Works in Silence

DANCE ON ENSEMBLE
Big Stage
Dates
29.10.2022 – 30.10.2022
Eine Frau und ein Mann gehen hintereinander im Gleichschritt. Sie sind in der Luft, die Beine gestreckt, die Arme gestreckt nach unten.
Fünf Tänzer*innen springen in die Luft, ein Bein und beide Arme nach oben gestreckt.
Vier Personen gehen im Pulk, die Körper nach vorne gelehnt.

The Works in Silence give insight into a decisive developmental phase of one of the most important 20th century choreographers. The compilation of early works from Lucinda Childs’ wide-ranging oeuvre is a rather significant rarity in dance history, because most of the pieces have never been shown again following their respective premieres in the 1970s. They date back to a choreographic phase in which Childs had shed all the hallmarks of the Judson Dance Theater era – such as the use of props, everyday objects, language, and symbolic gestures -, instead concentrating on the paths of the body through the room: from walking and running to changing directions, to bouncing, to jumping.
The origin of all movement, to Childs, was the act of walking.

Ty Boomershine, artistic director of the DANCE ON ENSEMBLE and longstanding dancer for and artistic assistant to Lucinda Childs, rehearsed this selection of seminal choreographies anew. The pieces open the gaze on an important period of change in the work of an artist whose work remains highly relevant to both the visual arts as well as to a generation of oncoming choreographers. They demand a fragility from the dancers that will only manifest after years of long-lived experience.
They will be presented by the outstanding dancers over 40 of the DANCE ON ENSEMBLE, founded in Berlin in 2015, that is dedicated to the value of age and the appreciation of older people.

Works in Silence shows: Untitled Trio (1968), Congeries on Edges for 20 Obliques (1975), Radial Courses (1976), Melody Excerpt (1977), Katema (1978).

Duration: 60 Min.

Production: Dance On, Bureau Ritter; Co-production: STUK-House for Dance, Image & Sound, Münchner Kammerspiele. Cast: Javier García Arozena, Ty Boomershine, Emma Lewis, Gesine Moog, Omagbitse Omagbemi, Lia Witjes-Poole. Supported by the Fonds Doppelpass of the Federal Cultural Foundation and by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. Co-financed by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. Supported by the Alliance of International Production Houses, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.