Rykena/Jüngst

Rykena / Jüngst have been working as an artistic duo between the cities of Hamburg and Munich since 2016. In their dance productions, they roam through strip clubs, 1920s vaudeville theaters, Ovid’s Metamorphoses or queer comic conventions and let mermaids, she hulks, expressive arias, velvet stages and marble down jackets collide. Their work engages queerfeminist, intersectional, and Ableism-critical body discourses and the transformation of normative categorization of bodies. For this purpose, they draw on classical, mythological as well as pop-cultural materials and create new figures, hybrid forms and grotesque embodiments with the aim of dissolving stereotypical, clichéd and heteronormative (gender) attributions. Since the beginning of their collaboration, they have experimented excessively with the relationship between body and voice and their possibilities to comment on and question each other. Rykena/Jüngst’s working method is characterized by the reinterpretation of virtuosity, the imagination and manifestation of different bodies, and the affirmation of expressive, humorous, and dilettant bodies. Since 2019, their artistic works have been continuously created in co-production with Kampnagel Hamburg and HochX Munich (including SHE LEGEND 2019/2020, ROSE LA ROSE 2021, SENSE OF WONDER 2023). In 2022 – together with the musician Raphaela Andrade Cordova – they have produced their piece SPLAAASH for a young audience which they continue to show at various places. Their work has been shown at various venues and festivals, e.g. at brut Wien, Outnow Festival Bremen, SPECTRUM Festival Villach/Austria, Hauptsache Frei Festival Hamburg, Hellerau Dresden or fabrik Potsdam. Their production SHE LEGEND was furthermore invited to Tanzplattform 2022 at HAU/Hebbel-am-Ufer and to FREESPACE Festival at Westkowloon Hongkong.

Since the end of 2020, they have also been working intensively on participation, access and ableist structures in dance and theater. They work themselves as audio-describers and audio description consultants in the fields of dance, theater and performance, among others at the summer festival at Kampnagel, at the Spielart Festival Munich or for and with colleagues such as Ursina Tossi and Leo Hofmann/Benjamin van Bebber/Franz Henschel/Jeanne Vogt, Sophia Neise, Nic Meyer etc.. They offer workshops on artistic audio description (a.o. with Sophia Neises or Naomi Sanfo) and integrate access means such as audio-description artistically into their pieces. In this context, together with choreographer Ursina Tossi, they initiated the research project SPOKEN DANCE, which focuses on artistic research around the topic and methodology of audio description. The networking and structural project, funded by NPN Stepping Out, is dedicated to organizing (awareness-raising) workshops, exchange formats, panels and open laboratories to jointly test and further disseminate audio-description. In 2024, a comprehensive website will be published on the project to anchor it more sustainably in the independent performing arts and to create a networking platform.