B12-Contemporary Dance & Performance Art Festival-Berlin: Asteroids & Invited Artists

B12 - the new festival for contemporary dance and performance art in Berlin brings on stage Invited Artists, a series of choreographies created by heterogeneous choreographers within the compelling festival.

This year the two Invited Artists presented an existing piece of their catalogue of work beside the research workshops that they gave as part of the B12 festival. Those are darwin to darwin by Johannes Wieland and the dust we raised by Luke Murphy.

The piece darwin to darwin by Johannes Wieland is danced by the Gotauté Kalmatavičiūtė, Safet Mistele and Evangelos Poulinas and it ́s a compendium about individuals, relationships and their stratified complexity.

Every performer embodies a certain character that transforms during the duration of the piece presenting several facets of the humankind.

Kalmatavičiūtė shines as a vulnerable, troubled and rebel being. She shows the weaknesses and strengths of a woman exposed to be led but wanting to lead. She is extravagant but also submissive, delicate and dreamy but at the same time intrinsically earthy. Her presence is outstanding as she performs a complex and dazzling character. Safe Mistele represents the macho. Strong, full of himself, flirty, endearing, he is the guy that shows off and plays with his virtues. Enthralling when he jumps in the air and flies low in rounded and twisted movements. Amusing as he starts playing with her in exchanges, sometimes vocal and others physical. The bodies ́s interaction is at times sweet and tender switching into rough and wild behaviours recreating an attraction-repulsion game. The interactive play, a sex like one, is beautifully performed by Kalmatavičiūtė with Evangelos Poulinas who, besides this performative frame, appears quite stiff as he would be a non-flexible body-character. Memorable his curved back and neck with an hanging head that stares the floor while he walks across the stage like a shy, timid passenger. Humorous parts come out with the overturned playback roles; the male voice is sang by the girl and the female one by the men. The title darwin to darwin is probably connected to the evolution but also involution of the human kind, too self-absorbed by his own realities to see and interrogate what ́s around and explore new paths but also on the mirroring phenomenon, naturally experienced by every human and animal being.

All in all the show leads to reflect on the diversity and intricacy of every individual trying to deal with a certain body evolved over seven million years and the existence of the individual with his mental and physical natural and nurtured knowledge, that can ́t be entirely explained, nor fully understood.

asteroids performance project series / johannes wieland: alvaro rodriguez

asteroids performance project series / shannon gillen: alvaro rodriguez

The dust we raised by Luke Murphy is a production based on the giant leaps forward actual technology, medicine and science that pushes ethnic questions and impels thoughts about the boundaries of the occurring dynamic. Triggering interrogations about the limits and having a ripple effect on the debated ambiguity and dichotomy of the so called progress, the piece has a strong visual and content impact.
When can we set a limit to the forward movement? Is going forward always for good? Vaccine, G.m.o, D.n.a mutation are definitely part of a big research that has been largely increasing in the last years and although speculations about the positive and negative effects are still being discussed, it seems quite clear that technology goes on and it applies its results for good and worst.
The piece, atmospherically persuasive with an aseptic scenography recreating a science laboratory, is made out of plastic curtains surrounding the whole space, three chairs and a rolling table with some led lights. The choreography is composed by accurate and sharp

sequences of movements on the floor creating geometrical pattern that recall the DNA chain. Some other times the dancers appear displaced, structureless and lost switching into furious and sharp beings in search of a way out as they were animals in captivity. They take shape as scattered bodies on the floor trying to find the right location and then, suddenly taken by new positions and phrases, they turn and twist over them selves in an ongoing internal and external conflict. Various texts related to discoveries, their own feelings and thoughts are recited by the three performers that switch roles as they inhabit the lab scenario. On the whole, the performance is engaging as it fosters reflections about an updated and strongly debated theme.

Differently conceived is Asteroids, a performance project initiated by B12 where the choreographers Helder Seabra, Luke Murphy and Lali Ayguadé & Guilhem Chatir are invited to create an idea on stage with a group of performers assigned to them.

the dust we raised: alvaro rodriguez

darwintodarwin: sbatura

The first show is by Helder Seabra titled passer-by.
Defenceless, weary, curved bodies on a misty stage slowly walk around a dj and his console. They start to partner up at a slow pace in precarious lifts. Most of the hefted bodies are dragged until they are released on the floor on a meditative repetitive sound. Slowly, once they all lay down, they start shaky and exploding movements to gather in smaller groups moving synchronised and energetic. They appear to be ecstatic in big and embodied motions generating a visual chaos that has his own order, rhythm and strength.

Follows the piece by Luke Murphy with the work vigilante.
Starting with a group embodying musical instruments the piece slides in diverse directions. The performers seem to move even but not compact as they would recreate a feeling of general solitude within a group. Two dancers make equal steps between the others that slowly move on the floors. Some others, led by two, are given orders how to move and act as they would be on a cinema-set. There is a general playfulness but not entirely amusing as ii turns into something superficial yet cynical. Recites and danced phrases appear random as everything would be into question, as a work in progress based on interrogations, about conflicts of the theatrical environment itself. Acting as, pretending to be, building the personality on certain schemes and parameters, the piece makes to think about the demand -how we are requested to be- pressure and potentially obsession.

The third show is lost souls by Lali Ayguadé & Guilhem Chatir that has an intense beginning with a collective laugh followed by screams out laud by the performers. As they start dancing same movements initiated imitating one, come out as a sort of wave motion. It ́s a dynamic play that invite to reflect about performances and the given feedbacks, it ́s as a game between the individual-performer and the collectivity-audience, where the vulnerability and un-conscious tension of being at the best of the possibilities consumes the pleasure of the present moment and spoils authentic and spontaneous fun.