etb English
Theatre
Berlin International Performing Arts Center

I Don’t Have A Line is a multifaceted performance based on the idea that dancers are constantly heckled by their choreographers and teachers and inevitably by themselves before the audience even has the chance to pass judgment.

so sick communications is a group of four artists with backgrounds in dance, choreography, scenography and music composition who collaborate to produce multimedia performances.

“Next time” is a phrase that we use to make ourselves feel better about another wasted opportunity.

Or a lukewarm consolation to somebody else suggesting that “it didn’t matter”? In her solo piece Next Time, theater artist Minna Partanen explores the nature of wasted opportunities. Partanen is interested in the space that lies between self-doubt, a fear of failure and anything that’s less depressing. The performance plays with reality and fiction, private and shared, laughter and pain. The dark Finnish self-deprecating humor shines through the piece. Performed in English and Finnish.

“At brunch next time, pass on the coffee cake and have an omelet. Maybe next time she’ll be dead.”

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony. ///

This is what will happen: You will come in and sit down. The lights in the room will go out. You will be led through a short guided meditation. The surrealist piece will then be acted out before you, with its themes of union and division, infantile sexuality, addiction, war. There may or may not be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. You will then leave the room, unfulfilled, but with something new to think about. /// How does that sound? Will that be everything? Is that enough? /// You may now kiss the bride.

Three solo artists weave together an evening of performance, sharing moments of spontaneous vision and inspiration via dance, voice and text.

An object or two are also subject to appearance. Our method of performance/creation happens at the crossroads of composition and improvisation. Our primary tool is the moving-sounding body, which conjures up ephemeral images, illusions and spontaneous characters. In ancient times, prior to the creation of writing and widespread literacy, prophets, healers and magicians played important roles in society and were highly depended upon. Today in the West, there are artists. Do artists now fill these long-lost roles? You can decide.

This performance problematizes the normative spatial and kinespheric relationships between the musician and the dancer. Simon Rose (saxophone) and Andrew Wass (dance) investigate the consequences of flattening the hierarchy of the spatial and kinetic operations that govern their relative practices. What is revealed when the musician and dancer have equal access to spacing, level, and facing?

A second investigative trajectory of their performance is to simultaneously discern the compositional limitations and recognize the freedom suggested by the immediacy of the moment. As the sonic and corporeal palettes reveal themselves, an infinite number of ways of manipulating those palettes is also revealed. By limiting their performance to the immediate and not referencing anything outside the performance space, they do not impose any allusions or illustrative restrictions upon the observers. The observers are freed from expectations of meaning and able to craft their own reception of the events on stage.

By experimenting with aleatoric processes, Andrew Wass finds that movement reveals an inherent awkwardness, a humor that echoes our own vulnerabilities. He formalizes the coincidental and emphasizes the conscious processes of composition that are the generative source of much of his works. Influenced heavily by his undergraduate studies of biochemistry at U.C. San Diego, Andrew works by creating a defined, almost crystalline palette in order to generate a myriad of possibilities. The possibilities are reduced and concentrated in the moments of execution and reception. The Judson Dance Theater artists Deborah Hay and Steve Paxton have had a deep impact on him as a choreographer and dancer. Hay’s use of detailed spatial choreographic scores has influenced how Wass negotiates space performatively and choreographically on stage. Paxton’s development of the dynamic weight sharing modality of contact improvisation has shaped how Wass moves and engages with other dancers. The majority of the performance pieces that he has created involve a score that governs the spatial and/or the corporeal choices of the dancers. He has performed in work by Nancy Stark Smith, Mary Overlie, Jess Curtis, Nina Martin, among others. He has taught at festivals and universities in Japan, Germany, and throughout the United States. A member of the performance groups Non Fiction and Lower Left, he is a graduate of the MA program of Solo/Dance/Authorship at the Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum für Tanz in Berlin.

Simon Rose is a musician and researcher from London, UK. A professional saxophonist (baritone and alto), Rose has performed frequently in Europe and North America. He has a commitment to developing practice through improvisation processes has encompassed working with large groups as well as the more usual small groups. Rose has a particular interest in the solo form and has recorded critically acclaimed solo CDs on alto (FMR) and baritone (Not Two). Rose’s PhD thesis: Improvisation, music and learning; an interpretive phenomenological analysis (Glasgow Caledonian University, 2012) interviewed world-leading improvisers in US, Canada, UK and Germany. This was his third research project concerning the potential of improvisation. His extensive teaching experience in drama and music includes schools, colleges and universities, as well as work in special educational needs and “permanently excluded” contexts. His early training in drama led him to work as a professional actor-musician in theater-in-education and he has toured schools, prisons and hospitals. His research interest in interdisciplinary relationships and improvisation processes has developed through his particular experience in music, drama and education.

Every Body, a dance performance in experiential anatomy: We all possess a body but for most of us it is not so often that we think about the contents, structure, function, or anatomy of this body (not at least, until something goes wrong or something stops functioning properly…we are not going to go there.) In this performance we bring attention to the body each of us is inhabiting, and invite every body to tune in to the experience of their body. It is a performance of connecting anatomies expressed through dance, sound and words.

Liz Erber is an interdisciplinary artist, performer and teacher who has been creating original works for stage, video and site-specific locations for the past decade. Liz, originally from the USA, has lived in Berlin since 2008. She teaches regularly at K77 Studio in Berlin, as well as at international locations and festivals around Europe and beyond. One of Liz’s primary focuses is embodiment, which she shares with performers and non-performers alike. One of her most recent stage works, a multi-media play, Tip of the Iceberg, was featured in English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center’s development series, THE LAB. Andrew and Liz have performed together regularly over the past several years in various locations around Berlin, including ETB |IPAC, Sophiensaele, Tanzfabrik, ada Studio and more.  In August last year she was a featured artist/film maker for the online film festival, Dances Made to Order. In addition to the performing arts, Liz has also worked in the fields of publishing, writing and translation, and holds Bachelor’s degrees in chemistry, dance and theater.

Andrew Wass began dancing in college, replacing the chem lab with the dance studio. He has had the opportunity to perform in work by Scott Wells, Jess Curtis, Nina Martin, Shelley Senter and Mary Overlie. His dance films have been shown in film festivals in LA, Minneapolis, Rio de Janeiro, Houston, Berlin and San Francisco. His performance work has been shown in San Diego, LA, San Francisco, Marfa, Tijuana and New York. In the fall of 2007, he was an artist in residence at Djerassi. He also received the Jack Loftis and Vibeke Strand, MD honorary Fellowship and an Izzy nomination for music/soundscore/text in 2007. Influential to his work has been a sentence by Keith Johnstone, “Content lies in the structure…” (Impro page 110).