*EIN TOTEN/TANZ/STÜCK*

BANSHEE RAGOUT

dance performance with live electronic music
2017

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Concept: Irina Demina
Choreography, dance: Irina Demina, Joshua Rutter

Composition& live music: Pelle Buys, Mark Leyrer
Light: Henning Eggers
Dramaturgic assistance: Angela Guerreiro
 

Project supported by Cultural Authorities of the city of Hamburg      
With kind support of PEM Theater an den Elbbrücken, Hamburger Sprechwerk, Tanzfabrik Berlin, Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin.Premiere: 09.02.2017 Hamburger Sprechwerk (Hamburg)

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Dance of Death (Totentanz, Danse Macabre) is an artistic genre of late-medieval allegory on the universality of death: no matter one's station in life, the Dance of Death unites all.

Banshee Ragout is a dystopia investigating the concepts that find themselves within the semantic field of death-dances. The medieval figure of a dancing Death embodies a paradox. After all, isn’t it the living who dance? Is dance not often seen, in all its dynamic ephemerality, as an expression and celebration of life itself? What are the connections between dance and death? Banshee Ragout attempts to inhabit the paradox, reflecting on the phantasma of reversibility of life, death and art.
This journey to nowhere weaves together a variety of strategies: the physical enactment of medieval representations of Danse Macabre, an analysis of death choreographies of German expressionist dance pioneers Mary Wigman, Kurt Jooss and Harald Kreutzberg, as well as contemporary doom metal and drone music, somatic exploration of the dying experience, and finally, experimentation with body fictions and cognitive imagery.

These ghosts of the past, fragilities of the present and dystopias of the future float and swirl in the loving embrace of a massive swathe of flowing black plastic, itself machined from the oozing bodies of our ancient forebears. The performers busy themselves channelling these ancestors both material and artistic, attempting to embody the paradox of a dancing death.
What are the connections between dance and death?
Who knows, maybe our death is dancing with us already.

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Videolink to the performance (75 min):
https://vimeo.com/204884414 (password: totentanz)

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Photos: Danny Merz/SOLLSUCHSTELLE

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Site-specific version of BANSHEE RAGOUT to be performed outdoors, in galleries, museums, churches, interesting architectures:

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