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Press release
Berlin, 16 April 2015
TANZ IM AUGUST – 27th international Festival in Berlin
presented by HAU Hebbel am Ufer
13 August – 4 September 2015
First highlights of Tanz im August on sale.
Tanz im August opens in 2015 with Available Light, an iconic, collaborative
project of Lucinda Childs, Frank O. Gehry and John Adams at the Haus der
Berliner Festspiele. Two German premieres are also announced: The Korea
National Contemporary Dance Company (KNCDC), with its new artistic director
Ahn Aesoon, and the return of last year’s critically acclaimed La Veronal.
Advance sale for these three productions starts today, April 16th. The
complete programme of Tanz im August will be announced in early June 2015.
The first three highlight performances of the international festival Tanz im August in its
second edition under the artistic directorship of Virve Sutinen, are announced. Available
Light, choreographer Lucinda Childs’ 1983 collaboration with the architect Frank O. Gehry
and the composer John Adams, will open the festival at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele on
August 13th. The Berlin audiences will be treated with yet another outstanding artistic
collaboration with the involvement of Lucinda Childs, after last year’s return of Einstein on the
Beach at Berliner Festspiele.
The Korea National Contemporary Dance Company (KNCDC) brings to Berlin the German
premiere of Bul-ssang, a groundbreaking work from 2009 by Ahn Aesoon, a leading figure of
South Korean dance, now the artistic director of the company. Bul-ssang will be presented at
the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz.
The Barcelona based artist group La Veronal led by young talent Marcos Morau, returns to
Schaubühne with a German premiere of its new work Voronia. This new creation is coproduced by Tanz im August.
Tickets and further information are available as of now – at www.tanzimaugust.de or the
HAU2 box office:
Hallesches Ufer 32, 10963 Berlin
Monday to Saturday from 3 p.m. until one hour before the scheduled performance,
on days with no performance from 3 to 7 p.m.
Closed on Sundays and public holidays.
Tel. +49 (0)30.259004 -27
The venues for Tanz im August 2015 are: Akademie der Künste (Hanseatenweg), HAU
Hebbel am Ufer, Haus der Berliner Festspiele, RadialsystemV, Schaubühne am Lehniner
Platz, Sophiensaele, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz.
Save the date! Press conference: Virve Sutinen introduces the festival’s complete
programme on 2 June.
Further information:
John Adams – Lucinda Childs – Frank O. Gehry: Available Light
Venue: Haus der Berliner Festspiele
13., 14., 15. August, 8 p.m.
European premiere in cooperation with Sommerfestival Kampnagel, Hamburg
After seeing Available Light in 1983, Anna Kisselgoff, dance critic for The New York Times,
called it ‘a work of blazing formal beauty’. In Kisselgoff’s eyes, the collaboration between
chorographer Lucinda Childs, architect Frank O. Gehry, and composer John Adams took
Childs’ career to a new level, two decades after she first started out at the Judson Dance
Theater. In Available Light the austere mathematical minimalism with which Childs permuted,
repeated, and varied the concentrated movement phrases was combined with a new
richness, unknown in previous works. Also ground-breaking in 1983 was the style of
presentation. The work was commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los
Angeles to mark the opening of its new exhibition space in a former warehouse, Temporary
Contemporary. The introduction of choreography to an exhibition space, today quite
common, was a radical gesture at the time. Available Light has now been reconstructed for a
world tour and will be performed for the first time in Germany. After the premiere in Los
Angeles in June, Available Light will open the Kampnagel Sommerfestival in Hamburg and
shortly after it, Tanz im August.
Korea National Contemporary Dance Company / Ahn Aesoon: Bul-ssang
Venue: Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz
28., 29. August, 9 p.m.*
German premiere
In cooperation with Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz.
In Bul-ssang the Korea National Contemporary Dance Company (KNCDC) brings on stage a
complex, contemporary world of its artistic director, choreographer Ahn Aesoon. The title,
Bulssang, is Korean word for pity, but it also refers to a Buddhist statue. Ahn portrays the
multi-cultural and multi-faceted reality between East and West, between past and present as
a highly contemporary mixture of symbols, signs and movement. Here, she combines her
contemporary choreographic thinking with Korean traditional dance aesthetics, but she has
also researched different movement styles such as Kathak, martial arts, traditional Korean
Jindo Drum Dance or K-pop to create a truly contemporary movement vocabulary. The
dancers embody this brilliantly moving with ease from urban dance to post-modern, blending
acrobatic with everyday movement. The colorful stage design of Buddhist statues, plastic
plates, and masks is an installation by Korean Pop/visual artist Choi Jeonghwa, and the
company is joined by DJ Soulscape live on stage. As a result, ‘Bul-ssang’ is a visually rich
blend of the sacred and profane, examining the contradictions and paradoxes in the mids of
Korea's rapid modernization. The combination of dance, image, and sound illustrates the
relentless transformation of contemporary existence and the search for identity, as
envisioned by Ahn, who created this ground-breaking work in 2009. Ahn has been a leading
figure of South Korean dance for several decades, after establishing her own company in
1985. She took over the artistic directorship of the Korea National Contemporary Dance
Company in 2013, just three years after its founding.
La Veronal: Voronia
Venue: Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz
27., 28., 29. August, 7 p.m*
German premiere
In cooperation with Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz.
In search of the concept of evil, La Veronal have once again chosen a geographical location
as the springboard for their artistic explorations: the deepest caverns in the world, the
Krubera-Voronia cave in Georgia, which La Veronal posits as an allegory of Dantean hell, a
place of evil. The Barcelona based artist group led by Marcos Morau last performed at Tanz
im August in 2014 with their surreal, philosophical thriller Siena. Their latest work, Voronia is
a co-production with Tanz im August. Dance, text, and image interlock to form a labyrinthine
drama revolving around a riddle that continually evades decryption. Voronia resembles an
episodic drama, a descending movement of shifting images.
*Combine your visit of La Veronal and the Korea National Contemporary Dance Company
on August 28 and 29 with a free of charge bus transfer inbetween the venues. Seats limited.
Press contact:
Hendrik von Boxberg
Tanz im August
T + 49 30 58901296
M + 49 177 7379207
[email protected], [email protected]
www.tanzimaugust.de
Tanz im August is presented by HAU Hebbel am Ufer.
The festival is supported by The Governing Mayor of Berlin – Senate Chancellery – Cultural Affairs, Capital Cultural Fund Berlin, Aventis Foundation.