๐ฅ๐ฒ๐๐ถ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ป๐ฐ๐ ๐ฆ๐๐ฝ๐ฝ๐ผ๐ฟ๐
Tanzfabrik, Theaterhaus Mitte
๐ง๐ต๐ฎ๐ป๐ธ๐ ๐๐ผ
Bernardo De Almeida, Berghain Team (Kirschan, Andrรฉ, Norbert), Filipe Serro, Kule, Dock11, Asier Solana
๐ฆ๐๐ฝ๐ฝ๐ผ๐ฟ๐๐ฒ๐ฑ ๐ฏ๐ 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.
๐ฆ๐๐ฝ๐ฝ๐ผ๐ฟ๐๐ฒ๐ฑ (in Cyprus & Barcelona) ๐ฏ๐
Goethe Institut
Photos below: Alicja Hoppel & Video Stills: QuietCityFilms (Svea Immel, Paul Holdsworth)
How does your body feel today? In this time of velocity and violence, choreographer and performer Andrรฉ Uerba explores intimacy as a practice of being together, along with seven performers and a musician. This work plays with the boundaries between sharing and withdrawing, movement and stillness, vulnerability and exposure.
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.
Andrรฉ Uerba began his research on rehearsing intimacy during the process of โBurn Timeโ (2018) and continued through โFire Starterโ (2019/20), โInviting Moments of Stillnessโ and โA hole the size of your touchโ (2021). โรffective Choreographyโ marks a new chapter in the research and was reinforced by his training in bodywork by the Institute for Somatic Learning, Sexuality and Bodywork (ISB Berlin).
๐ฆ๐๐ก๐ฆ๐๐ง๐๐ฉ๐ ๐ญ๐ข๐ก๐๐ฆ 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. Andrรฉ Uerbaโs รffective Choreography traces these embodied and perhaps confused transitions and brings them to light in a processual interplay between social interaction and introspection.
Janine Muckermann
๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ฎ๐ฑ
* Transborda Festival, Almada (Portugal)
*Museu Serralves / Festival DDD, Porto (Portugal)
๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ฎ๐ฐ
*English Theater, 10th Expo Festival (Berlin)
*Dance House Lefkosia, "On Bodies Festival" (Nicosia, Cyprus)
*La Caldera / Grec Festival (Barcelona, Spain)
๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ฎ๐ฏ
*Antwerp Queer Arts Festival, De Studio (Antwerp, Belgium)
*Halle am Berghain (Berlin)
*Tanzbiennale Heidelberg (Heidelberg, Germany)
The other day, I went to the theater and had a vision. I understood what had happened in Madrid with the Pride Day poster. Well, it wasnโt really the theater, it was a dance performance. It was a piece by choreographer Andrรฉ Uerba titled Affective Choreography. I didnโt know what it was about, but I felt the call of the unknown. It was performed at La Caldera, as part of the Grec Festival (Barcelona's summer performing arts festival).
It was Saturday evening. Barcelona was melting from the heat and fatigue, amidst construction rubble, while the metro was overcrowded due to ongoing works and closures. Politics once aimed to ensure people lived well; today, itโs reduced to the right to say something (anything) where allowed, leaving everyone to fend for themselves.
This vision made me realize the horror of that controversial poster: it had no bodies. Only things, objects, and colorful scribbles. No people. The poster denied the fundamental truth that a person is a body that feels, experiences, and communicates. This was precisely the theme of "Affective Choreographyโ.
Feรฑa, Lu, Lyn, Reinaldo, Olga, Mano and Pedro are the names of the seven performers who worked on the Barcelona version. These are their real names, and they repeated them over and over as they recounted moments from their lives. To strip their biographies bare, they had first stripped off their clothes. Very slowly. Choreographically, of course. It was like that song by Aute that said, Donโt undress just yet. Itโs easier to shed oneโs skin than to remove oneโs clothes. As the performers slowly undressed, time seemed to slow down. Not from discomfort, but due to the slowness itself. It felt as though the ticking clock within me had stopped, making me realize that thereโs also a dimension where only bodies exist, and time does not. Alongside the performers, Andrรฉ Uerba also undressed, as did the musician and composer Kristen Meyers. Everything that happened in the room was sincere, real.
The stories told there were full of scars. Most of them were physical scars, body marks. In some of them, you could see in the flesh the pink road of the wounds they told. Stories of sex, of suffering, of trauma, of their own or others' abuse, all these are experiences, and they also told stories of an unwavering bodily search to eliminate borders, to find out who is oneself. Words are never equal to feelings, nor to ideas (philosophers know this). But we are almost always satisfied, because otherwise we would not survive, and somehow we have to understand each other. Life appeared millions of years before language, and that is why life has an insurmountable lead over words.
The body is vulnerability. This was shown in Andrรฉ Uerba's work, and this is what was censored in the Pride poster in Madrid, but people celebrate this world day precisely because they know they are vulnerable! In the room of La Caldera, we had seven vulnerable bodies in front of us. The bodies came together, mingling with each other, twisting, squeezing..., forming a jumble, which in the end formed a single body. In the sculptural group of Laocoรถn - the one in the Vatican Museums - we can perceive that same mute writhing and that same suffering, capable of stopping time. But, in this performance, the snakes strangling the priest Laocoรถn and his two sons were the arms and legs of the performers. As we always travel with our own snake, we hope so many times to change our skin.
Every form of censorship, every concealment, every ridiculous poster, is a snake that coils around those who have freely used their bodies.
Javier Peฬrez Anduฬjar
Excerpt from elDiario.es, 16 July 2024