RELIQUIEM

Important: Due to the weather situation the event on Tue 03.10. will take place at tanzhaus nrw on the big stage.

What moves people? What movement would you like to inherit? Since 2019, more than 1,500 people, among them many Düsseldorf residents, have already donated their personal movement to the Motus Mori living archive. On its basis, choreographer Katja Heitmann again and again creates new artworks. In the new movement opera RELIQUIEM, the audience experiences other peoples’ motives, movement qualities, movement characteristics in a direct and vivid manner, namely through their own bodies. During an intimate ritual, the audiences themselves can re-enact the movements of those numerous movement donors to the archive, thereby including the personal movement relics of another person in their own movement repertoire. This creates movement-based exchange that is simultaneously touching as it is almost magical, termed kinetic empathy by Katja Heitmann. RELIQUIEM fabricates a collective, shared movement heritage, to preserve it for the future. RELIQUIEM takes place in public space far away from the tanzhaus nrw stages to position the audience’s experience into direct proximity to people and their everyday movements.
Katja Heitmann lives and works in Tilburg, the Netherlands, and drafts projects between choreography and visual arts. During a “Residenz im Realen/ Residency in Reality”, she explored everyday movement with visitors to the Düsseldorf Friedrichstadt Zentrum Plus/ DRK, back in 2018. She created a movement exhibition in Motus Mori Düsseldorf to accompany the premiere in 2020. With RELIQUIEM, the next step in her movement research finds its way to Düsseldorf.

Duration: 75 min.

Motus Mori: RELIQUIEM will take place in the Hofgarten on the lawn in front of the Theatermuseum, Jägerhofstraße 1, 40213 Düsseldorf. There will be tanzhaus nrw banners placed there, so you can't miss the lawn and us.

Please be there on time for the date and time you have booked. There will be a box office on site so that those who decide spontaneously can also buy tickets according to availability.

The performance of Motus Mori: RELIQUIEM will last 75 minutes and will be available in German, Dutch and English. You can choose your preferred language on spot. There will be an introduction in German before each performance. The performance is accessible for wheelchair users. Blind and visually impaired visitors are best accompanied by a sighted person.

The toilets of the Theatre Museum can be used during the performances.

What happens if it rains / in case of bad weather?

In case of heavy rain / wind Motus Mori: RELIQUIEM will take place on the Big Stage at tanzhaus nrw, Erkrather Straße 30, 40233 Düsseldorf. Should this be the case, we will notify you on our website.

Press reviews:

Theaterkrant (NL) – awarded RELIQUIEM with critic's choice:
"Art could not be more urgent. But beyond urgency, Reliquiem is also very moving."

New York Times (USA):
"The archive is our body."

De Standaard (BE):
“Kinetic empathy of the highest level."

deVolkskrant (NL):
“Utterly unique and impressive"

NRC (NL):
“The beauty and vulnerability of dance in a carefully considered concept."

Museumtijdschrift (NL):
“More direct, effective and gripping than a video, a photo or a text could ever be."

Interview with Katja Heitmann about the archive of movement Motus Mori: