During The Generations Season, Der Betrieb becomes a space for embodied reflection, which happens within and through the dance and artistic practice. The audience can enter the space at any time, stay as long as they want and always come back. In collaboration with the performers Esther Balfe, Frans Poelstra, Alexander Gottfarb, Valeria Chavez Chong, Stéphanie Evrard and musician Zosia Hołubowska a landscape of choreographed thought – a thinking choreography is created. During every performance day the dancers dive into a choreographic “perpetuum mobile”.
Guided by metaphors they move in circles and spirals, in diagonals, forwards, backwards, and sideways – in an attempt to convey the unsayable, touch the ephemeral. The team at Der Betrieb engages with the idea of simultaneity as a way of “tuning in” with another body. The synchronised dance becomes an affirmation of the performers’ individuality, it becomes a metaphor: “having a body” as a human condition. The Generation Season introduces the idea of a tender dialogue, the audience being invited to direct the course of the “conversation”… a tender dialogue would be about something you care about, or it would be about skin, it happens when you really want to hear about the other person, also accepting someone else’s borders, you are asking only so many questions… you also feel what the other one wants to tell, showing curiosity but not pushing, open for any kind of response, not having any expectations, and what do you do when the tender dialogue starts to get boring? You are just bigger than that…

Der Betrieb is an artistic space initiated by choreographers Alexander Gottfarb and Anna Maria Nowak in 2022 and located in the 15^th Viennese district. Der Betrieb was born out of a desire to offer an alternative to commercial spaces: shops, cafes and beauty salons. Der Betrieb is a room for practicing being together, where audience is welcome to enter, for free, and spend their time watching, reflecting and participating in the dance and art making. Until now Der Betrieb hosted four seasons, The Emotional Season, The Democratic Season, Your Season – In Search of a Common Season and The Ritual Season.

Anna Maria Nowak is a freelance artist, living and working in Vienna since 2005. She was born in Poland, where she studied Scandinavian Studies at the University of Gdańsk. She received her dance education at Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität in Linz. She is a founding member of Archipelago – Verein für Performative Künste, The Loose Collective and Arbeitsplatz Wien. Since 2006 she has been continuously working with Liquid Loft/Chris Haring. Her own work explores the interplay between thought, sensation, language, and movement, focusing on emotions, age, framing, and metaphor.