Archives: Projekte

One dancer, a projection screen, a live camera, some toned abs, and an attempt to answer:

How does a body ‘do’ masculinity, and how do our ideas around masculinity shape the world we live in? 

Combining pop culture, politics, and personal interviews, Making of a Man is an exploration of hyper masculinity, masculine heroics, and the vulnerable sides of masculinity. It’s a look at the leaky containers we build for masculine identity, and the ways in which constructions of masculinity contribute to the drawn-out staying power of the patriarchy. How can we find other ways of being in the world together beyond the rigidly chiseled codes of masculinity?

For the third time, the TanzQuelle initiative is bringing together local dancers and international choreographers for an evening of dance at HochX. The evening begins at 7pm with a program in the foyer. Choreographer Cristina D’Alberto will present her project “Entering TIME: the intergeneration movement explorer” and record impressions from the performers and the audience.

This will be followed by the two-part evening program “Co-Creation Lab”. The “Co-Creation Lab” production format presents its results on the HochX stage and offers Munich dancers the opportunity for artistic exploration with a guest choreographer. This promotes new creative approaches, improves the dancers’ skills and contributes to better networking within the Munich dance scene. In the 2024 edition, Constantin Georgescu was invited, who had already presented a creation in the 2022 edition. This decision reflects the desire of performers Bianca Bauer, Eléonore Bovet, Laura Manz, Paula Niehoff and João Santiago for continuity. Georgescu’s choreographic spectrum ranges from ballet reconstructions and contemporary dance pieces to multimedia installations and dance videos.

In the improvisation session entitled “Fresh Made Jam”, Munich-based performers Sophie Charlotte Becker, Matteo Carvone and Emmanuelle Rizzo present the results of research into improvisational tools for an interactive performance. The session integrates participatory elements to actively involve the audience and guests.

Image description: Two dancing bodies can be seen in a lifting figure. The person at the back – in dark training clothes – can be seen from the knees to the shoulders and is lifting the person in front upside down. She can be seen from behind, wearing an olive green top, blue pants and a braided blond pigtail.

A dance performance by Mónica García Vicente for 2 dancers, with an original musical composition by Maewen Forest.

Giselle is considered a masterpiece of classical ballet. Created in the era of early Romanticism, it is still part of the repertoire today. As in other ballets of the time, the titular female character, with whom the male protagonist, not befitting his status, falls in love, appears as a sexless, virtuous, innocent and dependent being. Admittedly, this image corresponds more to contemporary male fantasies and patriarchal ideals of femininity than to the realities of life for women and dancers in the 19th century.

I am [not] Giselle is a choreographic experiment in search of the real woman in romantic and contemporary ballet. The two dancers embody the complex and contradictory aspects of womanhood and femininity: on, off and beyond the stage. They explore their own longings and passions and those projected onto them, states of dependence and autonomy, their own bodies as voyeuristic objects of display and subjects of female desire. Choreography, musical composition, costume and scenography create an aesthetic and expressive formal language of self-exploration, not least to give Giselle a stage as a real, complex woman.

Image description: You can see two female read dancers in a dark room in skin-colored costumes. Their bodies are facing each other and their thighs touch, they lean backwards and open their arms – looking into the distance. It seems as if one body divides into two.

Workshop series

In the three-year project Listening, the choreographic duo Rykena/Jüngst, together with a variety of collaborators, devote themselves to speculating together about the future, exploring artistic forms of storytelling on stage, which they call “futuristic storytelling,” and negotiating how accessibility becomes a form of artistic expression. Carolin Jüngst and Lisa Rykena invite different artists and activists to question and negotiate artistic aesthetics in dance in a new and multi-perspective way. Everyone is welcome to participate in this artistic process. Listening aims to stimulate exchange and contact with the audience, listeners and spectators and implies various exchange, mediation and workshop formats in the form of (digital and analog) networking meetings, panels, workshops, interviews, studio invitations and research formats.

Image description: The image shows two hands reaching into the picture from the lower left edge of the image. One hand, with open flat palm, is gently touched by the other hand at the fingertips. The background of the picture, as well as the two hands are kept in light, transparent pink.

In the science fiction genre, the expression »sense of wonder« describes an expanded form of awareness of what seems possible, and thus simultaneously appeals to the willingness to marvel. By drawing on speculative and climate fiction motifs and combining the credible with the mysterious, the choreographer duo places the fairy-tale motif of wonder and its construction at the centre of their exploration.

As in their earlier works, the two artists draw on classical, mythological and pop-cultural materials and create new narratives, embodiments and hybrid forms from a queer feminist perspective. Carolin Jüngst und Lisa Rykena were represented at Tanzplattform Deutschland 2022 and are producing SENSE OF WONDER, their fourth work in Hamburg (Kampnagel) and the third in Munich (HochX).

What happens when touch is absent? Is the currently necessary physical distance an accelerant on the way to an individualistic and decoupled society? And how can we overcome the physical separation from each other?

The skin hunger project explores the effects of the lack of touch, borrowing from the audio world of podcasts. The 60-minute ensemble piece by Jasmine Ellis Projects combines the live elements of dance and music with the narrative connectedness of radio. Part of the project is a radio podcast by artist Johnny Spence in collaboration with CBC Canada’s Ideas radio show.

Image description: In the black and white picture, in the background, on the right edge of the picture, you can see a person lying on his side on the floor, hugging his own leg. Up to the waist you can see a person in the middle of the picture, in bare legs and short sports pants. On the left and in the foreground you can see a short-haired dancer in a light-colored T-shirt squatting on the floor with her own toe in her mouth.