01.03.2011
tomorrow…we…were
tomorrow…we…were
World premiere 25./26.9.2024 Muffathalle München
tomorrow…we…were
a production
more coming soon
Team
Choreography, Stage: Anna Konjetzky // Music: // Costume:
more coming soon
Choreography, Stage: Anna Konjetzky // Music: // Costume:
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.
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.
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.
“fleck.schwinden” is a piece for four dancers. Satellite images in time lapse show the audience the progress of a landslide. A whirring of the air, a flash of light, a growing tension, bodies becoming visible, bubbling, pulsating. A single vibrating mass that begins to slide – one above the other, side by side, like an avalanche driving them into the abyss. “Because of its continuous and constant movements, nature is my source of inspiration in “fleck.schwinden.”
“The breaking of glaciers or the desiccation of rivers generate constant change. They are movements that begin as a trifle, invisible, but then begin to “concoct” and finally “erupt.”
(A. Konjetzky)
Choreography, Scene, Installation: Anna Konjetzky // Dance: Sahra Huby, Katrin Schafitel, Elisa Marschall, René Alejandro, Huari Matues // Sound: Sergej Maingardt // Light: Barbara Westernach // Stage Design: Moritz Köster
Funded by the Department of Culture of the City of Munich.
01.03.2011
28.02.2011
26. – 27.2.2011
München, Black Box Gasteig