This site-specific creation was inspired by the extraordinary Bauhaus-architecture of Teatro San Materno. Due to its multipurpose use and the way it is situated in the landscape the building itself creates vastly different situations between intimacy and publicity.

The audience is taken on a ride through the location from the quiet indoors to the loud and overexposed outdoors. Divided into smaller groups they consecutively experience the sequence of scenes each from their own starting point. In line with the heritage of Teatro San Materno as a place of research and experimentation the performance utilizes Ioannis Mandafounis’ method of live-choreography which makes each show unrepeatable.

Ioannis

Choreography

Tänzer*innen der Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company

Dance

Released

RELEASED

Teatro San Materno

Human encounters are always unpredictable. You eye one another, rush ahead, wait, circle each other, stumble, suddenly stop, start again - and maybe realize, ah, yes, we can understand each other.

The scenes in "À la carte" use different props, sound effects, music and lighting to allow for a variety of dance styles, atmospheres and topics. The starting point is always the encounter between the ensemble and the audience, just as if they were cooking a colorful menu together. The framework for this is Ioannis Mandafounis' dance methodology, which makes it possible to create a choreography live on stage. Almost nothing that the dancers do in this production is predetermined. All movements arise from the meeting of the different bodies.

"À la carte" was the first production by the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company under the artistic direction of Ioannis Mandafounis. With this work, the ensemble presents its dance practice, which is based as much on the exchange between the individual artists as it is on communication with the audience.

Pauline

Choreographic assistance

Manon

Musical direction

Philipp

Anna

Dramaturgy

Stage and Lighting

Thomas

Costumes

À la carte

À LA CARTE

Athens Festival Peiraios 260

For "Wesenwelt" choreographer Kristin Ryg Helgebostad and composer and carillonist Laura-Marie Rueslåtten transform the ensemble into a collective musical instrument. All the dancers hold at least one bell in their hands - each with a different pitch. Every movement leads to a sound and every sound requires a movement, which makes the music visible.

On stage the ensemble acts as a collective subject in which each individual is dependent on the group and vice versa. What happens, if they can’t join together like well-oiled cogs in a gearbox? The collective whole can only exist, if it can include deviations. This results in a vulnerability which affects the collective as well as all its members - a precarious state that can only be balanced through humour.

As with a beehive, it is difficult to tell whether one is dealing with a single swarm-like creature or a multitude of individuals. And are they human? Who's to say!

Kristin Ryg Helgebostad is a dancer and choreographer who combines a wide range of performative and choreographic strategies in her practice. She studied contemporary dance and choreography at the National Academy of the Arts in Oslo, Norway, and now works with a range of partners. 

Her pieces have been performed at various festivals and have toured Europe. She created “Soil Girl” and “Spoiler” together with the trio Berstad/Helgebostad/Wigdel. Laura Marie-Rueslåtten is one of Norway’s few professional carillon players. Together the two artists founded the handbell ensemble Ula Metall and created the pieces “Me Too/Thee Too” and “Cheers”.

Kristin

Concept

Laura-Marie

Simen

Composition

Wesenwelt

In the European painting tradition landscapes are always framed via their relation to humans. They are displayed as the scene of communal rites, as gardens and forests that belong to a place and make it a homeland, as commodities that can be appropriated. From the immediate surroundings to the shores of the continent and beyond the European landscape paintings give a distorted image of the environment, resulting in a society that has a distorted relationship to the world. "Warpscapes" engages with these distortions, pursues them, exaggerates them and thus attempts to newly open up to nature in an artificial way.

Landscapes are created on stage, which the dancers inhabit as not-only-human creatures, which they design and examine, which they observe and in which they disappear. Discovering distortions and amplifying them, warping is the central method in order to approach the constant and contradictory changes in the living world – without having to negate its artificiality.


Sergiu Matis is a Romanian choreographer living in Berlin since 2008. He created dance performances such as "Neverendings" (2017), "Hopeless." (2019), "Extinction Room" (2019), "Unrest" (2021), "Drang" (2022) and "Blazing Worlds" (2023). His work has been presented at festivals throughout Europe. 

His dance practice can be understood as a tireless search in physical and digitalized archives. His performances provoke intense experiences that break with expectations, point to a new understanding of dance and reflect the complexity of our time.

Sergiu

Antye

Ashley Alexandra

Voice

Mila

Dorothee

Calvin

Video edit

Warpscapes

Welcome Dresden

Hellerau - European Centre for the Arts

This performance invites you to get lost in the woods. 

As they accompany a dancer from the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company on their journey through the rooms of the Senckenberg Museum, they each make their own journey. The visitors listen to a soundtrack that frames the events emotionally. The choreography shifts attention from the exhibits to the dancing bodies lost in the forest of the exhibition. 

By perceiving the surroundings in the corner of one's eye, the space is transformed into a place that has more to say than the information it contains. It becomes the scene of a journey whose riddle cannot be fully deciphered. Where am I now? Where have I ended up? What kind of place is this?

IF YOU DON’T GET LOST IN THE WOODS, YOU HAVEN’T BEEN TO THE WOODS

Senckenberg Museum

One chair, one dancer – that’s the point of departure for “One One One”. Whoever takes a seat becomes the focus of the dance, since the performers improvise based on impulses given by the person in the chair. They continue dancing for as long as eye contact is maintained by both sides. The result is a silent dialogue, an exclusive encounter and an opportunity to see dance through new eyes.

“One One One” is a unique interaction, one that also offers those viewing the scene an experience rich in emotional and choreographic nuances and developments. Initially created in 2015, “One One One” can be staged anywhere and has been performed in streets and squares, in hospitals, schools and shopping centers around the world.

One One One

Jahrhunderthalle Bochum

Museum Folkwang

Scarbo is a gnome, a goblin. Ioannis Mandafounis and Manon Parent borrowed the title from Maurice Ravel, whose music also opens the evening. The longer Manon Parent dances, the more the audience is drawn into her innermost world. A world replete with sadness, anger, joy, helplessness and strength. Those are the feelings the dancer expresses through her movements – immediately and unfiltered. All her cells seem to vibrate at different emotional frequencies. Showing ourselves in such diverse states is a freedom we rarely allow ourselves. This shared intimacy is the core of “Scarbo”. During the piece, the audience is free to consider whether the states in question are real or fictional, memories of the past or a personal story being told.

“Scarbo” explores the role of narration in contemporary dance in terms of function, form and meaning. The dancer herself is at the center of this narrative, which is about the interplay of body, soul and emotion.

The rhythmic dialogue of color, music and dance – which remains free, unconstrained and unpredictable – creates an atmosphere that transports the audience into the live version of an art film. 

Schedule

IF YOU DON’T GET LOST IN THE WOODS, YOU HAVEN’T BEEN TO THE WOODS

IF YOU DON’T GET LOST IN THE WOODS, YOU HAVEN’T BEEN TO THE WOODS

Welcome Dresden

Wesenwelt

Warpscapes

À LA CARTE

À la carte

RELEASED

Released

Scarbo

Scarbo

One One One

One One One

À la carte

À la carte

Scarbo

Scarbo