Highlights: ImPulsTanz Festival July 15 – August 15 (Vienna, Austria)

ImPulsTanz – Vienna International Dance Festival
July 15 – August 15

Thousands of professional dancers, choreographers and teachers from all over the world, come together, work together, for five weeks, in one city – ImPulsTanz.

1984. In Austria‘s leading cultural city Vienna the cultural manager Karl Regenburger and the choreographer Ismael Ivo launch the Internationale Tanzwochen Wien in order to give contemporary dance a voice in Austria. With six teachers – amongst them the well-known Joe Alegado, Germaine Acogny and Walter Raines – and twenty workshops, the two organizers get the festival started. A new dance culture unfolds itself and spreads out. Four years later a performance element is added to the increasingly successful workshop festival. In 1988 the ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival is introduced for the first time, featuring works by Wim Vandekeybus, Marie Chouinard and Mark Tompkins. All names that are still closely connected with ImPulsTanz, which meanwhile has grown to Europe’s biggest contemporary festival.

Robyn Orlin / City Theatre & Dance Group Johannesburg (ZA)
We must eat our suckers with the wrappers on…

MuseumsQuartier Halle E
20. Juli, 21:00
21. Juli, 21:00
22. Juli, 21:00

The title is straightforward enough. “We must it our suckers with the wrappers on” is a widespread idiom in the townships of Johannesburg. White South African choreographer Robyn Orlin chose this title for her play dealing with Aids, because the cynical metaphor will do away with hackneyed pathos and reveal the social taboo, the pandemia, the tragedy taking place in her mother-country.

Thick lipstick, bright plastic buckets, lots and lots of red lollipops, 77 light bulbs, street games, rhythmical group movements, everyday behaviour, zulu dances and jazzy a-capella songs combine to surrealistic images and bitterly ironic street stories. Her lively humour, Orlin’s trademark at other occasions, is almost completely missing, as the serious nature of the issue, in a country where one out of nine is HIV positive, seems to require.

Orlin is considered one of South Africa’s most provocative and controversial artists. The Art Institute of Chicago graduate creates political art combining interventionalist, image and dance theatre, with video projections counterbalancing reality and blurring the gap between audience and actors. Orlin has been creating performances and installations since 20 years, she was awarded several prizes (ao. the Lawrence Olivier Award). In 2007 she collaborated with William Christie for a production for he National Ballet de la Opéra de Paris.

DD Dorvillier & Human Future Dance Corps (USA)
Choreography, a Prologue for the Apocalypse of Understanding, Get Ready!

MuseumsQuartier Halle G
August 08, 21:00
August 10, 21:00

Apocalypse now! Or perhaps soon. Or… Anyhow, for New York artist DD Dorvillier, the loss of understanding is worthy of a prologue. Together with four dancers (including Amanda Piña, the Chilean living in Austria) and musician Zeena Parkins, Dorvillier immerses into the abyss of fake sensations and misunderstandings, including political implications. There, she attempts to rearrange various hierarchies of perception by means of wit and unusual actions. DD Dorvillier – danceWEB coach at ImPulsTanz in 2008 – is among those choreographers from the New York dance scene who collaborate closely with European colleagues. A recent, successful project was “Pièce Sans Paroles” with Anne Juren.

Keith Hennessy (USA)
Crotch

Schauspielhaus
July 26, 21:00
July 29, 23:00

What does conceptual dance look like coming from the West Coast? It must be ironic, all over queer and critical. As he proves in his solo “Crotch (all the Joseph Beuys references in the world cannot heal the pain, confusion, regret, cruelty, betrayal or trauma…)”, Keith Hennessy from San Francisco fulfils these criteria. He is interested in references to references: it is not without reason that the famous mask from the much parodied US horror film “Scream” appears. Parody is the most salutary of the many possibilities to establish references, and so Hennessy parodies: for example the Beuysian Fat Corner, in a refreshingly disrespectful manner, i.e. by pasting it between his legs in the crotch.

PAR B.L.eux / Benoît Lachambre & Louise Lecavalier & Hahn Rowe & Laurent Goldring (CA/USA/FR)
Is You Me

MuseumsQuartier Halle G
July 23, 21:00
July 25, 21:00

They make for a very special pair: Louise Lecavalier and Benoît Lachambre. Initially, Lecavalier – the world-famous dance virtuoso from La La La Human Steps – wanted to collaborate on a group work with crossover choreographer Lachambre. In the end, the result was the solo piece “‘I’ Is Memory”. Now the time has come for the two of them to enter the stage together to dance the question “Is You Me” – as accomplices in matters of dancing enjoyment. The design of the stage area and the video projections are in the able hands of renowned fine artist Laurent Goldring, whose works about the body image have become classics. The music is provided by multi-instrumentalist and film musician Hahn Rowe, who has also repeatedly worked together with Meg Stuart.