Common Emotions

Israeli choreographer Yasmeen Godder placed the topic “emotions in society“ on stage in a most impressive and convincing way with “Common Emotions”, playing at tanzhaus nrw in 2016. The reopening, which marks the start of the topical focus series “response-ability –  Ethics of encounters”, gives out a cordial invitation as well viewing itself as a multi-faceted reflection on encounters in life. The question here is: How may our deeds and our being open up again for encounters beyond hardened stances? With “Common Emotions”, Yasmeen Godder gives central stage to the body, in its power as well as in its fragility, as a mirror and a battlefield for social, cultural and personal experience. Six dancers invite the audience to contemplate collective emotion. And they also invite the audience to conquer the theatre space together. This intelligent staging brings about questions on that which draws us into events, on how we find access into an unknown emotional cosmos, and on the connections that are possible among all those aspects.

Yasmeen Godder has been touring globally as a freelance choreographer since 1997, winning the renowned “Bessie Award” in 2001, followed by numerous other international awards. She teaches in her Jaffa studio, a space for research and production, as well as producing projects with the Arabian-Jewish community. “Common Emotions” was created in Freiburg in the early summer of 2016, based on research conducted on the relation between movement and movement disorder in connection with dancers, scientists as well as with people suffering from Parkinson’s disease.

Duration: 70 min. / in English