Utopian Encounter. In Moments of Crisis and the Unknown

2024

»Utopian Encounter. In Moments of Crisis and the Unknown« is an ongoing collaboration between the chorepgrapher Jan Burkhardt, the visual artist Rebecca Ann Tess and the musician Wibke Tiarks. The starting point is the dance class »Movement Research« at Tanzfabrik, Berlin by Jan Burkhardt and Sigal Zouk. Bodies – of dancers and people with no previous experience, of different ages, gender and cultural backgrounds meet non-verbally without fixed choreographies. How can the practiced sensitivity, the opening up to unknown bodies, the resulting chaotic beauty of the spontaneous encounter and the slow forming of a group be captured visually and acoustically and made accessible to an audience in the form of a video work and a performance with participatory elements with the audience?

In these intense moments of encounter between individuals who are strangers to each other, political spaces for action flash up on the micro level, paving a way to address the opposition of divided societies and to return to a communicating group – including moments of not understanding each other, of drifting, but always continuing to be present with each other.

Thank you to all the dancers and Tanzfabrik Berlin.