- Presented by HAU Hebbel am Ufer
- 9.–26. August 2023
Under the new artistic directorship of Ricardo Carmona, this year’s festival is presenting 19 productions at 11 venues – including 5 world premieres, 6 German premieres, 8 Berlin and international co-productions and a commissioned project with 22 Berlin artists.
Tanz im August opens with the German premiere of C A R C A Ç A, by Marco da Silva Ferreira, which unites street dance and traditional dance forms, clearly extending the invitation of this year’s festival: to discover new directions off the beaten track, to overcome rigid ideas of dance, to bring mutual relationships to light.
Such directions are also taken in productions by Nadia Beugré, who combines voguing with coupé-décalé, and by the Ballet national de Marseille / (LA)HORDE, which stages dances that have gone viral on social media and video-game choreography. Serge Aimé Coulibaly, in contrast, connects traditional European and West African forms and rhythms with the contemporary movement vocabulary, and Marlene Monteiro Freitas’s eclectic choreographic expression mixes marches, ritual and sport, high with popular culture.
In his contribution to the festival – a German premiere presented in collaboration with the Berliner Festspiele – Trajal Harrell shows how dance can be celebrated beyond time and gender. And fusions of all kinds can be experienced in the battle project Outbox Movement, which is making its first guest appearance at a dance festival.
Mutual relationships between living beings and their surroundings are the theme of productions by Ginevra Panzetti and Enrico Ticconi, who explore the phenomenon of the island, Agata Siniarska, who invites us to think about the effects of war on nature, and Chiara Bersani, who takes the audience into the undergrowth of an imaginary forest where a new language is coming about. This theme is dealt with by another festival highlight: 22 artists from the project “Interconnecting Dance and Ecology“ share their visions with the public during three walks in the Park am Gleisdreieck, Stadtpark Lichtenberg and Volkspark Rehberge.
Further productions show how mutual dependence is determined across the generations, and the relevance it still has. Dorothée Munyaneza evokes the Caribbean figure of Tituba, who was persecuted as a witch in the 17th century. Taoufiq Izeddiou refers to Sufi rituals in an exploration of trance states. Kat Válastur examines the Greek tragedy “Iphigenie in Aulis” from a feminist perspective, and Radouan Mriziga engages with the stories and sounds of the North African Amazigh culture. Proceeding from the everyday movement of walking, Rosas think about individualism and collectivity. On the trail of empathy in gestures and sounds, Yasmeen Godder goes deep into the body, while Cherish Menzo questions the body’s restrictive categorisations in rap and hip-hop paradigms.
- All Infos and tickets: www.tanzimaugust.de
