In this suspended, fragile and continually postponed now, in this moment in which we remember the ‘before” and have no clear idea what might happen ‘after”, Fäden (Threads) emerges as a choreographic, poetic and visual meditation on different ideas and sensations of time and the way those formulate our lives.

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While ravelling and unravelling past, present and future, in an ever-changing landscape and through a long and lively conversation, performers knit a sentient reflection in which remembering, forgetting, losing, waiting, ageing and transforming become main protagonists in the inevitable passage of time.

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FÄDEN

Fäden, which means threads, strings, or twists in German, is a piece for and with eight performers, which takes as its starting point the idea of ageing. Ageing here is not only meant as a personal or individual process of getting old, but also as a collective process of maturing, gaining experience and transforming in both socio-political and biological context. Ageing is a natural, life-inherent and inevitable process. Every being who is born grows old, it is a part of his or hers “life contract”. However, ageing frightens many people; it is a process that leads us to death.

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In Fäden, Ivana is collaborating with four actors from the Kammerspiele in Munich, and with four members of the Berlin ensemble Dance On, whose members are mostly all over 40, which is for dancers considered as rather 'old'. This work is seen as an encounter, with this specific group of people and artists, belonging to different generations and exposed to specific historical, social and cultural working contexts. The piece is thus an opportunity to ask questions such as:

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How to age as a man and how to age as a woman?

How to age as a dancer and as an actor?

How to age as a foreigner and as a native?

How to age in public and in private?

How to age alone or as a member of a community?

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Reflection on these questions creates a framework that can reveal many complex relationships in the ways we see ‘the other’, and in the ways we live, work and age together. The representations of the body in a different age, its performance, its ability to inspire the imagination, its place in society or on a theatre stage are also part of it.

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“Nothing is lost, everything is transformed”, says the first law of thermodynamics. An ageing body has already used some of its initial resources, but it has also gained new ones. How does this new equilibrium change the quality of this body’s performance as well as its image?

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Together with the dancers of Dance On and the actors of the Kammerspiele, we will fuse different life and work experiences, and although the piece will draw on their individual experiences, the reflections will go beyond individual anecdotes and will engage in a narrative about humanity and our relationship to life in general, taking the theatre as a metaphor for the world but at the same time also as a working and living habitat, as an ecosystem.

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Conceived for a theatre venue, this choreographic piece will have an 'undisciplined' form at the intersection between dance, theatre and visual art. It will be woven of different threads: spatial, narrative and also, very concretely, by the threads of wool. These treads will gradually create images that will welcome and 'hold' different stories of those who weave them, being fed by the interdependent relationship between text, movement and the collective creation of an object.

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Although the artistic practices of different performers in the project may vary, with some having more experience in theatre and text and others in dance and movement, the whole troupe will move and speak. The approach to the text will be poetic and philosophical, i.e. it will not be based on the idea of psychology, characters or a story.

The movements will be mainly functional and linked to the idea of walking: a score of continuous movement will be circular and inspired by the idea of weaving. In this sense, there will be a 'functional necessity' to move in a certain way or in a certain direction in order to contribute to the creation of a larger image. (like the movement of a needle that has to move in a certain direction to make a knot).

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During the creative process, we will work within the framework of the permanent change of German (the official language of the theatre where the play will be staged) and English (our lingua franca). The translation between these two languages will be constantly present in the construction of the play and will therefore be an integral part of it. Instead of using conventional methods of translation in theatre such as over-titling, we will use 'live' translation in its various possible forms. This means that the text will always be spoken in both English and German. This will give us the opportunity to enter into the paradigms of interpretation, to offer playful and imaginative ways of connecting with the 'other' (other person or other language). Translating badly, deliberately not translating a certain part of a sentence, translating by adding a lot of new content etc. will be part of the 'strategies' employed in this translation game. This can lead to a whole field of interesting tensions between ideas such as 'national/international'; 'local/foreign'; a possibility of ghostly presences, the idea of double, questions such as: who really speaks and who interprets? etc.

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As almost always in my work, the idea of the body and the notion of the collective will figure as central places of interest. I see this process as an opportunity to rethink them, avoiding didactic or preconceived schemes that could be linked to the idea of 'ageing of a body' or 'ageing of a society', and to create, in collaboration with the artists, the spectators and others involved in the process of making, a poetic, temporal and spatial framework, a certain form of landscape that will offer us new points of view.

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Ivana Müller, December 2020

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DATES

16 April 2021 - Münchner Kammerspiele, Kammer 2, Munich (DE) - postponed due to sanitary measures

17 April 2021 - Münchner Kammerspiele, Kammer 2, Munich (DE) - postponed due to sanitary measures

19 April 2021 - Münchner Kammerspiele, Kammer 2, Munich (DE) - postponed due to sanitary measures

20 April 2021 - Münchner Kammerspiele, Kammer 2, Munich (DE) - postponed due to sanitary measures

12 May 2021 - Festival Dance Munich, Münchner Kammerspiele, Kammer 2, Munich (DE) - postponed due to sanitary measures

13 May 2021 - Festival Dance Munich, Münchner Kammerspiele, Kammer 2, Munich (DE) - postponed due to sanitary measures

25 November 2021 - Münchner Kammerspiele, Kammer 2, Munich (DE) - premiere

26 November 2021 - Münchner Kammerspiele, Kammer 2, Munich (DE)

(no performance on the 27th)

28 November 2021 - Münchner Kammerspiele, Kammer 2, Munich (DE)

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1 December 2021 - 30CC/Schouwburg, programmed by STUK, Leuven (BE)

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13 December 2021 - Münchner Kammerspiele, Kammer 2, Munich (DE)

14 December 2021 - Münchner Kammerspiele, Kammer 2, Munich (DE)

15 December 2021 - Münchner Kammerspiele, Kammer 2, Munich (DE)

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