Double Bill: Thaddäus Maria Jungmann - JUNGMANN // JUNGKLAUS | Willie Stark - Chapt(her)s

In the organizer's words:

Double Bill:

Thaddäus Maria Jungmann - JUNGMANN // JUNGKLAUS

Willie Stark - SHOWING Chapt(her)s

Mon. 29.04.2024 20:00 - World Dance Day

Tue. 30.04.2024 20:00
followed by a dance into May party

JUNGMANN//JUNGKLAUS

Thaddäus Maria Jungmann

JUNGMANN: 1800mm, 75kg meat, top speed 20 km/h, two legs, two untrained arms, flexibility and elasticity.

JUNGKLAUS: 2500mm, 3000kg steel, top speed 17 km/h, four wheels, powerful lifting hydraulics, stability and maneuverability.

In JUNGMANN//JUNGKLAUS , the two heterogeneous bodies meet in a mechanical pas de deux that negotiates Jungmann's discriminatory work experiences as a queer person in a logistics center. The interior cabin serves as a safe space until the hard JUNGKLAUS forks become soft and tenderly lift JUNGMANN from the queer-hostile floor. A continuous process of transformation until blood and oil flow into each other and the intimacy between vulnerable flesh and invulnerable steel challenges our stacked and supposedly irrefutable capitalist and binary ways of thinking.

On the one hand, conventions of what is considered "masculine" are restacked as soon as we speak of heavy physical work with machines, as well as the normative standards of couple dance, which takes place in a dual division into man and woman in ballet. JUNGMANN//JUNGKLAUS rethinks the (emotional) connection between man and machine and speculates on how we can emasculate technical objects in order to ultimately 'queer' (capitalist and patriarchal) systems.

Thaddäus Maria Jungmann is a performer.In her interdisciplinary practice, she interweaves text fragments with movement. Her focus is on autofictional performances in which she questions social phenomena such as hotness on her own body, explores the ugliness of glitter and stages front gardens as a place of encounter.

Concept & Performance Thaddäus Maria Jungmann

Forklift driver John Ossowitzki

Music Carl-Noë Struck

Set design Mila Weinert

Dramaturgy Daniela Riebesam

Production Rona Ludin, Florian Rzepkowski

Photos Filip Felix, Lars Ksienzyk

Trailer Filip Felix

Outside Eye Carolina Brinkmann

A production by Thaddäus Maria Jungmann, co-produced by the Figurentheater Osnabrück

Supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste and Landesbüro NRW

Supported by research at Kolbhalle Köln 2023 and a residency at Low Air/Lithuania 2024

SHOWING Chapt(her)s

Willie Stark

In Chapt( her)s , dance is understood as a political instrument and a means of encouragement. Throughout history, numerous dance styles have developed as forms of expression and as acts of resistance against social constraintsand oppression. Chapt(her)s explores how culture, gender, race, history and socio-economicconditionsinfluence the expression or suppressionof anger, empathy, oppression, love andunderstanding. Chapt(her)s is experimental research that centers on thebody, both as subject and object. The focus is on the embodiedexperience and the conception of new ways andpossibilitiesof movement exploration by creating a meeting point between different dance styles: Urban dance andcontemporarydance techniques.

In this work, women are portrayed from a female perspective: as mothers, deities, saviors, prostitutes or whores, martyrs, saints and nuns. We want to initiate a discussionaboutgender norms and women facing body shaming, double standards, intense scrutiny, social media, political oppressionand social marginalization through research, voice, sound and movement material.

Willie Stark, from Uganda, born and raised in Paris, works as a performing artist, choreographer and dancer. She began her dance training in Modern Jazz and continued in various dance styles such as Hiphop, House, Afro Dances andlaterContemporary.

Willie Stark is a winner of the Tanz NRW Sprungbrett 2017, where she created and produced her first solo. In various collaborations, she develops transdisciplinaryprojects between movement and music and makes the disciplines dance with each other. She has danced in performances produced by HAU Hebbel am Ufer Theater, tanzhaus nrw, Renegade Pottporus, Philarmonique Liege, Pact Zollverein and Ringlokschuppen Ruhr, among others.

There she had theopportunitytoworkmore intensively with contemporary dance and to develop and performpiecesby prominent choreographers. Herstage projectsare characterized by a sophisticated movement language that emerges from her years of research into textures and soundsand are often created in close connection with or inspired by a musical score or a specific design idea.

Artistic direction, choreography, dance Willie Stark

Choreographic input Yasmine Calasse, Laura Schönlau

Music composition Fallon Mayanja

Supported by the Kunststiftung NRW