Anna Konjetzky & Co

tomorrow…we…were…

tomorrow…we…were…

World premiere  25./26.9.2024 / 20 Uhr / Muffathalle München

tomorrow…we…were…

A dance piece by Anna Konjetzky

6 dancers deal with nostalgia, with holding on to something that is supposedly better, with looking back to yesterday but wanting to move forward. Nostalgia is currently a strong driving force again, both individually and in society as a whole, not just as an exit from an uncertain present, but as a vision of the future. The performers move in a half-pipe pulled apart, jumping up, letting themselves fall, simultaneously moving forwards and backwards in their dynamics. Yesterday / All my troubles seemed so far away – a song like a lifeline. But can we turn the past fantasy into a future fantasy?

Team

Choreography, Stage:  Anna Konjetzky // Music: Sergej Maingardt // Video, Light: Joscha Eckert // Costume: Dimos Klimenof // Dance: Matteo Carvone, Sahra Huby, Amie Jammeh, Venetsiana Kalampaliki, Sotiria Koutsopetrou, Quindell Orton // Dramaturgical advice: Maxwell McCarthy // Stage Construction: Klaus Hammer // Pr: Simone Lutz // Production: Elsa Büsing

Partners & Support

A production by Anna Konjetzky & Co in Coproduction with Muffathalle Munich. Supporters: Cultural Department of the City of Munich, Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and BLZT, Bayerischer Landesverband für zeitgenössischen Tanz, with funds from the Bavarian State Ministry for Science and Art.

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September 2024
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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.

Die Summe der Öffnungen (“The sum of openings”)

Die Summe der Öffnungen (“The sum of openings”)

World premiere January 10, 2010, Muffathalle Munich

Die Summe der Öffnungen (“The sum of openings”)

a dance piece by Anna Konjetzky

In Anna Konjetzky’s “Die Summe der Öffnungen,” five dancers move about the top of an almost four meter high stage construction that drops down on two sides. A “mountain” with stairs and steps, corners and edges, with niches, platforms and holes. A space architecture that forms, forces and challenges the movements of the dancers; and thus it becomes part of the choreography. A choreography that resembles the dance of Sisyphus: you cannot escape from the “mountain,” as stairs are leading into the nowhere or back to the top; bodies are swallowed up, fragmented and yet manage to return to the surface and start over.

“I drew inspiration for this work through my fascination that people again and again manage to create living space anywhere. How a living space is created under the strangest, most absurd and horrific conditions, and in such places. How the body conquers centimeter after centimeter, fights for the right for space. This dance piece may not be completely unlike life on a garbage heap.”
(A. Konjetzky)

Team

Choreography, Scene: Anna Konjetzky // Dance: Daniel Bear Davis, Marie-Laure Fiaux, Paul Hess, Sahra Huby, Katrin Schafitel // Music: Laura Konjetzky // Stage design: Anton Lukas // Video: Marc Stephan // Light: Barbara Westernach

Partners & Support

Funded by the Department of Culture of the City of Munich and Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V.

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Past Events

30. – 31.1.2011
Muffathalle München
19. – 20.1.2010
Muffathalle München