Highlights: ImPulsTanz Festival 2011 (Vienna, Austria)

ImPulsTanz – Vienna International Dance Festival
July 12 – August 14

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.

Highlights:

Nicole Peisl (DE/AT)
„Vielfalt“
venue: Arsenal
dates: July 17, 19:00
venue: MuseumsQuartier Halle G
dates: July 22, 20:00

In her piece Nicole Peisl, long-time member of the Forsythe Company, examines the realities and the conditions of perception of a performance. The ingredients: triumph, failure, silence and gestures, sound, humour, posture, ropes and two dancers. Elena Giannotti and Satu Herrala move across the stage space as if freed from any conventional logic. The combination of their movements and actions gently opens up ever new spaces for interpretation. “Variety” was created in close collaboration with philosopher Alva Noë as a commissioned work for the Forsythe Company.
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Ultima Vez / Wim Vandekeybus (BE)
„Monkey Sandwich“
venue: Odeon
dates: July 28, 21:00 & July 31, 22:00

A naked man staggers across the stage between two large ventilators. He burns his fingers. White dolls made of paper dangle around him. A storm is brewing. Turbulent film sequences on a large screen, in which someone says to people standing about: “The Tigris is losing all its water…!” A group of men run through high grass. They carry weapons. Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus pulls out all the stops. In a furious staging he combines live performance and film, dream and nightmare, euphoria and helplessness. Once again, a breathtakingly dynamic, exciting piece by the restless artist and passionate collector of stories.
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Daniel Linehan (US/BE)
„Zombie Aporia“
venue: Schauspielhaus
dates: August 01, 22:00 & August 03, 22:00

In “Zombie Aporia” contradictory movements and rhythms ghost-light through the bodies of three dancers. Not unlike a pop concert, they perform short tracks in which absurd humour collides with questions of political stance. “Zombie Aporia” deals with hidden possibilities in apparent opposites: music as a result of dance, emotional expression that starts off physically, spontaneous bursts of emotion that are prefabricated, and words that convey a feeling of vibration rather than a meaning. Daniel Linehan moved from New York (where he had worked e.g. with Miguel Gutierrez and Big Art Group) to Brussels in 2008 and studied at P.A.R.T.S., the school founded by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker.
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Marcela Levi (BR)
„Around the hole everything is edge“
venue: MuseumsQuartier Halle G
dates: August 02, 20:00 & August 04, 20:00

A fable consisting of various fragments. In Marcela Levi’s minimalist duet objects, too, become performers, while beauty and violence seem to coexist in an irritating way. A piece full of helplessness, but also of humour, that calls upon the audience to get lured into the unknown. “Around the hole everything is edge” is the fourth performance by the choreographer from Rio de Janeiro. It won the ZKB recognition award at the Zürcher Theater Spektakel in 2010.

View the full program