1998

Vision Europe - a door for the stranger

Focus: Johann Sebastian Bach 8th Festival of Contemporary European Theatre 10 – 15 November 1998

Theatre and dance from old and new Europe Under the patronage of Wolfgang Tiefensee – Mayor of the City of Leipzig

Festival Director: Ann-Elisabeth Wolff

Programme 1998

Das beste deutsche Tanzsolo (Best German dance solo)

Competition within euro-scene 1998

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Saint François d'Assise (St. Francis of Assisi)

The town Assisi is located in Umbria near Perugia, about half ways between Florence and Rome. A visit there is a fundamental essential of all classical journeys to Italy and the town is shaped by the personality of the holy St. Francis (1182-1226) who lived and worked there. He founded the Franciscan order whose dicta demand penance, poverty and humility.

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Iets op Bach (Oddments on Bach)

A nomadic artist family at a rooftop terrace among television antennas, chimneys and ventilation shafts. An acrobat, a transvestite and a cripple, wailing women, a girl harassed by her father and a pair of lovers. Euphoria, blood, tenderness and lust. Freedom poetry, merriments meaninglessness, everydays heaven and hell.

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Fugitus

Bach's »Kunst der Fuge« (»Art of the Fugue«) is considered one of the most mysterious and complex works of musical history. This gigantic body, that with the »Goldberg Variation« and the »Musikalischen Opfer« (»Musical Sacrifice«) belongs to the great later cycles, presents an oddly constructed all-embracing oeuvre consisting of all forms of fugues. The »Kunst der Fuge« (»Art of the Fugue«) was Bach's last composition (1747-49), it remained uncompleted and unadapted for instruments. Its structure remains enigmatic even today.

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Dantons Tod (Danton's Death)

»The knight, death and the devil are tattle-tale Partners in Büchner's piece. They are very brazen, funny and smutty and seem to be escapees from a mediaeval mystery play or a puppet show. They argue which scenes of Büchner's piece should be played and which should be cut. They play Danton, Robespierre and Camille with malicious and tender wit... Theatre like this, sophisticated and experimental at the same time, has indeed become very rare« (Klaus Pfützner, Neues Deutschland, Berlin, 01.12.1997).

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Simple Storys

The hit of Leipzig's 1998 Book Fair was Ingo Schulze with his novel »Simple Storys: a novel about East-German provincial life«. Schulze tells in 29 stories what happened to the residents of Altenburg, a small town about 40 km south of Leipzig's city gates, along their way to the newly gained freedom.

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La Pantera Imperial (The imperial panther)

»The piano is possessed by the devil. From within, with the wooden intestines lit up, played by magic hands, whacked, shifted about – a dreadful old squawk box that clatters across the stage with moaning and groaning like a bad spook and, in the process, elbows the two grand pianos aside which, after all, are still manned by human piano players. A nightmare in concerto« (Tanja Rest, Frankfurter Neue Presse, 20.12.1997).

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Lambarena

Black Blanc Beur, »one of France's most exiting dance companies« (Pia Kurz, Frankfurter Neue Presse, 20.12.1997), started its Hip-Hop success story out on the streets of Paris' suburbs. The kids met there during the mid-eighties – the blacks, the blancs (the whites) and the beurs, as the children of the Algerian immigrants were called. Jean Djemad picked those dance-crazies off the streets and put them on stage. He still manages the company today.

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Bella

Ina Rager was born 1969 in Salzburg. Since 1984, after her basic dance training in Salzburg, Vienna and Copenhagen, she specialised in the various techniques of Butoh, contemporary, ethnic and performing dance. After 1990 she worked as a street performer in many European and Asian cities and performed in numerous productions, e. g. at the Serapionstheater and the Tanz*Hotel in Vienna and the Tanztheater Ikarus in Klagenfurt.

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Loose Leaf

Frey Faust hails from California. He completed his dance training in pantomime, acrobatics, jazz, ballet and stage contact under the tutelage of Marcel Marceau in Paris. Contact improvisation, Aikido and Afro Haitian dance were added later to his repertory. After returning to his native country he worked together with several choreographers, e.g. Merce Cunningham and Stephen Petronio. Afterwards he lived for several years in Düsseldorf and created numerous choreographies which ranged from solos to group performances. Lately, he once again lives in the States.

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Suspicious Love

While Simone Sandroni was a member of the Belgian Ultima Vez company from 1987 until 1992, Wim Vandekeybus was leading it. In 1992 he left this troupe, set up his own Compagnie Ernesto in Brussels and performed with it in several European countries. Later, in 1996 and together with the Czech choreographer Lenka Flory, he founded the company Déjà Donné in Prague .

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Solo M

Annamirl van der Pluijm learnt her profession at Rotterdam's dance acedemy and then worked as an actress for the Belgian theatre producer Jan Fabre and the German choreographer Reinhild Hoffmann before she started her own solo work in 1992. Due to her fascinating stage appearances, she played successfully in many European cities, as for instance with »Solo P.«, a hommage in the style of Henry Purcell (1995) and »The Other Me«, a self-analysis (1998).

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Ein Air geht um die Welt (An Air goes around the world)

Werner Stiefel, born in 1954 in Malchin/Mecklenburg, worked from 1972-90 at the ballet of the Oper Leipzig, first as a group and later as first solo dancer. He later switched for six years to the Schauspiel Leipzig's Tanztheater. Since 1990 he choreographs his own chamber dance evenings, such as Erwins Stache's »Pas de Triangel« with sound machines (invited at the euro-scene Leipzig 1992) and »BB-Stübl« (»BB Chamber«) at the Oper Halle in 1993. In »Bachsche Verwirrungen« (»Bach-like confusion«, 1994) he turns towards Bach's music for the first time.

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Marmelade – Jam Session

A paper-covered wood frame is backdrop, screen, interior and projection surface; all at the same time. Paint is applied, music sounds, a video recording shows a woman who, wearing a blue kerchief while spiritlessly working on an assembly line, suddenly has a tiny car driving from under her hands, chased by a gondola. Dreams of the vast world of western opulence are stirring …

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Schlappstock

The puppets are facing each other in silence, waiting patiently. A deadly silence dominates the casemates, broken only by the plopping of the thawing ice. A powerful rubber stamp returns the puppets to reality, a world in which work has become scarce.

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Im (Goldenen) Schnitt I (In the (golden) ratio)

A single dancer – and piano music by Bach. Wrapped in a dark-blue coat, the man, well past his prime, slowly walks from the rear towards the front and then, later, through columns that start glowing at the inside. Broken pillars out of wood and Plexiglas, nature and artificiality, perhaps a site of sacred rites. The man is not lonely but simply lone, in dialogue with his own body, with space, with sounds, with silence, with time.

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