Presenting international guest performances, dance premieres by young artists from Vienna and across Austria, studio visits, workshops and talks, the imagetanz festival marks a beloved March highlight of brut’s programme. Even though planning is not the easiest thing to accomplish at the moment – for reasons known all too well –, we hereby declare that imagetanz 2021 will take place! While it will be somewhat different in shape and duration, its way of being experimental, young, new, international and exciting will be unaffected. We called this instalment the Emotional Support Festival because we know how hard these times are – for many of us, all over the world. That’s why we’re here, that’s why we keep going: We will be improvising, we will be digital and we will use hybrid formats to actually get involved with this present in order to shape it instead of just leaving it to itself.
The curator of the festival Flori Gugger interviewed by Ö1 Kulturjournal
Two international guest performances specifically designed for the digital realm will be part of the programme. In Body of Knowledge – At Home by Australian artist Samara Hersch, the audience will be connected live to teenagers in Australia, creating a performance on the bigger and smaller questions of life and the future. How close can people who don’t know each other and are separated by continents, cultures and generations become? And how does theatre even work without the co-presence of bodies? Also, imagetanz will stream a performance by Henrike Iglesias live from Sophiensaele Berlin. In their marvellous competition show UNDER PRESSURE, the collective deal with the pressure to perform that is omnipresent in this, our turbo-capitalist society. The performers compete against each other, while the audience decide, by remote access from their homes, who “THE BEST” Henrike is.
Other projects will be adapted for the digital realm by our imagetanz artists and shown as film premieres in March. Jaskaran Anand will challenge the duality of the human body and psyche, showing us the limits of our thinking in opposites and stereotypes. Julia Müllner will address the process of fermentation, inviting audiences to a bubbling collective encounter with micro-organisms. Johanna Nielson, Agnes Schneidewind & Marina Poleukhina will delve into the exciting worlds of Tarot, creating an atmosphere of relaxation and sensual experience using various objects. Malika Fankha will lure us into a world of elves, trolls and other hybrid characters during imagetanz when she publishes her first of a series of music videos to be continued over the spring.
brut’s Handle with Care series will use the imagetanz festival yet again to show what Vienna’s young performance scene is up to: Laura Stoll, PUC collective, Susanne Songi Griem, Sara-Lisa Bals, Klemens Hegen, Frida Robles and maria mercedes will call for online studio visits, allowing glimpses into their new works in progress. Sööt/Zeyringer will give an online workshop, and The Art of Assembly, the series of talks on political theatre created by and featuring Florian Malzacher, will be continued digitally in March, this time featuring such guests as political scientist Jodi Dean from New York and Athens/Rotterdam-based artist Jonas Staal. Accompanying the events, the website www.art-of-assembly.net is designed to archive all the talks.
Rehearsals throughout March will take place at our new venue brut nordwest. Scheduled projects by Potpourri (Farah Deen & Olivia Mitterhuemer) and n ï m company/Naïma Mazic are being prepared so that their live premieres can take place at later dates in the 2021/22 season, along with a guest performance by artists Carolin Jüngst & Lisa Rykena.
imagetanz 2021 featuring Samara Hersch, Henrike Iglesias, n ï m company/Naïma Mazic, Johanna Nielson, Agnes Schneidewind & Marina Poleukhina, Potpourri (Farah Deen & Olivia Mitterhuemer), Jaskaran Anand, Julia Müllner, Carolin Jüngst & Lisa Rykena, Malika Fankha, Sööt/Zeyringer, Florian Malzacher, PUC collective, Laura Stoll, Frida Robles, maria mercedes, Sara-Lisa Bals, Klemens Hegen, Susanne Songi Griem and many more
postponed to autumn 2021
Naïma Mazic / n ï m company – PoLy-Mirrors /a re-performance of feminine diagonals/
Carolin Jüngst / Lisa Rykena – ROSE LA ROSE