Guest performance presented in cooperation with Festival Theater in Bewegung, Jena

English without surtitles

Xiao Ke greets us via live broadcast from her apartment in Shanghai. Between sofa and television, in the middle of the night there, she describes her career as a performer in traditional dances, modern dance and contemporary dance. For us in Europe, this simultaneously opens up the history of modern, post-Maoist China from the perspective of an ambitious artist. And now Bel sits in front of the audience on stage and Ke shows examples from her wide-ranging choreographic repertoire, in which different, sometimes antagonistic epochs of her country are reflected.

But Bel also stands for renewal, as one of the pioneering French stage artists of our time and co-founder of a new conception of choreographic creation. His Bel’s work includes a series of portrait pieces that can be as much about a ballerina from the Paris Opera as they are about a traditional Thai dancer. These are discussion processes in which the realities of life are discussed unvarnishedly, but with a great deal of humor.

As here, in an intercontinental encounter that paradoxically arose in the midst of the Covid pandemic with its lockdowns and border closures. That’s when the Internet was the only solution. In addition, Bel and the members of his company – because of climate change – have long since stopped booking air travel. Thus, Bel’s works reflect his convictions and commitments, in absolute authenticity.

www.jeromebel.fr

+ Fri, November 10: Follow-up talk with Jérôme Bel, moderated by Prof. Dr. Patrick Primavesi