Credits Photos: Philip Sichler

Inspired by the works of the German painter and object artist Peter Roehr, the dancers of the Hessisches Staatsballett transform Kunsthaus Wiesbaden into a stage and create a unique dance event.

Free entry

Photo: Patrick Bäuml

The international waacking icon and choreographer of “STUCK” Mounia Nassanger gives an insight into the movement language of waacking/whacking and its history on the US West Coast in the 1970s.

While voguing has its roots in New York, waacking emerged on the West coast of the USA, in Los Angeles, as the dance of the LGBTQ disco scene in the 70s – in a period when queer people were largely unseen and stigmatised.

An extension of punking (a positive use of the derogatory term “punk”), this expressive style was typified by accentuated arm movements to the beat of the music. With STUCK, international waacking icon Mounia Nassangar creates her first choreographic work, transposing the movement language of waacking into a personal and idiosyncratic contemporary stage work. Here she searches for answers to physical and mental blocks. Dance becomes a tool that transforms internal and external pressures into freedom and self-determination.

In STUCK, five female dancers each take their own highly individual approaches to waacking. While their bodies and histories are different, they all share one powerful experience: the immediacy of dance and expression that is capable of resisting all forms of oppression.

‘Avessos’ (“inside out“) is the new work by the Brazilian dancer and choreographer Marcos Abranches – currently Artist-in-Residence at Staatstheater Darmstadt. For this solo performance he explores the most varied styles and artistic forms including DanceAbility, butoh, contact improvisation, cinema, photography, fashion, music and somatic techniques like Feldenkrais.

DanceAbility is a method of dance, movement and non-verbal communcation. It integrates people with and without disabilities and is based on the principle of inclusion instead of isolation.

Japanese butoh is a dance that upsets conventions. Butoh aims to free itself from accustomed forms of physicality and thinking and to achieve a new kind of presence through improvisation and embodiment. Contact improvisation focusses, among other things, on transferring weight: on holding and being held.

‘Avessos’ invites its audience to enter a kaleidoscope of expressive forms and to experience a poignant solo.

On Sunday, 10.11. a “Meet the Artists” takes place after the performance.

Two women are eating sunflower seeds in a park, a doorway or a courtyard. They share an everyday space, a conversation and the intimacy of silence. Suddenly singing and dancing interrupt this normal world and transform it into a magical spectacle.

In ‘Taranto Aleatorio’ (“Random Taranto”) the choreographer and dancer María del Mar Suárez/La Chachi and the singer Lola Dolores offer their personal take on the roughness of taranto, a form of flamenco. It is a variety of dance that originated in the Adalucian mining region of Almería. It is accompanied by a simple, dry song without guitar accompaniment that was developed from its need to be sung independently.

Both artists adopt the principle of chance in the piece and create a good-humoured atmosphere with their unabashed gestures. Their choreography moves smoothly from easy to swirling movements in which their heels create a laughing, plaintive rhythm on the floor as the space is enveloped in a song that never wants to end.

In ‘A BEGINNING’, five dancers and singers take to the stage in darkness. Sparingly illuminated with hand-held lights, their songs flood the space.

For the artists Aurora Bauzà and Pere Jou, light becomes an object that reveals more about voices than bodies. Meanwhile the darkness encourages the public to use their imagination and to notice what is felt but not seen.

In this piece Bauzà and Jou have developed a practice of physicality and movement that displays two movements in a single body: the movement in the singing that is audible and the movements that are visible.

At the same time, the darkness alters our sense of space and time. The boundaries between the bodies of the performers and those of the public become blurred: the piece turns into a journey and theatrical story about the eternal dialectic between the individual and the collective, between movement and voice, darkness and light.

A Warm-up will take place in the foyer of Kammerspiele before the performance (19:00 Uhr) as well as a “Meet the Artists” after the show.

Language: Rumanian, English, Latin

Seven dancers stand on stage dressed in earth tones. Their movements appear hesistant and gentle, then angular and almost machine-like, before flowing into a soft and tender form of expression again.

‘Every Minute Motherland’ by the Polish choreographer Maciej Kuźmiński is about fleeing from Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Working together with his company and Ukrainian dancers in exile, Kuźmiński uses the language of dance to find a way of expressing what cannot be put into words: the war as a turning point that completely derails people’s lives.

Trauma, exile and alienation, lost identities. The piece focusses attention on the bodies and experiences of the witnesses while the war plays out every day on TV and social media in numbingly repetitive fashion.

Every minute their thoughts return to the country that they were forced to flee from and to the people they left behind. Loss and pain are communicated with a gentle expressive power, through small gestures that reveal the full dimensions of the tragedy.

A “Meet the Artists” will take place after the performance.

Twenty dancers combine their colective energy in an explosive dance piece by the acclaimed choreographer Saïdo Lehlouh. In a game that balances energy, personality and decision-making, dance is created from the vitality of the moment. Throughout this process the group is united by a strong common interest: bringing together dancers from different styles and backgrounds to develop a choreography that is centred on the vibrations and energy of their encounters.

Saïdo Lehlouh originally started in b-boying and made his name as a breaker with the Bad Trip Crew for his dynamic style combining fluid movements with authenticity. In ‘Témoin’ (Witness) he expands his choreographic vocabulary with several influences that go beyond hip-hop and have shaped the careers of the ensemble he has assembled. The piece draws on the individuality of the dancers and their way of improvising in a dynamic process of intense listening and encounters. ‘Témoin’ is a unique experience that celebrates the beauty of an instinctive and spontaneous hip-hop dance.

After the performance, the opening party of Tanzfestival Rhein Main will take place.