Performances

Shibari Express in Stockholm

After a full week of workshops and rehearsals at the NYXXX collective at Rökridån, Frances and I had worked on a couple of new performance ideas with ropes and with masks. This is a slightly new enterprise I started in recent performances. Exploring the theatricality using latex masks. There is a distinct perception of the material and the combination with domestic settings and quotidian actions, which I think are worth investigating. The way we used them, they generated a sort of anthropomorphic quality in the movement and the reading of animal relationships. It was not about animal play though. They are also an interesting tool to generate choreography from a different mode of body awarness, because of the slight  deprivation of either the eye sight, or the hearing ability. How do we move, dance if these primary senses for orientation are reduced? How do we eat, bike, wait and so on.

Two weeks ago I taught a workshop at Meg Stuarts/Damaged Goods new production ‘Until Our Hearts Stop’, dealing with topics around intimicy. After a three hour warm up, they got the masks to improvise, and most dancers were in one or the other way flashed or inspired. Mostly I think they experienced a certain freedom and strangeness in motoric impulses. Allowing a strange way to move and a different sense for timing. Something shifts  when  the cat, pig or the dog become personalities. When they encounter or make human decisions. We will continue this research! Here are a couple sweet moments from the performance.

Viennese Rope Festival 2015

Some time last year Flora invited us to the Viennese Rope Festival. Reading the program, I absolutely wanted to meet Kamijoo Saki. She is a most interesting rope master, owner of a bar by Osaka, guitarist and singer of a rock band. She is considered one of the fastest riggers (truly fast! :) and she gave me most precious insights to her way of using ropes, and  some secret tricks for performance.

Schnucki das Rennpferd and I performed a new version of SHIBARI EXPRESS on Saturday night. For these 30 minutes we tried an unconventional progression in the air, with an super high suspension point.  Discussing late into the nights how to integrate more circus-like suspensions into a theatrical setting and still finding a sensual connexion.. We ended up a cat tying dog :)

The festival a slightly challenging frame, since the audience was rather traditional (even though the organisers are not!). Which yea, in bondage terms still means strong guys tying girls!
Except there was this really sympathetic group from Düsseldorf who came across as frankly open :) , and of course the experimental group Vienna Thermostat, and also Yoroi Nicolas with his partner I much enjoyed watching.

Another favourite performance was Barkas’ and Manuela’s. Both being simply good performers, and super sweet in how they made a sort of tango-seduction story around advanced and playful Shibari, I love seeing how clear Barkas guides his ropes.

We also did two days of Kamijoo Saki’s workshops. One was meant to be a masters class with focus on ‘Japanese Torture Bondage’, a rather different approach than Yoga and Shibari.
Together with Joy, her translator, and a Japanese ‘model’, they made an extremely charming team! She talked a lot about the historical reasons for this rough (especially from the outside) idea of bondage, which for her is still the real Shibari, in contrast to a sort of wellness approach prevalent in Europe.
(Yes! I am reconsidering my ‘general care approach’ at the moment, but certainly keep valuing it for the right moments! ) Unfortunately the masters class was quiet poorly attended, and non of the other Viennese masters were there, and I keep wondering why?

Other than that I thought a spontaneous self-suspension workshop on Saturday. A funny and mixed crowed of people. Some of them kept tying themselves all afternoon. Especially this younger guy, which was touching, since normally its still more a woman thing. But yea, things are changing ;) !

Back to Berlin with a stack of new input to experiment and digest. Here are some moments, and more photos to come…

Premier: Pasolini – Große Vögel kleine Vögel

Große Vögel Kleine Vögel – das Helmi
Große Vögel Kleine Vögel – das Helmi

Das Helmi & Cora Frost

Premiere: 13. Februar 2015 – 8 pm
14 – 15 / 20 – 22 Februar – 8 pm

More information: Ballhaus Ost

Wir wollen. Abbruchlandschaften und poetische Ruinen, die Dialektik der Vorstadt, den dunklen Ausdruck der Gesichter und das verrückte „Weiter! Immer Weiter!“  Intensive Puppen, gesungene Landschaften, getanzte Erleuchtungen, tanzende Stricher und Spatzenbanden, Kommunisten und trotzige Perversionen, durch Hingabe und Erleuchtung, zwischen Narr und Heiligem.

