Grammar of Happiness

“I look back on my first season as artistic director and I am pleased with what we have achieved so far. We have chosen new paths and will continue to look for new ways. It is exciting to see and explore for ourselves what institutions like Tanzquartier Vienna are able to achieve in these complex and difficult times. Personally, I regard these institutions as important social and artistic indicators—due to their ability to bring about change both within the arts and within a greater social context”, says artistic director Bettina Kogler.

Opening the fall season, a new group choreography by Austrian-Mexican-Chilean choreographer Amanda Piña / nadaproductions is to premiere at Tanzquartier Vienna. With DANZA Y FRONTERA, which is part of the Endangered Human Movements series, Amanda Piña puts the focus on a precolonial but still contemporary dance performed in the border areas between Mexico and the US in a context of extreme violence where narcotrafficking, militarization, and cheap labour industries meet. A contemporary, pop-cultural appropriation will take place in which indigenous practices, colonial narratives, hip-hop culture and mysticism resonate.

Program focus: Happiness
The program during the fall season will mainly focus on two aspects. Mankind’s lifelong pursuit of happiness, which can take on all shapes and forms, will be at the center of the first program focus. The critical examination will range from spiritual rituals pursuing the moment of happiness to instances of sweet luck, which we were promised by capitalism. Linda Samaraweerová’s The Endless Island of Absence will offer a radical and reduced sensuality in reply to a society obsessed with pleasure. In Princess, Filipino dancer Eisa Jocson will adopt the physicality and language of Snow White only to deconstruct step by step the normative identity structure of the Disney figurine. Anne Lise Le Gac will participate in La Caresse du Coma in what will be a fictitious meeting of some colorful characters seeking eternal life at a spa hotel. Finally, Portuguese choreographers Ana Borralho & João Galante and a group of Twentysomethings from Vienna will create together a documentary performance about the pursuit of happiness.

Program focus: Grammar of Stage
What is possible on stage? The productions of the Grammar of Stage series focus on this specific question. Language, rhythm, dramaturgy, sequence, composition and deconstruction—to infiltrate the inner workings of the stage. In his pieces one and many, Austrian choreographer Willi Dorner will make use of the stage as if it was a playground and he will transform it into a platform on which corporeal and virtual reality meet. With Meg Stuart & Tim Etchells, two “masters of the stage” will join up and show how one can create entire worlds out of sheer nothingness—movement with Stuart, language with Etchells. In If What Could Be Is How Why Not, visual artist Andrea Maurer will dismantle a monologue set in an unconventional stage setting. Finally, Jan Martens’ dance performance Rule of Three will be pure kinaesthetics, a choreography analytically disassembled and reconstructed from bodies, light, music, costumes and text.

Mammoth project: Negotiations
For one entire year—until January 26, 2019—Swedish-Austrian choreographer Alexander Gottfarb will have presented his durational performance Negotiations within the space of a former shop on Neustiftgasse, Vienna. During the usual opening hours, daily between 10am and 6pm, 14 dancers perform in turns at this branch of Tanzquartier Vienna—in an effort to prove that dancing is proper labor. In November, the symposium Dancers at Work will closely look at the current working conditions of performing artists.

For press inquiries please contact:
Franz Jud
T +43 5813591 65 / presse [​at​] tqw.at