Who is Frau Troffea?

Strasbourg in the summer of 1518: a woman begins to dance in the street. Frau Troffea (so named in the source material) dances and dances. For hours. For several days. For months. Others join her. There were supposedly about 400 persons who danced until they collapsed from exhaustion and pain. Many of them died. This dancing excess went down in history as the “Strasbourg dancing plague of 1518.” Up until the present day one still is puzzled about the causes. More recent research suspects the dancing mania was a reaction to uncertain times. Ceren Oran, who has chosen Munich as her home, is also searching for the individual, emotional reasons. Her dance marathon – 10 days, 7 hours each day at different venues – is fed by sequences of movement inspired by social, political, or personal matters and distributed among each other. Materials and comments will also be distributed on the website www.whoisfrautroffea.com.

With the world premiere of Who is Frau Troffea? at DANCE 2019 this dancer, choreographer, and “sound painter,” who was born in 1984 in Istanbul, presents another result of her ongoing research into the exhausted, or rather, exhausting human body. In her piece Rush Hour (2017) treadmills take the performers to their limits and beyond. How far can a body go? How long can the dancers maintain the performative quality? While the choreography over the course of eight hours accumulates, the bodies weaken gradually. Coincidental passers-by and the targeted members of the audience are confronted with dancers who are increasingly weary. They pop up during the festival at different places in Munich. (For more information, visit www.whoisfrautroffea.com) Their interventions in everyday social life in the city borrow political protest movement motifs that have become iconic: the young woman Jan Rose Kasmir who stood in front of the National Guard holding a flower during the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations in 1967; the “tank man” who stood in front of a column of tanks on Tiananmen Square with two shopping bags in his hands; and the “standing man,” whose picture from Taksim Square in 2013 went around the globe. In addition, Ceren Oran, who finished her studies in 2006 with a master’s degree in international choreographic exchange at SEAD in Salzburg, has researched why humans dance at all. The dancers in her international and multi-ethnic team let their own stories and experiences flow into the performances. The more personal their dance is, the more convincing it is, says Ceren Oran. Her core team comes from Germany, Slovakia, Turkey, Israel, and Columbia. The team will be supplemented by students from SEAD – Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance. The music for Who is Frau Troffea? is by the composer and DJ Hüseyin Evirgen, who has vast experience with long-term live acts. A techno soundscape of electronic music instruments and via sound generators that lasts more than eight hours and functions without samplers or computers. The pre-produced material, a type of first draft, will be played in one take and recorded. The dancers and their bodies orient themselves to special sound signals, in passion and exhaustion, in dynamics and tranquility.


10 days between 2pm and 9pm with changing location throughout Munich. Running time: 7 hours Venue information on www.whoisfrautroffea.com

Concept, Choreography: Ceren Oran
Dancers: Daphna Horenczyk, Dante Murillo, Jaroslav Ondruš, Roni Sagi, Karolína Hejnová, Ceren Oran und TänzerInnen von SEAD – Choreographisches Zentrum Salzburg: Samuli Emery, Michaela Kadlčíková, Jin Lee, Sati Veyrunes, Bry Prunelle, Susanna Ylikoski, Ana Bleda Torres, Akira Yoshida, Jovada Zelenovic
Music: Hüseyin Evirgen
Accompanied Dramaturgy : Jean-Baptiste Charlot
Artistic Production Management: Rat & Tat Kulturbüro
Technical Support: Dennis Kopp
Assistent: Emma Herrschmann

Premiere:
16 - 26 May 2019, Public Space Munich


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The production is supported by the Department of Arts and Culture of the City of Munich,  in collaboration with SEAD – Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance and TANZBÜRO München. The production is supported by the Fonds Darstellende Künste funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media With kind support of Dance Watch and Czech Centres. Ceren Oran is a member of Tanztendenz München e.V. The production is supported by the Department of Arts and Culture of the City of Munich, the Bayerische Landesverband for contemporary dance (BLZT) by Bayerisches Staatsministeriums for Science and Arts, in collaboration with SEAD – Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance and TANZBÜRO München.