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Learn more about dance in Munich! In TTmag dance creators talk about their aesthetics and approach, dance formats and Munich dance topics are put under the microscope! |
 Conversations about formats Micha Purucker about STANDPUNKT.e – welcome to my world The STANDPUNKT.e series was created in 2009 for the venue schwere reiter. What was the impulse, the idea behind this format? First of all, the schwere reiter was a new space, it had only existed since 2008, and as Tanztendenz we wanted to develop specific formats for it that in a way reflect our approach to dance. Formats that stand outside the usual considerations of dance programming and focus more on processuality and methods. That's - I think - what needs to be held up for dance in general in the schwere reiter: We shouldn't do everything the way everyone else does, but develop our own quality. That's how the International Choreographers' Studio, side.kicks and STANDPUNKT.e came about? Exactly, and with STANDPUNKT.e the idea was that we wanted to do a series where choreographers present their work in a different way - not through a performance, but by illuminating the background, the sources of inspiration. So to speak, the subtexts and the nutrients that are behind or in the pieces. The things that you just don't get as an audience. Ultimately, it's the parameters from which the stage works develop. The same parameters that you need as a choreographer when you start rehearsing with people. You don't have a text for the piece, a composition that everyone can read, but you still have to take the participants along on the journey, create references. And these milestones or parameters are interesting, for example, because I may not see them on stage, but there I see: where have they arrived, in what territory? But for the most part I don't see the landmarks, I don't see how to get there. When you say subtexts, I immediately think of something like visual art influences, a text or film that triggered something, or music.... Actually, the subtitle to the series comes from a song. I once did a piece at Riem Airport and Robert Merzo picked out a song called "Welcome to my world" and I thought: that's actually exactly what I'm missing when we talk about dance. It's not this single project alone that you see right now, but there's a whole cosmos behind it. That's important for dance: making it clear that the pieces, the authors, are not floating in a vacuum, but are just as anchored as painting, music, literature. Where does the Movens come from? What opinions do they have? From which everyday reality, from which conflicts do these works come? What makes Forsythe tick outside the stage, for example? What occupies him, where does he stand politically, how does he see the art business, etc.? Compared to other art forms, we know little, even about the big names in dance. Dancers and choreographers seem to have fallen out of the world somehow, as lunatics, as escapists, they just do their stuff in a tower of ivory, they are not of this world. And so there's a great muteness around the pieces, but also around the people who make them. And STANDPUNKT:e tries to break through this muteness? That's one way of looking at it. But when you talk about dance, it's always kind of difficult, insufficient, because language just works differently than dance; you're immediately in a fundamentally different communication model. Hence the idea of developing a format that takes into account choreographic authorship, work biographical content, as well as the different mode of communication of dance by 'talking' about the respective works in a different way. By gathering and staging interests, preferences, the vectors of a work, a method, etc. in a public situation - by the people involved. Choreographers are not actually understood as authors with an agenda. But they all have a personal 'trajectory' that is very difficult - if not impossible - to discern from individual productions. STANDPUNKT.e is an attempt to show this 'trajectory', based on the coordinates determined by the invited artists themselves. How do we have to imagine this? The concept is a carte blanche for the creation of two evenings, i.e. the choreographers can de facto do almost anything they want, as long as they think it is a contribution from their cosmos. There are several talks in advance about the concept of the series: It is not a performance as they are used to; it is not about routinely showing a piece - although they are welcome to bring dancers and show excerpts. But they should get out of their routine. Riccardo Iazetta, for example, brought his hairdresser in 2012, you could get your hair cut and his little son crawled across the stage - a totally crazy and touching evening. Jeremy Wade came with his band, Charles Linehan showed among other things his family albums. Viktoria Hauke had cooking and eating together, Cristina Caprioli made the audience dance under a cloth. It is really a different kind of evening, it is about the world behind the work and its author. Does that work even if you as an audience member don't know the work at all, haven't seen anything? Of course it's nice if you've already seen something, then you can discover new things. That's also why some of the invited artists show live excerpts or work with videos. Thomas Hauert, who was at STANDPUNKT.e in 2022, took two dancers from his company with him and showed work methods and excerpts and also worked with video in an installation way. Whether an evening works, however, depends on what the artists come with and how much the evening speculates on a direct comparison with the work; or whether they choose other paths into their world. Paulo Emílio Azevedo, who was at STANDPUNKT.e in 2015 - that was an incredibly great evening, whether you know the Oeuve now or not. It was all very much about community, about being together, about a generosity with everyone present. There was also dancing together at the end. In the foreground was: We do this together now and we make us now a good moment. Is it a mandatory aspect of STANDPUNKT:e that the audience is involved or participates? Not at all, it depends entirely on the choreographers who create the evenings. We also had guests who did workshops before the public evenings; Pat Graney, for example, worked with refugee girls and their photographic works became part of her evenings, or Cristina Caprioli was in a retirement home in Munich and did movement training with the residents. Pierre Droulers, on the other hand, worked with Munich dancers in advance and organized the evenings with them - among other things, they played table tennis. The artists respond to STANDPUNKT.e with what they ultimately want to share, and they have to give it some thought. If they really take the concept of the series seriously, they are taking a risk. What do you mean? Because it is, after all, an invitation to articulate yourself other than through a performance, you can't pull anything familiar out of the drawer, you can't call up your usual stuff. You have to take yourself out of what you normally do and really want to try something new - and that is risky. We call ourselves free - free dance scene - but the question is, to what extent do we not constantly fulfill some kind of expectations that the system places on us and are quite formatted according to the needs of this apparatus. For me, this also questions a format like STANDPUNKT.e. It creates an anti-routine - for the artists, but also for the audience, for the press, for sponsors ... the whole business has to endure the fact that until shortly beforehand it is usually not clear what exactly is happening on this evening, because that is the concept. Is STANDPUNKT.e also a mediation format for you? That wasn't the idea behind it and I wouldn't write it over, but I think it does that in a pretty smart way. It opens up access to choreography in general. Just by the fact that you see: Oh, come on, these are also people of this world, just through this contemporaneity. That is also a question that the series poses to artists: In what do they see their contemporaneity? STANDPUNKT (i.a. Standpoint) also means something - precisely: Where do you stand? More on previous issues of STANDPUNKT.e: STANDPUNKT.e The interview was conducted by Simone Lutz, April 2022  Tanztendenz Munich e.V. is sponsored by the Munich Department of Arts and Culture |
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