Archives: Projekte

The Rodeo Festival

Since 2010, the Rodeo Festival has been a cornerstone of Munich’s art scene. Held biennially, it showcases the city’s diverse dance and theater landscape, fosters exchange between local and international artists, sparks new artistic directions, and addresses current cultural policy issues.

Over the years, Rodeo has evolved into a focal point for local, national and international independent artists and organizations. The 2024 and 2026 editions are organized by HochX and Theater und Live Art München e.V., respectively, under the artistic direction of Ute Gröbel and Antonia Beermann. Supported by the City of Munich, the festival is also a member of FestivalFriends, a network of independent performing arts festivals across Germany.

RODEO 2024: Every body is a signal

At rodeo 2024, the body is in the spotlight: whether seen as male or female, young or old, healthy or ill; conforming to norms or defying them; As a queer, virtual, or collective body. Bodies are more than just bones and skin—they are seismographs of our society, bearing the imprints of values, ideologies, and desires. How we perceive and treat bodies is an eminently political question. Recently, the growing right-wing movement has also targeted the body as a battleground, agitating against “gender ideology” and sexual self-determination.

This year’s Rodeo selection stands for diversity against these repressive policies. In their works, the artists celebrate resistance, rebellion, and defiance. They envision utopias for a better tomorrow while also exploring themes of weakness, exhaustion, and vulnerability.

How do we remain tender in times of brutalization? How can we make our echo chambers and bubbles permeable again? The 12 selected pieces are a plea for empathy and attentiveness—toward people and the world around us.

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).