Archivi tag: she she pop

digital heritage

50 Grades of Shame by SHE SHE POP. A picture album inspired by Wedekind’s spring awakening
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After its premiere last March in Munich, She She Pop are now showing a new version of their picture album inspired by Wedekind’s Spring Awakening and E.L. James’ erotic novel 50 Shades of Grey with older, younger and very young guests from the Berlin dance, performance and theatre scene. Based on Wedekind’s utopian models of education, the stage here serves as an educational institution and She She Pop and their guests form a faculty within it.

PH DORO TUCH

On two large panels onto which cross-fade images are projected, the different actors – old and young, children, women and men – are staged in a series of encounters. Through monstrous or simple presentations, and constantly shifting poses, different generations and genders, real bodies and fantastic figments expose. The experienced elderly stand next to innocent youth, or vice versa: no position is secure and nobody has reliable knowledge.

The experience of sex is constantly changing – it is historical, political, biographical, and conditioned by specific contexts. Even the most private declarations about desire, reproduction, gender specificity, and so on, are ideologies; they are smoke and mirrors, banal, dull or fictitious. Imparting knowledge is a form of penetration, just one kind of lewd sex game among many. Yet despite all these doubt and unease, sex education is still necessary. What is sex? What makes a woman a woman? What makes a man a man? What does a child know? The pan-generational teachers in 50 Grades of Shame rises to this challenge. The performers use their bodies and their accumulated physical shame as visual material.

50 Grades of Shame is concerned with creating, viewing, modifying and reinterpreting imagery: images in the form of ideals and norms, images of collective and individual desire, images as concrete examples, and as pornography, caricature and subversive collage. Together with their guests, She She Pop’s performers are working on a new theatrical format. The aim is to abandon the individual limits of the body, age, gender, shame and hard-won sexual identity in order to merge into new, collective image of bodies, live on camera. Each and every one of us, whether old or young, is naive despite all our experience, and has to teach others. Each and every one of us can imitate, parody and penetrate the other. The result is an ars erotica for the stage – a fusion of modern sex-education picture book and late medieval dance of death.

Credits

Concept: She She Pop
By and with: Gundars Abolinš, Sebastian Bark, Daniel Belasco Rogers, Knut Berger, Lilli Biedermann, Jean Chaize, Anna Drexler, Jonas Maria Droste, Johanna Freiburg, Fanni Halmburger, Walter Hess, Christian Löber, Lisa Lucassen, Fee Aviv Marschall, Mieke Matzke, Ilia Papatheodorou, Florian Schäfer, Susanne Scholl, Berit Stumpf, Zelal Yesilyurt.

Video: Benjamin Krieg. Sets: Sandra Fox. Costumes: Lea Søvsø. Music: Santiago Blaum. Artistic advice: Ruschka Steininger. Dramaturgy: Tarun Kade. Sounddesign: Manuel Horstmann. Lights:Michael Lentner. Technical Tour Support: Florian Fischer, Sven Nichterlein. Video Assistance: Phillip Hohenwarter. Surtitles: Anna Kasten (KITA). Production/PR: ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro. Freelance Communication Support: Tina Ebert. Financial Administration: Aminata Oelßner. Company Management: Elke Weber.

A production by She She Pop and Münchner Kammerspiele in co-production with HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, FFT Düsseldorf, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt a.M. and Kyoto Experiment.

premiere, March 2016, Kammerspiele, München

Funded by the Berlin Senate Chancellery for Cultural Affairs and supported within the framework of the Alliance of International Production Houses by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

Trailer

She She Pop: 50 Grades of Shame (Trailer) from She She Pop on Vimeo.

DIGITAL PERFORMANCE, FOCUS

THE RITE OF SPRING as performed by She She Pop and their mothers. Roma, Short Theatre Festival 4 sept
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 Foto: Doro Tuch

Together with their own mothers, She She Pop are staging their version of The Rite Of Spring based on Igor Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre du Printemps“. The performance focuses on the subject of female sacrifice in the family and in society. In the piece, She She Pop consciously superimpose the religious sphere of ritual human sacrifice from “Le Sacre du Printemps” with the ethical question of personal self-denial between women and men, as well as between mothers and daughters. This superimposition immediately generates reluctance: to sacrifice oneself as a woman for others is today no more than one item on an embarrassingly outdated normative agenda. The overriding importance of self-empowerment and personal freedom has placed an obscure light on all acts of sacrifice and devotion. The archaic rite of spring however stands for the certainty that every community demands sacrifices, is even only really created and confirmed by collective sacrifice.
By superimposing these two spheres, She She Pop touches on a subject that silently stands between the generations. As in Stravinsky’s original piece, The Rite Of Spring unfolds as a ritual: the encounter between She She Pop, their mothers and the audience will be staged in full ceremony. However, unlike the community assembled by Stravinsky to celebrate the spring sacrifice, She She Pop and the mothers are by no means agreed about the procedure, quite the contrary. Doubts began surfacing right at the start. But so did the resolution to attempt this together.

Credits

Concept: She She Pop.
By and with: Cornelia and Sebastian Bark, Heike and Johanna Freiburg, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Irene and Ilia Papatheodorou, Heidi and Berit Stumpf, Nina Tecklenburg.
Video: Benjamin Krieg & She She Pop.
Set: Sandra Fox & She She Pop.
Costumes: Lea Søvsø.
Musical Collaboration: Damian Rebgetz.
Choreographic Collaboration: Jill Emerson.
Assistant and Dramaturgical Collaboration: Veronika Steininger.
Light Design and Technical Direction: Sven Nichterlein.
Sound: Florian Fischer.
Video Assistant: Anna Zett.
Trainee: Mariana Senne dos Santos.
Production/PR: ehrliche arbeit- freies Kulturbüro.
Company Management: Elke Weber.

