featuring works by Yana Novotorova, Philine Herrlein & Diana Treder; Paula Pau & Igor Meneses and Katharina Rerich

The platform for up-and-coming North Rhine-Westphalian artists regularly presents the first works under their own names by young regional dance creators. In the initial post-lockdown edition, Yana Novotorova, Philine Herrlein and Diana Treder will show an excerpt from their performative research project “Recircling”. They explore the concept of energy from different perspectives, on the backdrop of global exhaustion of energy resources, concentrating on a danced and choreographed debate with the principles of self-renewing energies. The simplest movement principle, built-in to the extraction of renewable energy such as wind or waterpower, is that of circling. With the motif of a circle in repeat, a re-circling, the group searches for ways to find this principle in the human body and in choreographic structures or to adapt it to them.

Dancers* Paula Pau and Igor Meneses, originally from Malaysia and Brazil, come together in their first joint work “Imminent Arrival” to study the performative aspects of the relationship of their respective families’ spiritualities and their own queer identities. While involved in this, they negotiate how marginalised bodies relate to the concept of faith. Both dancers* move into a personal and dance-rooted examination of the intersections of religious practice, withheld privilege and queer identities.
Paula Pau and Igor Meneses are currently concluding their dance studies at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. Within the framework of Now & Next, they will show the preliminary results that they plan to evolve into a full-length piece in which complex references of Malaysian-Chinese Taoism, Brazilian Evangelical church ceremonies, queer femininity and electronic music collide.

Katharina Rerich is a Visual Vernacular artist and sign language interpreter. She regularly interprets performances at tanzhaus nrw and made stage productions by Céline Bellut, Reut Shemesh and Kollektiv Zoo accessible for hearing-impaired visitors*. Visual Vernacular as an art form originated in the hearing-impaired community and represents a means of visual storytelling without resorting to sign language, but with a unique employment of body and movement. Visual Vernacular utilises facial expressions and gesture in a multifaceted manner, thereby generating more and more interest also among the hearing. In this edition of Now & Next, Katharina Rerich will show one of her Visual Vernacular video works.

Duration: 90 min. break incl. / in English