Rabih Mroué: "Elephant" - © Jubal Battisti

Rabih Mroué: "Elephant" - © Jubal Battisti

Rabih Mroué: "You Sould Have Seen Me Dancing Waltz" - © Jubal Battisti

Rabih Mroué: "You Sould Have Seen Me Dancing Waltz" - © Jubal Battisti

Rabih Mroué

Elephant / You Should Have Seen Me Dancing Waltz (in co-operation with the Münchner Kammerspiele)

Three hundred and sixteen pencil sketches of dead bodies. They are essential components of the touching duet "Elephant," which Rabih Mroué developed with the dancers Jone San Martin and Ty Boomershine from the Dance On ensemble. Isolation and the desire to be around someone, loneliness and the yearning for closeness characterize "Elephant." The second piece of the evening, "You Should Have Seen Me Dancing Waltz," which Rabih Mroué developed with Dance On, illustrates what effects news about violence and brutality have on us. How do we react physically to this? The dancers discover very personal words and images for this.

This evening presents two dance pieces by Rabih Mroué, the Lebanese artist, actor, and performer who lives in Berlin; he created the pieces for and with the superb dancers of the ensemble Dance On. After "Water Between Three Hands" (2016) the internationally renowned artist and the company worked together for a second time. In "Elephant" (2018) he uses – as in many of his pieces – documentary material in order to blend personal and collective archives into one another. Here it's pencil sketches of bodies lying on the ground. Are these people resting? Are they sleeping? The restrained atmosphere soon gives way to other associations, images of victims of violence or refugees whose lifeless bodies washed ashore. For a year Rabih Mroué gave himself the task of sketching a dead body every day. For "Elephant" three hundred and sixteen images from this collection were selected, and over the course of the piece they will be projected on the back wall of the stage. Jone San Martin and Ty Boomershine translate with Mroué the concept into movement; Mattef Kuhlmey composed the music for the piece.

For the second work of the evening, "You Should Have Seen Me Dancing Waltz" (2019) Rabih Mroué also worked closely with the dancers. Reports about deaths and destruction, horrible images as soon as you page through a newspaper and which keep recuring – what if one would never get used to this? The dancers read the newspaper, we hear the sentences, movement echoes, and in turn they are put into words. Rabih Mroué poses political and moral questions with both pieces, and he transposes them into space, speaking, and dance.

Online

Saturday, May 15, 2021, 7 – 8.30 p.m.
Live Stream
8.30 p.m. Artist Talk with Rabih Mroué

Sunday, May 16, 2021, 9 – 10.30 p.m.
Video Stream
10.30 p.m. Artist Talk with Rabih Mroué

Tickets from Münchner Kammerspiele 

ACCESS LINK ON THE TICKET

Artist Talk:

 

Rabih Mroué: "Elephant"
Concept and direction: Rabih Mroué
In artistic collaboration with Ty Boomershine and Jone San Martin (Dance On Ensemble)
Cast: Ty Boomershine, Anna Herrmann, Emma Lewis, Jone San Martin, Marco Volta
Lighting designers: Patrick Lauckner, Tanja Rühl
Light Technician: Arno Truschinski
Sound designer: Mattef Kuhlmey
Costume designer: Sophia Piepenbrock-Saitz
Assistant to the director: Jacqueline Azarmi
Production Assistant: Pauline Stöhr
Production: Dance On / DIEHL+RITTE
A co-production with HAU Hebbel am Ufer
Produced for the Dance On Festival with support from the Capital Cultural F.
Premiere: February 28, 2018, HAU Hebbel am Ufer (HAU2)

Rabih Mroué: "You Should Have Seen Me Dancing Waltz"
Concept and direction: Rabih Mroué
In collaboration with the Dance On Ensemble
Cast: Anna Herrmann, Emma Lewis, Ingeborg Rasch, Jone San Martin, Marco Volta;
Christine Kono (Premiere Cast)
Light: Arno Truschinski
Sound designer: Mattef Kuhlmey
Costume: Sophia Piepenbrock-Saitz
Production: Dance On and DIEHL+RITTER
A co-production with Onassis Stegi and Kampnagel Hamburg
Premiere: November 8, 2019, Onassis Stegi, Athens (additional performances on November 9 and 10, 2019)

Kammerspiele

Supported by NATIONALE PERFORMANCE NETZ co-production funding dance.

NPN

Dance On is funded by the federal government commissioner for culture and media, the senate administration for culture and Europe of the Land of Berlin and co-funded by the program Kreatives Europa of the European Union as part of DANCE ON, PASS ON, DREAM ON.

Kultursenat Berlin BKM

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