Double Bill

The new Double Bill format presents the first feature-length pieces by young North Rhine-Westphalian choreographers in the frame of a double programme. Elsa Artmann and Samuel Duvoisin will be first out of the gate with their premiere “Hätten Sie von sich aus die Familie erfunden? (Would you have invented family voluntarily?)”, based on Max Frisch’s“Hätten Sie von sich aus die Ehe erfunden? (Would you have invented matrimony voluntarily?)”. Inspired by 2017 federal election campaign ads targeting families, the duo started with research on the influence and the effects of family – and its replaceability. What if the majority of people find the promise of private bliss, of care and intergenerational living elsewhere, not within family? And: How would you advertise your family?

In “ARIODANTE”, Essen choreographer Marie-Lena Kaiser and four dancers examine the specifics of a modern dance piece and its creation. What is the secret that makes dance look good on stage, while also being significant, too? The performers improvise with classic, urban and contemporary patterns of movement, only to crush them, never to be performed in their entirety: The search that sometimes yields more questions than answers becomes a permanent condition, offering a blunt view on the creation process.  

Elsa Artmann and Samuel Duvoisin conduct research for ways of combined composition between dance and painting. They focus on the contact with one another as central compositional drive and look at concepts of communality that leave their imprint on our political climate. Marie-Lena Kaiser graduated in dance studies from the Folkwang University of the Arts in 2016 and has been working as a freelance dancer and choreographer in North Rhine-Westphalia and abroad since. She is a Pina Bausch Fellowship for Dance and Choreography 2018 scholarship holder.

Duration: 100 min.