Man Drake | Sandrine Maisonneuve (F)
QUE DU BONHEUR

Everyday gestures to the metronome’s pulse. A woman trapped in the same recurring rhythm of her own choosing, in a game of inflicted roles, fighting usual stereotypes until exhaustion sets in.

Idee/ Concept: Toméo Vergès
Performer: Sandrine Maisonneuve

The works of the Man Drake company move on the verges between theatre and dance. Director Toméo Vergés focuses his gaze upon the everyday things surrounding us in his performances, turning them into the absurd and surrealistic. His formats beyond usual stage works open up new perspectives and create spaces for one’s own interpretations.

Did U Hear
Howool Baek (DE/KOR)

[The rose that grew from concrete] Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Proving nature’s laws wrong it learned to walk without having feet. Funny it seems but by keeping its dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air. Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared. - Tupac Shakur
Does everyone have to have two legs? Does everyone have to learn how to breathe? Does everyone have to look well? Does everyone have to be coloured the same? Does everyone have to be straight? Does everyone have to be normal? What is normal? People look in the same direction and step their feet into a footprint left by others. They care about surrounding, follow invisible rules and try to reshape their feet to fit the footprint. Everyone has their own struggle in life. Social stereotyping and prejudice drag us down deeper. We have a right to tread our own, unknown way, with our own feet. We have a right to choose our direction, even if it takes longer. There is hope inside despair. There are roses everywhere inside of us, when we believe in ourselves.

Choreography: Dance Howool Baek
Composition: Live music Matthias Erian
Coproduction: Im_flieger / Austria

Support: Arts Printing House / Lithuania, Tanzzentrale / Germany
Thanks to: Eunyoung Kang (2014), Peter Kutin, Ronald von den Sternen, Tim Blechmann

Howool Baek is a Korean choreographer, based in Berlin. Her initiation into dance came with the wish to dance to K-POP music as a teenager, and after that, she started to learn and dance hip hop on the street. She wanted to learn more diverse dance styles and studied at the dance department of Incheon City College (Korea). Her professional career as a dancer took off with the company Dance On&Off in 2004. The beginnings of her choreography works were focused on limited space and the discovery of movements which could be created in limited space. Through that, her work has developed in a direction to explore the human body and to change body perception. Recently, her focus lies on the discovery of movement possibilities and idiosyncratic expressions of individual body parts.

Close Up
Saskia Rudat (DE)

While language ploughs through the pros and cons, the body wrestles, yet in disequilibrium, for steadfastness. Did you ever feel the urge to tell somebody something that was of importance to you? We probably all know that this is anything but easy. This play puts a magnifying glass unto the contradictory thoughts and emotions flooding us in the moment prior to our attempt to communicate.

This piece expands the contradicting thoughts and emotions we have in the second before we open our mouths to speak about anything that means something to us. The voice is the soundtrack. The audio consists of thoughts and try outs to say something: Discontinuous speech, followed and continued by the nervous sounds of an electric guitar, gropes its way through yeas and nays until it bursts in a shower of confessions and revelations. Sometimes body and voice, thoughts and feelings go together in unity, sometimes, they grow apart terribly.

Concept/performance: Saskia Rudat

Saskia Rudat was born in Dresden in 1991. At first, she went to study the thoughts, feelings and actions of the human being during her studies of Psychology at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. Then she entered the Folkwang University of the Arts to study “physical theatre” in order to become a performer, director, choreographer and author. Her artistic interests and abilities include music, text, directing and acting as well as mask acting, puppetry, object theatre, performance art, dance and acrobatics. Regardless of the art form, the focus of her works lies on the moment of sharing emotions, stories, images or events with the audience. In her choreographic works, she is interested in the borders between dance/choreography and theatre, exploring rhythm and contradiction as well as a personal but clownish performative attitude. With Ivo Schneider, she founded collective SÄCHSISCHE SCHWEIZ, producing pieces that are funny, colourful and consistent.