Billinger & Schulz:
hip piece

Rhythms that get the hips moving and the asses shaking and trembling: Shake your booty! “hip piece”, the new piece by choreographer duo Verena Billinger and Sebastian Schulz, is dedicated to the body’s core, the centre of desire and lust, the motor of dance. And in doing so, it places itself in the thick of current cultural debates about appropriation and ownership, eroticisation and exoticisation, sexualities and gender, identity politics and universalism. On stage: a group of dancers of varying backgrounds and different dance trainings who have been initiated into the art of swinging their hips by experts in Afro dance, Afro house, so-called oriental dance or belly dance, dancehall, various hip-hop styles (popping, locking, etc.), salsa and twerking. They present their approach to the newly learned movements in ways that are sometimes sober, analytical and vulnerable, sometimes playful and exuberant. In the process, they explore dance as a way of liberating themselves of labels and of becoming more and different than they are at first glance.

Work in Progress: 10. May 2024, 6:45 pm | meeting point Foyer Kammerspiele at Staatstheater Darmstadt

Credits

Concept, Choreography Verena Billinger & Sebastian Schulz
Dance, Performance Thomas Bauer, Davide Degano, Camilla Fiumara, Minju Kim, Kyoko Oku
Costumes Anika Baum. Project orgnaisation: Emma Atzenroth, Antonia Zeich
Movement coaching Suffian Bangura, Niranh Chanthabouasy, Lena Drescher, Mariluz Fuente Figueredo, Gabriela Gleinig, Carina Maria Göllmann, Leila Nour
Graphics Florian Krauß
Costume trainee Dana Joldaspayeva
Production Billinger & Schulz
Co-Production FFT Düsseldorf, Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt am Main
Funded by Fonds Darstellende Künste with support measures with funds of NEUSTART KULTUR – the rescue and future-oriented package for the cultural and media fields financed by the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM), Kunststiftung NRW, Hessian Ministry of Science and the Arts
Supported by Z – Zentrum für Proben und Forschung Frankfurt, Frankfurt LAB, Schauspiel Frankfurt

The Co-production takes place in the frame of the Alliance of International Production Houses, funded by by the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, as well as by the Tanzplattform Rhein-Main. The artistic work of Verena Billinger and Sebastian Schulz is multi-annually funded by the city of Frankfurt am Main and the Konzeptionsförderung of the federal state North-Rhine Westphalia.