DAS Choreography Alumni Interview Project

The first interview was held by Nathalie van Regenmortel in 2020

Tell me a bit about yourself and your professional background in the performing arts

I’ve been working in the field of dance and choreography field since a long time now. Almost 26-27 years. The lust for movement has been always in the center of my life. As a child, I was always searching for a way of ‘new’ movement like Ice-skating, roller-skating, it was always an overwhelming capacity of exploration.

Then I did a more old-fashioned kind of dance education. It was a daily modern dance and ballet training but also contact improvisation, improvisation, Bartenieff fundamentals and other classes.

Early, it was clear to me that I did not want to express myself this way on stage. Then, I discovered Butoh. It was a channel for me, to see there is something completely different to what I have experienced so far. For me, it was an entry into an unknown field, into how you could find a new and unexplored way of physical expression.

After that I found my interest in the intersection of dance with other disciplines like fine art, photography etc. Working for a long time together with artist VA Wölfl and his company ‘Neuer Tanz’ shaped my focus in this interest. Later on this interest was continued in the collaboration with Mariola Groener. She’s a visual artist and we’ve been friends since we were teenagers. Then, we somehow naturally created a company. The core of our interests is the intersection of fine art and choreography. This is the driving force of our collaboration. We have been doing this since 20 years. The collaboration is very much based on our friendship. We started in a very playful way exploring performance art and ways of expressing ourselves. This playground was more and more transformed into a professional way of working together.

After being in this collaboration for so long, I felt a bit stuck, which was a strong motivation of doing the programme in Amsterdam. Dealing with a lot of habits. I had a strong wish of questioning these habits and finding a new form of thinking about my work. Stepping away from this collaboration and finding an outer perspective. I think that was my way of finding to Amsterdam.

What drew you to DAS Choreography specifically?

Mainly through colleagues from Berlin. Christina Ciupke for instance, a friend of mine. She told me a lot about the programme. That was a way of how I got to know the programme?

What was your experience with the programme itself?

As it’s a non-residential programme it was a perfect way of combining it with my living and working in Berlin. Doing what I’m doing in Berlin, producing and researching dance and choreography. Being able to step out of this process, going to Amsterdam, and getting a new perspective on my ways of working. It was a fantastic experience apart from the fact that I felt completely overwhelmed at the beginning concerning the demanding and intensive feedback character of the programme. Although it was perfect for me the non-residential aspect of the programme sometimes also caused problems, as we had to pack so much things in those three weeks. It was intense, and wow, so important, full of experience and inspiring! It was really difficult to come back home and holding on to that impact and continuing the concentration of the seminars. And then trying to hold on to it! A constant hunt for the same experience. It was an ongoing subject.

Can you tell me about the creative process of your DAS Choreography master presentation?

The final presentation… I have really good memories. I had the feeling, it was expressing my research I was aiming for, which was at that moment about the question of how text, body and physicality are interfering to each other. I was focusing on the diaries of Franz Kafka, and using excerpts from those diaries, as a kind of internal, physical information which created a kind of physical dialogue Text and the physical expression as an ongoing relation and dialogue. From that starting point, it was a travel through those years, I found a channel for having a good outcome for this research. It made me happy I could transform the research into a performative structure. In the beginning I always thought there was a conflict between research on the one side, and what could be the possibility in framing it into a theatrical / performative format. Is there any sense in that? Why should I bring it on stage? Why shouldn’t it only be a research field? But I was so happy I could have a way to do both. On the one side representing my research, and on the other hand opening a theatrical performative possibility.

It was fantastically supported by Jeroen and Sher (Sher Doruff was one of the two tutors at the time), who both have a great capacity of guiding you through uncertainties, doubts, questions. Of course that was very supportive, transforming the research into its final form.

Do you feel like their guidance lingers throughout your professional career? The things you learnt at DAS, how have they benefitted you?

A crucial question! Throughout the last years, I’ve been asking myself this question. The echo’s, experience of the programme, sometimes I have the feeling they completely faded away and that I can’t grasp them anymore. But now I’m completely sure that they found a very good echo in forms of quality. In the last years I found myself very much in new forms of practices, added around my purely physical research. I started a writing and drawing practice – which started in Amsterdam – found different ways of dealing and listening with my work. I found additional practices to enlarge my work. In terms of quality, there is a strong echo. In the ways I listen or think about my work.

What works have you created since DAS Choreography?

A lot. I must say I was already in a good situation before I came to the master programme in terms of funding. I was always in a happy situation that Berlin’s senate of culture was funding my work, and is still doing that. Since one year we have the programme of basis funding, which is fantastic. We have a four-year guarantee of being funded. It is a different way of planning, creating, and forming networks which is really great.

