sinnestaumel, is the the second production in the frame of the long-term working cycle “Early Music & Contemporary Dance” laborgras started in 2020 and is taking place within the series “Tetra Bach – Four Positions on Bach” initiated by Folkert Uhde Konzertdesign.

This time the setting is the atmospherically rich space of the St. Elisabeth Church. laborgras encounters two proven specialists in historical performance practice – Midori Seiler on the violin and Christian Rieger on the harpsichord. Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Six Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord, BWV 1014-1019” prepare the ground and are the driving kinetic force of this encounter. Bach’s artful intertwining of three equal voices produce constantly emerging and varying forms in real time, which demand great analytical differentiation as well as playful artistry from the interpreters.

Accepting this challenge of the music, the dancers put their physicality in to an interplay with each other and with the evocative lines of the music. At the same time they follow the energy of the movement in Bach’s sonatas harmoniously or in contradiction, changing their roles and relationships to each other and the musicians, who in turn anticipate, accompany or deliberately contradict the dancers. Compositional lines unfold and merge again, they proceed parallel to each other or build a contrapuntal tension with each other: Along the musical richness of Bach’s sonatas, a continuum of constantly changing associations and appearances emerge, something continually nascent, not narrative, but in vital recognition, irritating and fascinating at the same time.

The spatial dimensions, the performers and the musical voices composed by Bach –are the three artfully entwining “voices” of sinnestaumel: In front of the audience eyes and ears they merge into an exciting dance performance, opening up associative spaces in endless, vortex like variations, suggesting moods and characters and oscillating between hope, longing, melancholy, joie de vivre and reverie. The ongoing shifts between being and non-being are in constant becoming. In the atmospherically rich room of St. Elisabeth’s Church the audience is invited to experience how lyricism and drama, humor and grotesque mingle to shine a light on humanity’s poetical power through dance and music.

Concept & Artistic Direction: laborgras
Artistic Collaboration: Barbara Weigel
Choreography: laborgras in collaboration with the dancers:
Abraham Iglesias Rodriguez & Tian Gao
Performance: Abraham Iglesias Rodriguez, Tian Gao, Renate Graziadei
Violin: Midori Seiler
Harpsichord: Christian Rieger
Dramaturgy: Arthur Stäldi
Costume Design: Claudia Janitschek
Technical Direction & Lighting Design: Emma Juliard
Production: Inge Zysk & Raquel Moreira
Press and Public Relation: k3 berlin – Kontor für Kultur und Kommunikation
Photo: Phil Dera, Layout: Mia Sedding

Music: Johann Sebastian Bach –Six Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord, BWV 1014-1019, from this the sonatas BWV 1014, 1017 & 1019