Backstage with senzenberger|rieck
Miriam Rieck and Katharina Senzenberger started their collective collaboration way back in the context of their dance studies at the Cologne University of Music and Dance. senzenberger|rieck’s first stage piece, a dance routine, will premiere at tanzhaus nrw on November 3rd. Philipp Schaus, tanzhaus nrw dramaturge, conducted the following interview.
Katharina and Miriam, what kind of experience would you wish the audience to have when encountering a dance routine?
Miriam: There will be moments during a dance routine that the audience needs to come along with. We would wish for the audience to engage, to enter into a relationship with the people present in the room. We create on-stage moments in a dance routine that require work form everybody, work to get engaged. A willingness to do this work, that is what we wish from our audience. I would also like to add that a dance routine allows for a very physical experience. Physical experiences, for the most part, remain within the body, as memories. Therefore, I also wish the audience an experience that transcends the moment of the performance.
Katharina: By placing our bodies on stage, we become extremely vulnerable. Because, in a certain way, bodies that are put onto a stage are consumed by the audience. Therein lies the opening of a hierarchy between performers and audience. Because we permanently work with the gaze, and also due to our use of light and the specific arrangement of the audience within the stage space, the audience in a dance routine needs to become vulnerable themselves, for a bit. We award the audience a form of agency through this act. If that is redeemed, the audience will be in for an intense and very emotionally charged experience.
You have been collaborating for several years now and tackled topics, motifs, and strategies of body transformation. How does a dance routine connect to your previous work?
Katharina: Since we started working together, we have been involved with neo-materialist research approaches. We are fascinated by texts such as Karen Barad’s “Meeting the Universe Halfway” or thought lines by Donna Haraway and Brian Massumi. From those theories, we view transformation as an in-between moment. In the process between moment A to moment B, transformation occurs. Transformation is the movement from moment A to moment B. Seen like this, transformation designates the continuous change of relations. The relation to the self as well as to the world. This constant negotiation of how to relate to something also results in a constant renegotiation of positions of power. In a dance routine, we work with a gigantic TikTok dance archive, and most of these dances are perceived as self-contained within a certain space. If transposed into choreography, the blanks, the in-between points, and the movements of transformation become visible.
Miriam: If we assume we are in constant motion, that there are no fixed positions, this also means that every connection, every relation is in a constant state of change, of realignment and self-interrogation. Thinking about this absolutely is an important part of our practice. So, every understanding, every interpretation of relation or social codes is therefore dependent on the situation. Human beings always act from specific situations and moments.
Katharina: What we were interested in during the conceptual phase of a dance routine was the question for the effects certain movements have on us. Dance is often perceived as individual expression. I feel something and subsequently find a suitable expression in or through dance. With internet dances, we are actually interested in the opposite phenomenon. They are movements that touch us as we dance them. If I clench my fist, something resonates within me. It makes me feel something specific. The movement leads to a transformation in my body. To me, the following idea is fascinating: All those millions of people dance this TikTok dance and perform these certain movements. What effects do these movements have on those people?
Your practice is marked by a dedication to both digital as well as site-specific projects. Which perception of digitisation are you most interested in for a dance routine?
Miriam: The digital realm provides the transmission format for movement. We work with our body as material, as flesh. Through digitisation, movement may flow into our bodies. A delineation between the digital and the analogue is hard for me. If we, for example, film ourselves during the work process, the movement becomes digitised again. That is like a digestive process in which the boundaries blur and dissolve. How do movements that have been conducted by so many before inform me? In what way do I become a part of a certain community by doing them?
Katharina: I think that this differentiation between digital and analogue serves as a good example to demonstrate that dichotomies, in general, are bullshit. Our world is simply far more intricately structured, and it oftentimes makes no sense to separate the one from the other so clearly, to think in such dichotomised terms.
In a dance routine, you work in an area of dance in which new aesthetics and choreographic practice emerge just now. Apps such as TikTok change the structure of dance and the way dance circulates globally, in various mannery. In a dance routine, you create an aesthetic of dance and choreography that has not yet been around for that long.
Katharina: I have a feeling that what we have been doing on TikTok is exactly the same as what everybody else does. We then transfer it into a stage context in a certain way. What we talk about a lot in the context of this transposition of digital platforms into a stage context is a question of authorship as well as of cultural appropriation. Who owns the authorship of a dance on TikTok, and – on the other hand – which dances are meant for whom? This provoked much uncertainty at the project’s outset. We realised during our work that the core of these dances on the internet is the invitation to be danced and reprocessed. Yet it remains important to us to credit all the dances we use. Many dances are made to be learned by other people, and they are not made to be owned by a single person alone. The thought of one dance being for many, intended to be shared, that is exciting to me.
Miriam: It was important to us to work on these dances with a certain sensibility and to attempt to understand which dances were made to be shared by all users, and which ones were rather not.
What is a dance routine?
Katharina: The English term routine denotes a certain choreography to be studied, in commercial dance, but also in figure skating. This is mostly a choreography consisting of extremely precise motion sequences that will be trained for a very long period of time. The routine, so to speak, is the practice or the performance of this choreography, the dancing of the dance.
Miriam: Exactly, the routine is the rehearsal of those motion sequences. A rehearsal that inscribes itself into the body through repetition. Routine, I would like to add, is also akin to the notion of skill or proficiency. A dance routine very clearly describes what we are busy with, in the piece and during rehearsals. We acquire new movement vocabulary to develop a movement language, and to train our bodies. Especially at the start of our work, it was also a concept to me that I strongly connected with everyday life. In the sense of having an everyday routine that is repeated daily.
Katharina: To me, everyday life becomes imbued with meaning via certain gestures that go viral in TikTok videos before becoming everyday gestures. And via the everyday act of looking into the internet. Routine is connected to effort, to achievement. This taps into the notion that we produce an achievement on stage that is consumed by audiences. The term has a general proximity to commercial dance. Contemporary dance fancies itself as being divorced from the capitalist system. This conceals the integration into a market that contemporary dance also faces. In any case, we have been working on these dances for a very long time, intensely, with precision, and very painstakingly. They are actually really difficult, despite them often not seeming that complex. They sport distinct movement sequences while simultaneously granting much leeway, and they can be danced in decidedly different manners. A lot of material went into this piece, and we rehearsed, and rehearsed, and rehearsed.
