Unfinished Requiem_in the Gut of Humanity

Dance Evening by Andrea Peña

Following the sensational successof *Let’s Talk About Trance* — Transmuted Symphony —Andrea Peña returns to TANZ_KASSEL with a new dance performance at the INTERIM at the Staatstheater Kassel. In a time marked by uncertainty and shifting social realities, the body reveals itself as both a place of vulnerability and a source of agency. What was once seen as an image of quiet care—the held, wounded body—becomes here the starting point for movement: the moment when the body rejects rigidity, tensions become visible, and express themselves through strength, urgency, and presence.

This dance performance explores what happens when the body ceases to be merely an object of the narrative and begins to emancipate itself—contradictory, uncontrollable, and alive. The starting point is the Pietà: the iconic image of a body held by another, which conveys both care and human vulnerability. A body held in silence thus becomes a vessel of tension. Beneath this silence, however, lies a physical reality: the weight of the body, the work of holding, the constant negotiation between support and collapse. In the present, this image takes on a new urgency.

Here, the Pietà no longer appears as a static icon, but as a dynamic system. The image collides with reality: the clear boundary between a safe interior and a dangerous exterior is dissolved. What once promised stability can become fragile; what signified safety can turn into a threat. This is countered by the emancipation of the body: tension can no longer be controlled; resistance and desire come to the fore. When the body moves—uncontrolled, contradictory, alive—it becomes clear that the existing order is losing its validity.

The composition of the bodies evolves into a flexible structure in which balance, pressure, and interdependence are constantly being rebalanced. The body is no longer merely an object of observation, but an active part of the movement. Tension is not released but redistributed. Order gives way to rhythm, repetition, and excess—a choreography in which bodies move between coordination and rupture, between support and dissolution.

Andrea Peña views the Pietà not as a symbol to be preserved, but as an image that can be expanded. The work explores what happens when this familiar structure becomes a collective organism: a field of bodies in which weight, care, friction, and resistance are negotiated.

Andrea Peña is an internationally acclaimed dancer and choreographer whose works combine body, space, and emotion into clear choreographic images. With a knack for simultaneously revealing vulnerability and strength, she addresses social, political, and personal themes—always with rhythm, energy, and visual precision. Queerness and identity play a central role in her work, both in performative experiments and in immersive choreographies. For TANZ_KASSEL, Andrea Peña developed the piece *Let’s Stalk About Trance*, which explores the boundaries between trance, intimacy, and collective experience. There, precision, political reflection, and sensual power converge into a performance that immediately draws the audience into the tension between power, desire, and resistance. Andrea Peña is today regarded as one of the most important voices in contemporary dance—an artist whose work appeals to both the mind and the senses.

“I’m interested in the moment when the body ceases to be a symbol and appears in all its complexity—marked by tension, resilience, effort, and fragility. In *UnfinishedRequiem_In the Gut of Humanity*, the body is not merely depicted but negotiated: a space where vulnerability and agency coexist. It is a body that eludes simple categorization and understands its contradictions as part of the human condition. Shaped by my background, I understand the body as something that is constantly transforming—in an interplay between matter, memory, and landscape. In this work, the Pietà unfolds into a collective architecture of bodies: a fluid structure in which weight, care, pressure, and resistance are continually renegotiated, and in which the act of holding itself becomes an active force.” 
- AndreaPeña

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