FRE!HEIT
Abstract
A solo from David Brandstätter about freedom.
Performance and installation
Intention Note
What is freedom? And what is freedom demanding from us? Is freedom even a task?
Inspired by a selection of moments, dialogues and personnal experience, David Brandstätter portrays his vision of freedom, in a continuing dialog between thoughts, space and body. Balancing, shifting between movement, texts, sound and visual installation, he describes being free as a path of constant questioning, of critical negotiations with oneself, and of liberating ones imagination.
MAGAZINE DANSER
“The performance gives a feeling of pure risk, abstract, conceptual. It takes a long time, with a lot of patience, and allows to feel, through kinesthetic empathy, the tensions of the body, actually very active, that are involving the body of the dancer, negotiating one step, leaning on all fours, standing up, coming to a standstill.”
Artistic statement
I am interested in the contradictions that come to light when one compares different perspectives, contexts or levels of impact of the word freedom: inner and outer, philosophical, spiritual, personal and social, felt and lived freedoms, but also freedom as an advertising promise and as an ideological construct.
My explorations of freedom reveal to me the complexity of our world, the limits of our language. Freedom requires us to be aware of the forces at work, including our own. It helps us to critically confront ideology and to recognise other options instead of A or B. However, promises and ideas of freedom can also subjugate, paralyse, divide, lead to wars, self-destruction and addiction. One time freedom does something to us and sometimes we do something out of it. Exploring and pursuing our own freedom is a balancing act for me.
So I do just that. I balance on porcelain, cups that I move around the room at the same time. They form landscapes, disintegrate in happy disorder, reform into strict patterns. The suggestions that arise from these different constellations correspond with the text, which itself takes place on several levels. Spoken, projected and from the tape. The tension is held by the text and the body. It is subjected to the compulsion to never touch the floor. A game. Freedom becomes a negotiation with one's own endurance. But also a homage to ordering and classifying and moving on. Behind the question of freedom is also the question of what we want to do with our lives.
For me, working on themes like freedom and courage is a key to hope, my basis for a creative engagement with the fragility of our present.
Press
Team
PROJECT, CHOREOGRAPHY David Brandstätter | DRAMATURGIC ADVICE Malgven Gerbes, Howard Katz | TEXTS David Brandstätter in dialogue with Hatto Fischer, David Williams, Alexandros Mistriotis, Gabriele Wittman, Katja Kettner, Martin Clausen | NARRATOR Alexandros Mistriotis | MUSIC David Brandstätter, Ruth Wiesenfeld | LIGHTS Michael Kunitsch, Thomas Achtner | PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT Katja Kettner | PRESS Kathrin Schäfer | TOURING Alix Pellet, Clémence Rey | PRODUCTION s h i f t s - art in movement | COPRODUCTION fabrik Potsdam: Artists-in-residence | RESIDENCES Collectif Danse Rennes Métropole, Tanztendenz Munich, Giesinger Banhof Munich | SPONSOR Kahla Porzellan | WITH THE SUPPORT OF Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V., BLZT Performing Art Fonds, Kulturreferat München
Performances
Muffatwerk Munich | Gdansk Dance Festival | Tanzhaus NRW Düsseldorf | Festival Made in Postdam | Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis.
