Pau Aran/ Helge Letonja: Bodily Me – Bodily Us

"Don't ask me who I am and don't tell me to stay the same."
(Michel Foucault)

Who has never experienced tensions between self-perception and the social gaze? Feeling in the "wrong body" as a common human experience becomes the starting point for artistic research. The friction between the perceived body and social body images, which often causes suffering, becomes a spark of creativity and a search for healing.
Following the production Skin Deep by Helge Letonja and Tù Hoang, OCN deepens its exploration of the experience of the body. The direct experiences and physical memories of one's own body are juxtaposed with social judgments and attributions that often restrict and separate. The 'self' as an individual in confrontation with the group, with society - a pair of opposites, a field of tension, two entities that influence each other, one constantly in danger of losing itself in the other. Bodily me - bodily us. How do we relate to traditional images of the world and people?

Information about the artists:

Choreographer Pau Aran, a long-time dancer with Pina Bausch, and Helge Letonja, artistic director of the ensemble, look at the self-perception of the body through dance with the company Of Curious Nature. The two choreographers are united by the conviction that dance can show how much changeability and movement should be granted to the self and how the self can feel at home in a community.

Pau Aran uses the adaptability of plants to light, climate and environment as a metaphor for this artistic exploration. He compares the self to the ecosystem of which it is a part: diverse, changeable, influenceable by external impulses, internally in continuous negotiations between desire, environment and self-perception.

Helge Letonja views the body as a vessel and looks at forms of expression and action in motion and how they solidify: Evolution, social experience, handed-down images, the passing on from generation to generation. In order to circumvent his own or external definitions, he works with the dancers to find a language of movement that is connected to the inner self and understands relationships to other bodies as resonances or dissonances.
OCN creates space between nature and culture and opens up ways of appreciating each energetic self in dance.

Information on accessibility:

Duration: tba

All public areas of the Schwankhalle are accessible at ground level and without steps.

There are three different toilets: a barrier-free toilet that can also be used by wheelchair users, a toilet with 3 toilet cubicles and a toilet with urinals and a toilet cubicle.

The public area is generally seated.
The wheelchair spaces are located in the front row and can be reserved in advance by phone on 0421 520 80 70, by email at ticket@schwankhalle.de or by entering them in the ticket store.