MOUVOIR – École des Sables, Stephanie Thiersch & Alesandra Seutin: UNTIL THE BEGINNINGS

In the organizer's words:

World premiere

To begin again

Isn't to go backwards

But to decide to go on.

(Amanda Gorman)

On the canvas of global rhythms, UNTIL THE BEGINNINGS stages an energetic dance poem that brings together an international team of eight dancers from Senegal, Germany and France with musicians from the fields of percussion and rap. The directors Alesandra Seutin (artistic director of the École des Sables, Senegal) and Stephanie Thiersch (artistic director of MOUVOIR, Germany), who represent different working methods, weave a choreography that challenges the essence of hospitality.
Current political entanglements such as the criminalization of hospitality in many parts of the world as well as concepts of Jacques Derrida and Anne Dufourmantelle and utopian community spaces found their way into the project. Together, Alesandra Seutin and Stephanie Thiersch embark on a journey to deconstruct the concept of "home" and the possibilities of cultivating a common garden in a web of continuity, cycles and interconnecting threads.
Stephanie Thiersch was last at tanzhaus nrw with the performance concert HELLO TO EMPTINESS with MOUVOIR 2022. Authentic and experimental, MOUVOIR's multi-layered productions deal with the essential areas of our modern lives. As an uncompromising observer, Stephanie Thiersch dissects her environment with MOUVOIR: pop culture, philosophy and the visual arts are her tools. Thiersch sees her choreographic work in a broader understanding of interdisciplinary movement research, which currently incorporates music in particular into choreographic thinking.
UNTIL THE BEGINNINGS was created in a transcontinental collaboration with École des Sables and Alesandra Seutin. The École des Sables is an international center for traditional and contemporary African dance, a school for theoretical and practical teaching, a research laboratory and a place for encounters and exchanges, conferences and artistic residencies for dancers and choreographers from Africa, the African diaspora and various cultures from around the world. Alesandra Seutin has been the artistic director of the École des Sables since 2020. The international performer, choreographer and lecturer was born in Harare, Zimbabwe. She studied dance in Europe, Africa, Asia and the United States. She also trained at the École des Sables in Senegal, where she was a student of Germaine Acogny, who passed on her technique to her. Today, Alesandra Seutin is an ambassador for this technique, which she teaches at the École des Sables and all over the world.

Duration: 75 min.

In English, Wolof, Malagasy and French.

Supporting program
Sat 18.05. 19:00 Physical Introduction