Created with and Performed by
György Jellinek, Jone San Martin, Lyllie Rouvière, Manoela Rangel, Pedro Aybar
Sound Design / Live Music
Kreatress
Dramaturgical support
Meg Stuart
Light Design, Space and Objects
André Uerba
Executive Production
SHORT HOPE / André Uerba
Co-Production
Radialsystem
Production & Press
Apricot Productions
Residency Support
Tanzfabrik, Theaterhaus Mitte
Supported by the NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETWORK - STEPPING OUT, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the framework of the initiative NEUSTART KULTUR. Assistance Program for Dance.
How does your body feel today? In this time of velocity, violence and chaos, choreographer and performer André Uerba explores intimacy as a practice of being together, along with five performers and a musician, in his new work “Æffective Choreography”, which premieres at this year’s edition of Radialsystem’s SENSE series. The performance plays with the boundaries between sharing and withdrawing, movement and stillness, beauty and deception; the performers structure their encounter through a slow pace, propelling their bodies to attune, sink and merge together, refining their present moment.
The desire to make hidden things visible is unfolded by their intimate gestures. Collectively they turn their gaze to inner landscapes where slowness and touch become a main practice. Their bodies resemble a choir that acknowledges the group as a body itself.
André Uerba began his research on rehearsing intimacy during the process of “Burn Time” (2018) and continued through “Fire Starter” (2019/20), “Inviting Moments of Stillness” and “A hole the size of your touch” (2021). “Æffective Choreography” marks a new chapter in the research and is reinforced by his current training in bodywork by the Institute for Somatic Learning, Sexuality and Bodywork (ISB Berlin).
- Sensitive Zones -
In André Uerba’s Æffective Choreography the five performers György Jellinek, Jone San Martin, Lyllie Rouvière, Manoela Rangel and Pedro Aybar reflect on the feelings inherent in their bodies and show vulnerability. The premiere took place on July 29 as part of the SENSE program series at Radialsystem.
Clad only in socks or barefoot, the audience enters the bright dance floor and sits down. The summer evening sun shines through the windows of the Radialsystem, its warm rays are reflected by the Spree and glitter in the panes. Leaning against the wall, performers György Jellinek, Jone San Martin, Lyllie Rouvière, Manoela Rangel and Pedro Aybar slowly swing their bodies back and forth as one performer pushes a wheeled suitcase into the center of the room. Then the others join in, sitting around the suitcase and on top of each other as if their bodies were also furniture, their legs crossing over. They rub their genitalia against the heads and shoulders of the other performers, caressing hands. They hold each other by the neck, keep contact with each other. Sitting behind a mixing desk, the sound designer Kreatress accompanies the scene with a whispering hum.
With her eyes closed, performer Jone San Martin nestles against the wall where I sit. She begins to caress and undress herself, letting her clothes fall to the floor. By now it is so quiet that even the rubbing of fabric against the skin can be heard. Naked, the performers walk through the space picking up sheets from the floor, pulling them behind them as they walk, then holding them in front of their bodies. The semi-transparent sheets/fabrics show close-ups of genitalia –– their own? They cover themselves behind the photo prints, lie down with them, hide themselves and their faces behind the vulvas and penises. Still lying down, they curve to the side, lying tired and vulnerable in a row. Sounds of dripping ring from the loudspeakers and Kreatkress, who has meanwhile also taken off her clothes, hums a melody in a bright head voice.
After the performers have hung the clothes on a pole construction, they line up behind a microphone and introduce themselves by reciting fragments of memories that have shaped them. In doing so, they work their way from describing some of their external attributes (for example, weight, condition of teeth, number of siblings) to what they have experienced (early death of a parent, bullying based on appearance or sexual identity) and to their internal feelings (feelings of lust, shame, or loneliness). They talk about trauma and queer realities as well as humorous moments and their hormones, sharing their stories with the audience who feels and laughs along. The performers show their wounds and vulnerabilities, which they push through their lives like the rolling suitcase at the beginning of the performance. At the same time, they demonstrate self-love, which is their emancipatory resistance against dysfunctional sensations, relationships and judgments.
In the following sequence, the performers rub themselves with a cold block of ice, whereupon the drops wet the floor. The intertwined bodies also begin to melt into each other. The naked skin reddens due to the cold. To warm themselves up, the performers blow on each other’s arms and bellies, so that it tickles and smacks, making the skin vibrate, transferring from the outside to the inside. Sitting and facing the audience, they eventually let their genitals imitate singing movements. Possibly to show that the semiologically loaded external genitals do not only exist for sexual stimulation. Or that the body does not have to strive for beauty and perfection, that it is okay the way it is, with all its supposed flaws.
Sensitive zones are often linked to the external genitalia in a sexualizing way. But feelings, emotions, memories and wounds also rotate in the body as embodied traces of human coexistence in societies characterized by violent power relations. As if locked in roller suitcases, these affects are often carelessly pushed through everyday life. André Uerba’s Æffective Choreography traces these embodied and perhaps confused transitions and brings them to light in a processual interplay between social interaction and introspection.