#contradictions #transcendency #subversive #let’s get physical #human body #interdisciplinary #political

In my dance studies in Cologne and Reykjavik, which were characterized by dance technique and reflection, I got a solid basis for dance art and as a dancer and choreographer I am interested in intensive and demanding physical work and the rediscovery/finding of my own physical limits and performativity. My sympathy for physical work lies in my youth, in which I practiced competitive swimming for over 10 years. I see the body as my instrument and in the desire and curiosity to explore the body I have gone beyond my dance studies/dance training to follow various physical trainings (such as aerial acrobatics, pole fitness, high diving). I am particularly interested in the human body and its relationships to space, time and other bodies. Art, especially performative arts, which use the human body on stage as an instrument and representative tool, have in my opinion the great subversive potential to reflect social currents. Since art itself and the human body and its relations in space are norm and boundless in this staged context. In contrast to the very standardized and limited nature of being and relationships within our society.
I am interested in the embodiment or fusion of physical work with conceptual perspectives and social themes. In the elaboration, my focus is strongly on contradictions and their merging. The fusion of diametrically opposed is what shapes my creative urge and my previous work. Just like my approach about identity – in its diversity – to regard it as a construct and to find a playful way of dealing with it. These thoughts and interests are strongly related to my biography, my double “cultural identity” – two cultures whose mentality and sociality make many contrasts perceptible – as well as my trans-/androgynous “gender identity”. I see contradictions as a fruitful starting point for reflection, which can lead to a more comprehensive understanding of dependencies and norms, the self, the ego, the body, life.

In order first to understand/reflect these thoughts and constructs, which deal with society and life, and then to be able to spin/develop/reverse/transcend them, I am of the firm artistic conviction that I also have to reflect on and continuously expand the “language” and the understanding of the language I speak and express myself, namely my “art language”. Art is a language, just like any other language that humans can learn to speak/read/write/understand. And like any other language, art is a dynamic cultural and political construct. A thorough reflection on this construct enables a sensitized awareness of one’s own “language” and speech habits, furthermore of one’s thinking. Language evolves, so do thoughts. It is not an absolute. As an artist I see my effort – to spin/develop/transcend the concept of dance and its matter – as my great responsibility for art. My work is interdisciplinary. For me, interdisciplinary work is translation work, which simply helps me to expand my understanding of dance art, the body and the framework of the staging by inscribing the change of perspective into the body and trying to read dance with the articulation of this new language. Such an interdisciplinary approach is characterized by the analog embodiment and translation of the “other” discipline into “one’s own”. It differs from conventional interdisciplinary works that interweave other disciplines with one’s own by placing them more or less monolithically side by side without changing their form.

Photo by Marcos Angeloni