About the pieces: Right after the programme, me and Mariola produced a trilogy titled “becoming undone”, a trilogy that was directly linked to the programme. It was a direct echo. The title “becoming undone” was the title of a book by a philosopher Elizabeth Grosz. We were reading it in the programme, suggested by Sher. Very inspiring, the title itself which was exactly the feeling of how I wanted to be in the programme: becoming undone; being curious about the body, its transformative potential. The first three works after doing the programme were totally an echo, and a direct dialogue with the programme.

What are you currently working on now? You just performed in the Tanzfabrik. What are your next plans?

Right now, we are in a long-term project that will expand for four years. We call it ‘performing archive’, so it kind of happened very naturally. As I told you, we have had this collaboration for 20 years now. Naturally you ask yourself about all the things you have done already. What could a performative archive be? That’s a very crucial question to us at the moment. Or: Can the body also be considered as a living archive? What other criteria’s of an archive? Can you see the body of work as an ongoing transformation machine that is always producing new things? Can you maybe go back and take a little detail out of the work, and using it as a new source of inspiration? So the archive theme currently keeps us very busy. This was also expressed in the last performance we did.

How are you dealing with alternative art forms because of corona?

Actually, this was really interesting. We didn’t search for new forms, it kind of came to us in a way as an invitation from the Goethe Institut. They asked us if we would like to do an online performance for people in Indonesia, basically people in the south pacific region. That was okay, why not? It was an experiment for both us and the Goethe Institut, as we both never did it. But yes, then we did, and it was a special performance created for an audience at the other end of the world. It was an interesting experience because we were asking ourselves: what is really the sense behind it all? With online performances, a lot of things are missing when it’s not live. You are not reaching the people, because it’s a screen, we all know it. After the performance we had a Q&A with the people: Did you feel it was live? Or did it give you the feeling that it was prerecorded? And a lot of people said ‘no’, and that it had a live character. How it was designed, the way the camera moved from the street into the studio, and then we came on stage. They felt like they were entering a theatre and being confronted with a live situation.

This is kind of how it was all starting. Soon after we got a new offer from a festival in Ljubljana, the Co-Festival. where we were supposed to perform in November. But then they asked us: could you imagine to do an online live performance for us? I really don’t want to perform only online in the future in front of a camera. It’s a horrible imagination, no human connection. It was interesting in a ghostly space, where no audience was physically present, but still you were imagining a ghostly setting, where people were not there but still looking at you from the other side of the world without seeing them in the space.

During a real live situation, in October, the audience had to wear a mask, which also had a big influence on the relation with the audience. I didn’t think about it so much. But when I entered the stage and saw the entire audience with all the masks: it was spooky. Normally you deal with the faces, and you get information, but the masks of course hide any expression. I had to really set myself free from any expectation and not to be able to read the faces. It was an issue to deal with for sure.

What other organisations have you been represented by?

In the last years we had a lucky position. We were invited to be part of a network called Lifelong Burning/Creative Crossroads It’s a network between dance and production houses in Europe. In Amsterdam, it’s the Veem House for Performance. Stuk in Belgium, in Berlin Uferstudios. You’re invited to travel for two years within this network. The Ljubljana thing also took place within the network. It was a really fantastic opportunity to get to know partners and networks. We went also to Montpellier/ICI-CCN for a residency. In Berlin we are represented by different theatre houses. Mostly Uferstudios, but it is always changing. We don’t have a fixed partner.

Can you tell me more about how you’re involved with the production process? The invisible labour you do as a creative producer?

I think it’s really funny because we are always confronted to do everything always by our selves. Mariola has qualities that I maybe miss. And the other way around. We always complete each other. But of course you cannot do everything by yourself. From time to time we are working with production assistants, of course we have people doing press work. But this is also instable, and not always working with the same number of people. Basically, I would say, from the very beginning of the process like writing applications, organisation, financial issues, we all do it by ourselves. Mostly it’s the two of us. It’s a full-time job. We are constantly working on our things.

The next production will be bigger, and we will need more people to support us. But this is constantly shifting, this year it was less important because of corona. It was basically Mariola and me doing everything, with the support of Tanzfabrik.

What is your message to aspiring DAS participants and people working in the field?

For me, the biggest benefit I got from this programme is that you have the possibility to throw your art in a professional network of discussion and reflection. You as an artist are very much in the centre, with fantastic feedback from outstanding eyes. But at the same time, you as an artist, have to step back, and bring the work of a peer or colleagues to the centre of attraction. I liked that very much. That the programme is a mixture where you can combine the art of choreography with social choreography. It is a very important thing: you have the ability to distance yourself from your work, and listening to others, at the same time listening to other people. This I think is so important. What I feel what happens in society is that we no longer have the capacity of listening to others. I have the feeling that it’s getting more and more important to listen to each other, and finding and giving space to our different realities we have. I think this is something I learnt in the programme: respecting different realities, especially artistic realities, and treating it as a value you have to deal with and are confronted with. This is something very important

The second Interview with Günther Wilhelm was held by Vasiliki Liakopoulou, intern at DAS Choreography in 2023