The ‘:Love:’ cooperation between Radialsystem and Tanzfabrik has striven since the spring of 2019 to improve the resources and conditions for dance performance in Berlin – making sure to provide international and local artists with rehearsal space, performance platforms and publicity for shows each spring. The rare winter instalment of this love-in between two of Berlin’s leading dance institutions in the Freie Szene sees premieres from Ixchel Mendoza Hernández and Sergiu Matis come to Radialsystem’s stage.
The Mexico-born, Berlin-based Mendoza Hernández confronts the nature of perception itself in The Infinite Gesture, part of her ongoing exploration of “Visual Ghost”, the constant reconceiving of what she calls “consciousness and inner virtuality”. The Infinite Gesture considers the role of touch in reworking the world – particularly in terms of rethinking, resetting, or, better put, re-sensing hierarchical power relationships. Matis turns his gaze on planetary inequalities. The Romanian choreographer, who has called Berlin home since 2008, enlists five dancers to refract a set of personal texts about the ongoing climate catastrophe that threatens humanity’s continued existence.
Responding to these texts that the performers recite, the movements of the dancers create an archive of response to the crisis that this work also seeks to help resolve. Both promise urgent interventions into the crises the world is facing, as well as a reminder about the collectivity-forming power of movement-based art.
- Radialsytem, Holzmarktstr. 33, Friedrichshain, Dec 19-22, details.
