Dance Performance
I am interested in what comes to light when one compares different perspectives, contexts or levels of impact of the word freedom: inner and outer, philosophical, spiritual, personal and social felt and lived freedoms, but also freedom as an advertising promise and as an ideological concept. My explorations of freedom reveal to me the complexity of our world, the limits of our language. Freedom requires us to be aware of the forces at work, including our own. It helps us to critically confront ideology and to recognise other options instead of A or B. However, promises and ideas of freedom can also subjugate, paralyse, divide, lead to wars, self-destruction and addiction. Freedom does something to us and we to it. Exploring and pursuing our own freedom is a balancing act for me. So I do just that. I balance on porcelain, cups that I move around the room at the same time. They form landscapes, scatter in happy disorder, re-form into strict patterns. The suggestions that these different constellations give rise to correspond with the text, which also takes place on several levels. Spoken, projected and from the tape. I submit to the constraint of never touching the floor. A game. Freedom becomes a negotiation with one’s own endurance. But also a homage to ordering and classifying and moving on. Behind the question of freedom is also the question of what we want to do with our lives. For me, working on themes like freedom and courage is a key to hope, my basis for a creative engagement with the fragility of our present.
Credits:
Concept, choreography, performance: David Brandstätter | Dramaturgic advice: Malgven Gerbes, Howard Katz, Alexandros Mistriotis | Texts: David Brandstätter | Narrator: Martin Clausen (De), Jim Sert (Fr) | Lights: Michael Kunitsch, Thomas Achtner | Video: Thomas Achtner, Max Sautai | Production shifts \ art in movement | More: https://shifts.dance/repertory/freiheit
Biography
Born in Wuppertal 1979, David Brandstätter lives and works in Le Havre | France and Berlin.
With Malgven Gerbes he founded shifts \ art in movement : s-h-i-f-t-s.org