The Red House Centre for Culture and Debate "Andrey Nikolov" with the support of Goethe-Institut, Bulgaria presents:

Bach

dance performance by Isabelle Schad

Choreography: Isabelle Schad.
With the participation of Ivailo Dimitrov and Sasha Krustarska.
Music: Johann Sebastian Bach: The Weltempered Clavier, Second Part.

The project “ Bach” investigates the production of pleasurable and comical situations through a physical approach that means through body practice, movement and dance. Th e focus on physicality is important because it leaves behind emotional and strategical relations to representation; whereas one might produce pleasurable situations through the use of existing images or pre-conceived representations, Bach stress es the function of the body as an initial motor. The project is a research of physical activities that produce enjoyment, sensuality, pleasurable or humorous sensations and emotions. How can such activities look like and where can one initiate them in one's body?

The performance is based on the experience of the famous semiologist and writer Roland Barthes in his formulation of the relationship between the pleasure and lust experienced while reading a text and the pleasure experienced through the bod y while watching. Movements are these expressions that evolve physical experience transcending psychological motives of actions. What is the potential of kinesthetical imflaming of spectator’s emotions. This ground initiates the comparison between the body and the text, movement and grammar, the structural exploration of repetitions, interruptions, construction and breaking of expectations in producing a moment of surprise. The repetitions and interruptions lead the public through labyrinths of unfulfilled expectations and sublime moments of surprise and amazement.

"Bach" tries to get to the places where the clownesque and humourous appears, where one can surprise oneself/one's own body, where different ‘characters’ can get produced. In this work Isabelle Schad deals with the revelation of a multiplicity of bodies within one, including the appearance of unexpected or under-represented bodies and a fluid identity through the various faces one can assume: the possibility of transformation which signals the performativity of the self. Isabelle looks for body strategies that allow us to un-cover ‘other’, invisible bodies. These bodies are what she thinks can be our personal political bodies. How physicality and the other self are incarnated into a living body being at the same time author’s and spectator’s.

Isabelle Schad

Isabelle Schad studied classical dance from 1981-90 in Stuttgart. From 1990-96, she danced in various classical companies. Since then, she began creating her first own choreographies and extending her dance education through diverse workshops and scholarships. She was member of Ultima Vez / Wim Vandekeybus in Brussels and has worked a.o. with Olga Mesa, Angela Guerreiro, Felix Ruckert, Eszter Salamon. Since 1999, she has developed numerous own projects and dance performances in close collaboration with choreographers, performers, musicians and visual artists, which have been presented internationally in theatres, alternative places, galleries or festivals such as Tanz im August Berlin, Internationale Tanzwochen Wien or Dashanzi International Arts Festival Beijing. She received several nominations, prizes and scholarships. She has been co-conceiving the Good Work-Project and works currently together with Bruno Pocheron on the realisation of several projects of this series, a.o. with -Benoit Lachambre, Martin Belanger, Nuno Bizarro, Manuel Pelmus, Frederic Gies, Hanna Hedman.

Since 2003, she has been Artist-In-Residence at Podewil/TanzWerkstatt Berlin and at de Monty in Antwerp among others.

Recently, she has been working on a new project in collaboration with Germana Civera and Laurent Goldring, which premiered in the Festival of Montpellier Dance 2006 and on a solo project for and with Dalija Acin, that premiered at the Bitef Theatre in Belgrade. In 2007 she directed the mentoring project at Tanztage Berlin.

December 4 (Tuesday), 8.00 p.m. .
With the support of Goethe-Institute Bulgaria.
Duration: 45 min.
Entrance: 9/6 BGN

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