Katja Heitmann: Museum Motus Mori

A choreography for belly fat, a dance of belly button and rib cage, the anatomy of a sigh…

German choreographer Katja Heitmann and ten dancers will create a museum for physical movements that face the threat of extinction. Museums are meant to preserve human culture and history. It nearly goes without saying that they do so through objects, installations, and occasionally, stories. But humanity itself is missing in this solidified version of our lives. For six weeks, five hours a day, the dancers and the choreographer will take on the remarkable challenge of creating a new museum precisely for that purpose. Museum Motus Mori will sensitize visitors to the deep humanness hidden within the body.

In choreographic sculptures, Heitmann zooms in on details of human motricity to unravel it into patterns, specific sequences of structures, and seemingly eternal loops. A choreography for the collarbone, a dance of belly button, belly fat and rib cage, a phrase for the heartbeat and knee muscle arises. Body parts are isolated, mechanically brought into motion, the hips tilted, the leg lifted, driven across the space in a meticulously technical manner, every movement of which is deliberate. The fragments are constantly repositioned in time and in relation to one another, sharpening and questioning our perceptions.

Museum Motus Mori lets visitors experience what a museum of human movement can be. This does not happen only through experiencing the dancers: the exhibition also includes two interview spaces where visitors can ‘donate’ their personal movements to the museum. The score (notation) of those movements will be shown in the exhibition’s archive room. This will lead to a full cycle of donation, notation and exhibition of a museum in which each muscle is an anatomic trigger that underscores the vulnerability of human existence.

The choreographer and her team will spend two months in Maastricht for this project, on which they will be working every single day.

Katja Heitmann
Katja Heitmann (1987, Germany) operates on the interface between dance and visual arts, performance and installation. In her work she investigates what moves man in the present era. In 2016 Katja won the Prijs van de Nederlandse Dansdagen (Dutch Dance Days Award).

Katja Heitmann’s choreographic work consists of emphatic aesthetics, in sharp contrast to human fallibility. Her radical-minimalist and hyper-formed visual language confronts the viewer with a ferocious sea of insights. A field of tension that is constantly recurring in her work.

Marres
Marres is a House for Contemporary Culture located in the heart of the old town of Maastricht. Marres develops with artists, musicians, designers, chefs and perfumers, a new vocabulary for the senses. In addition to bringing a lively program of exhibitions, trainings and performances, Marres also features a beautiful garden and a wonderful restaurant.

Museum Motus Mori was developed by Katja Heitmann / This is not a show in co-production with Marres – House for Contemporary Culture and DansBrabant with whom Katja Heitmann is working on a long-term project.

This project is made possible by the BankGiro Loterij Fonds, Fonds 21, the Performing Arts Fund NL, the Province of North Brabant and the Municipality of Tilburg.

Marres, House for Contemporary Culture receives structural support from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the Province of Limburg and the Municipality of Maastricht.