In the moment of improvisation, a special, almost magical presence of the body emerges. Anything seems possible, even identity breaks free of its fixed structures and bonds and allows itself to be reinvented every moment.
Using music and dance, all of the artists weave their own experiences and memories into a common whole that remains in constant motion. Thoughts and ideas flash up, are taken up by the group and develop into something else. In this way, new connections and possibilities are always created, the power of change is revealed.
Present Body 2 is a live improvisation with dance and music dedicated to the decolonization of bodies. It builds up the performance of Present Body, which was recorded in November 2020 as part of the MIMIMI Space project and presented digitally at HAU4. The new version now links the Black and white perspectives: dancers from Grupo Oito and MIMIMI Space enter into dialogue with each other. They bring in their experiences and the physical repertoire of the last productions, in which they worked on a new form of physicality and being from different perspectives, thus looking for what they have in common and what connects them. Understand the past, dance the present and dream the future in your own way!
A post-performance discussion moderated by Nora Amin will be held on Wednesday, November 15
Spielberg’s Jaws is a striking example of a cultural turning point: Just when the so-called counterculture seemed to finally dominate, preparations for a new era began. The names Thatcher, Reagan and Kohl and the economic terms neoliberalism, deregulation and privatization brought traditional values back to the fore and countered the ideas of counterculture. After ten years of youthful optimism, but also mistrust, defeat and fear – Nixon and Watergate; defeat in the Vietnam War, the oil crisis and economic decline – Jaws showed a society banding together in the face of a grave threat, recalling its old values and again producing heroes from its midst.
Jaws is a movie about a fish, a threat and a hunt. The fish is a giant Great White Shark that appears off a town on the East Coast of the United States. It kills several swimmers and becomes a threat to the summer season of the seaside town, which depends entirely on tourism. An adventurer, a policeman and a scientist pursue the fish in a boat and, after a losing battle, bring it down – the boat sinks, leaving the adventurer and the fish to die.
Today, the three albums of the so-called `Berlin Trilogy´ are considered the artistic highlight of David Bowie´s career.With his creative curiosity, he went through very different artistic phases in the course of his long career, thus appealing to a new audience each time, and ultimately even to a new generation.
Somehow, Bowie touches everyone. How? What does he have to say? What makes him a pop star, what makes him an artist? And why Berlin?
Susan Bernofsky studied comparative literature at Princeton University and creative writing in Washington. Since 1993 she has been a translator of German-language literature, both of classics such as Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka and Robert Walser and of contemporary authors such as Jenny Erpenbeck, Yoko Tawada and Uljana Wolf. She has received many awards for her translations, including the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize in 2006 and the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation in 2017. In 2020, she was a Berlin Prize Fellow of the American Academy for her work on a new translation of Thomas Mann’s Zauberberg. Susan Bernofsky chaired the Translation Committee of the PEN American Center in New York, served on the board of the American Literary Translators Association, and curated the “Festival Neue Literatur” for three years, introducing German-language authors to a New York audience. A professor of creative writing at Columbia University in New York, she directs the Literary Translation Program.