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.

chipping

chipping

World Premiere 8.10.2014, Kammerspiele München

chipping

a dance piece by Anna Konjetzky

Everything vibrates: The stage in Anna Konjetzky’s chipping is constantly in motion: cubes are moving- sometimes very slowly and hardly noticeable, sometimes faster and seemingly running everything down, changing images and shapes flood the space, breaking it, making it wide or flat. In the middle of it: the body of a dancer that needs to assert itself against, and with, the space; that needs to adjust to constantly new circumstances and that needs to find new ways around. The body must adjust to new situations constantly, finding its way through the oscillating space: each step is a new balancing act; every movement newly devised; newly counterbalanced; and each way newly found. Even the passive body cannot rest on this stage: the moving space encroaches, deforms and swallows it. The body is driven restlessly to exhaustion and beyond.

“In my opinion, restlessness is a very exiting aspect for the research of the body and movements. Yet, also the society seems to become faster and faster. Inundated by information, always reachable and available, seemingly limitless self-determination and the dictum of being permanently productive are a societal space that constantly forces—or enables—us to do certain “steps.“ (Anna Konjetzky)

Team

Choreography, Scene: Anna Konjetzky // Dance: Sahra Huby // Music: Brendan Dougherty // Video: Timm Burkhardt // Scene: Anton Lukas // Project Coordination: Laura Martegani/Rat&Tat Kulturbüro

Partners & Support

A co-production with Rodeo-festival Munich in collaboration with Kammerspiele Munich and théâtre de la ville de Luxembourg. Supportet by the Kulturreferat der Landeshauptstadt München, Kreissparkasse München-Starnberg-Ebersberg and Muffatwerk GmbH. Supported by NATIONALE PERFORMANCE NETZ (NPN) Koproduktionsförderung Tanz aus Mitteln des Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien aufgrund eines Beschlusses des Deutschen Bundestags.

Press

Upcoming Events

Past Events

4. – 6.7.2020
HochX München
27.11.2018
co festival Ljubljana
24.11.2018
Tanzfaktur Köln
17.11.2018
Kurtheater Baden
9.2.2018
Lichthof Hamburg
8.2.2018
Lichthof Hamburg
23.12.2017
Ramallah
21.12.2017
Ramallah
6.11.2017
Rio di Janeiro, Brasil
5.11.2017
Rio di Janeiro, Brasil
1.11.2017
Recife, Brasil
31.10.2017
Recife, Brasil
27.10.2017
Salvador, Brasil
26.10.2017
Salvador, Brasil
22.10.2017
Fortaleza, Brasil
21.10.2017
Aquiras
2.10.2017
Tirana deutsche Kulturtage
12.5.2017
Studio Alta Praha
29.4. – 2.5.2017
Algier festival culturel international de danse contemporaine
25.3.2016
Napa festival Karachi
7.11.2015
Unidram Potsdam
16.10.2015
Saarländisches Staatstheater
9.10.2015
Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxemburg
13.9.2015
cricoteka Kraków
12.9.2015
cricoteka Kraków
11.4.2015
Werkraum Kammerspiele
9.12.2014
Bremen Schwankhalle steptext
23. – 24.10.2014
Werkraum Kammerspiele
8.10.2014
Rodeo festival Werkraum Kammerspiele