A She She Pop Production.

In Co-Production with HAU Hebbel am Ufer, FFT Düsseldorf, Mousonturm Frankfurt, Kaserne Basel, brut Vienna, German Language Theater Festival of Prague/Archa Theater Prag, Kyoto Experiment and Théâtre de la Ville/Festival d’Automne à Paris.

Residency funded by Art Center Kyoto, Kyoto Experiment and the Goethe Institute.

Funded by the City of Berlin  – Department for Cultural Affairs and the Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin.

premiere, April 2014, HAU, Berlin

more dates:

  • April 2014, HAU, Berlin
  • April 2014, Mousonturm, Frankfurt on the Main
  • June 2014, HAU, Berlin
  • June 2014, Kaserne, Basel, Switzerland
  • September 2014, Théâtre Vidy, Lausanne, Switzerland
  • October 2014, Kyoto Experiment, Kyoto, Japan
  • October 2014, Théâtre de la Ville, Festival d’Automne, Paris, France
  • November 2014, Kammertheater, Stuttgart
  • November 2014, Archa Theater, Prague, Czech Republic
  • December 2014, brut, Vienna, Austria
  • January 2015, Kampnagel, Hamburg
  • March 2015, HAU 1, Berlin
  • April 2015, FFT, Düsseldorf
  • June 2015, The Israel Festival Kindly supported by Goethe-Institut, Israel., Jerusalem, Israel
  • June 2015, Festival delle Colline Torinesi Kindly supported by: Goethe-Institut Torino, The Federal Foreign Office (Germany)., Torino, Italy
  • September 2015, Festival Short Theatre Supported by the NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ Guest Performance Fund for Dance, which is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and the Departments of Culture and Arts of the German federal state., Rom

Trailer

Press

DIGITAL PERFORMANCE

Testament: lo strepitoso spettacolo del collettivo femminile tedesco SHE SHE POP
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Lo spettacolo delle SHE SHE POP  dal titolo TESTAMENT Preparativi tardivi per una nuova generazione ispirati a Re Lear arriva al Festival delle Colline torinesi ed è sold out. In Italia avevano fatto un’importante comparsa al Festival di Santarcangelo di alcuni anni fa e tutta la critica italiana non esitò a definirle geniali ed eccentriche.

Schubladen era il titolo e significa cassetti riempiti di cose che riportano al passato – libri, appunti, fotografie, vinili, musicassette- ; sono quelle di tre coppie di donne tedesche provenienti dalla ex DDR (Germania dell’Est) e dalla BRD (Germania Ovest) che si confrontano sulla memoria e sull’identità prima e dopo la caduta del muro di Berlino dai due diversi fronti della storia.

Sono le She She POP ovvero Performance-Kollektiv come amano definirsi. Nate e cresciute in una piccola città di provincia Giessen dall’inizio degli anni Novanta mettono in piedi un collettivo al femminile che condivide un lavoro artistico comune senza gerarchie ma anche senza richiamarsi a forme e modalità già sperimentate negli anni Settanta da gruppi come il Living.

sheshepop_testament

Questo lavoro non recentissimo, parte da una delle tragedie più famose di Shakespeare ovvero Re Lear, o meglio all’idea che può riportarci all’attualità del testo elisabettiano: l’eredità che il sovrano vuole concedere da vivo alle tre figlie. Il testo c’è, è presente in forma di “gobbo” della televisione che viene letto mentre il presentatore finge di ripeterlo a memoria; il testo è il fondamento di tutto, non la trama che si inerpica tra violenza e potere come scrive Agostino Lombardo nella prefazione all’edizione Garzanti, ma l’implicito problema generazionale, il rapporto padre e figlio. Da qui partono le She She Pop che hanno coinvolto i loro padri reali spingendoli in scena senza recitare veramente ma mettendoli in una condizione di assoluta realtà e naturalezza. Le eredità di oggi sono quelle di corpi di anziani da mantenere, sorvegliare, curare, pulire, gestire.

Così il passaggio del testimone dal potere del padre a quello delle figlie diventa una continua negoziazioni sugli spazi da condividere una volta che il padre non sia più autonomo nella sua quotidianità, sui reciproci “cassetti” di ricordi, fatti di ingombranti libri e memorie da conservare. Impossibile descrivere la bravura degli anziani genitori colti nella loro nudità di vita in scena, in soccorso dei loro pochi beni che rimangono, a cui si attaccano con pietosa e commuovente forza. Passata l’epoca dei contrasti generazionali rimane solo la difficile convivenza che solo il rispetto reciproco e l’affetto permettono di mitigare. Il passaggio di vestiti, giacche, scarpe, corone di carta rappresenta un momento davvero commuovente, un rito dove “ripeness is all” la maturità è tutto. La tecnologia ci mostra primi piani dei volti dei tre anziani uomini “prima sovrani” poi solo “coinquilini” ed è solo  uno dei tanti mascheramenti che le She She pop mettono in campo.

Uno spettacolo ricco di possibilità di lettura che cerca di rispettare i 5 atti del Re Lear mentre ne tradisce continuamente la forma, mettendo canzonette e bare in scena, ma anche balletti pop che raccontano tutto in modo assolutamente sopra le righe, la fragilità dell’uomo.