and more power, energy and pressure. A diffuse, uncontrollable process is set in motion and escalates in the spectator’s mind.

“Lighting also has a double face for me as a title, because object and subject both undergo an active process. When I light something, the action is no longer in my hands, but the “burning” object now creates its own process, which is completely beyond my control.”
(A. Konjetzky)

Team

Choreographer, artistic director: Anna Konjetzky // Dance: Thuy Hang Nguyen, Thi Can Nguyen, Van Luong Phan, Van Nguyen Vu, Minh Hien Dang, Viviana Defazio, Paul Hess, Sahra Huby, Michele Meloni, Quindell Orton // Music: Sergej Maingardt // Light: Barbara Westernach

Partners & Support

A coproduction with the Vietnam National Opera and Ballet, the Goethe-Institut Hanoi and the Muffathalle Munich.
Funded by the Department of Culture of the City of Munich, the Bayerischen Landesverband für zeitgenössischen Tanz (BLZT) with funds of the Bavarian State Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts, the Goethe Institute Hanoi and supported by the NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETWORK (NPN) with funds of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

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March 2023
22 Mar

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Wednesday, Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln
21 Mar

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Tuesday, Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln
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August 2019
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September 2017
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