Wir wollen: Endlich die leeren Straßen rings um Rom, das geheimnisvolle Niemandsland zwischen Märchen, Fabel, Surrealismus, Slapstick, marxistischer Allegorie und christlichem Lehrstück betreten, in dem Pasolinis Film Große Vögel, kleine Vögel spielt. Diese wunderbaren Bilder werden helmisiert, sie werden zum einen in die Gegenwart geholt, zugleich wird aber die Erhabenheit und Strenge des Vorbildes gewahrt.

Wir wollen als Narren in dem Land umherziehen, in dem Vögel von der Ideologie berichten, die schönen Prostituierten in Kornfeldern sitzen, wo Laien und Schauspieler gleichberechtigt agieren und in dem die magische Ennio-Morricone-Musik eine Atmosphäre zwischen elektrischer Kirchenmusik und italienischer Tarantella beschwört. Inspiriert von unserer kongenialen Partnerin und legendären Papstdarstellerin Cora Frost, die seit langem schon treue Weggefährtin ist.

Auf unserer Suche nach Gott sind wir bereits in Eco´s Der Name der Rose auf Franz von Assisi gestoßen; jetzt folgen wir den vibrierenden Bildern des revolutionären italienischen Kinos der 60er Jahre. Die Figuren von Toto und Ninetto erinnern uns ein wenig an Dostojewskis Idioten in ihrer Mischung aus Wahnsinn und Unschuld. Pasolinis aggressive klassenkämpferische Haltung, die sich in absurder Expressivität ausdrückt, bietet eine weitere interessante Facette für unsere Suche nach Erfahrung, Schmerz und Spiritualität. Dabei wollen wir rausgehen in die Hinterhöfe, ins Niemandsland, nach Marzahn und mit unseren sprechenden Vögeln den Menschen als existentiellen Individuen auf der Reise ihres Lebens begegnen.

VON UND MIT CORA FROST / SOLENE GARNIER / JULIA GRÄFNER / FELIX LOYCKE / FLORIAN LOYCKE / BRIAN MORROW / FRANZ ROGOWSKI / DASNIYA SOMMER / EMIR TEBATEBAI // BURKART ELLINGHAUS / JENNY DECHENE / CECA STANIC / EHRLICHE ARBEIT – FREIES KULTURBÜRO

EINE PRODUKTION VON DAS HELMI IN KOOPERATION MIT DEM BALLHAUS OST
GEFÖRDERT DURCH DEN HAUPTSTADTKULTURFONDS

Remounting ‘Untangle’

Angela and Jared are performing ‘Soon you are Theirs’
(a retrospective) in Luzern. As part of this there will be concert performance with music by Evje and Bondage by Dasniya.
When: 31.1.2015,7 pm Große & Mittlere Halle
at Südpol, Luzern

Two evenings to rehears Untangle with Angela Schubot, Jared Gradinger, and the band Evje Luxurious but also necessary after nine month break. “It feels familiar and yet alien,” Angela says, to hand herselfs over and to twin fly for about half an hour. Jared loves how the show seems to run by it self, no preperation, doing nothing, just baring and enjoying to space out.

Photos & light: Andreas Harder

Rehearsing ‘Uccelacci Uccelini’

With das Helmi I am currently working on Pasolini’s ‘Uccelacci Uccelini’ (Große Vögel Kleine Vögel). Nine people, a hybrid team of singers, musicians, dancers, actors, directors extreme performers and personalities! Obsessively watching his movies, most inspiring for all of us. Since yes, it contains all the massive topics at once. Religion, communism, sexualitly …challenging and forcing us to realistically limit our actionfield to the eight week research. Half way through in January Heinz joined rehearsal. An old companion of Cora Frost, the last real communist in Berlin she says,  reading to us from the Manifest and passionately discussing with us.

Digging deeper into Pasolinis cosmos our roles start to define. There is for example Franz Rogowski who turns out to be our ‘Paso’. Just as in the 60’s he takes camera and mike to interview people in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. At the gym, in the street or my bondage class, asking questions about the sexual equality, internet love or camera surveillance systems in the Berlin subway. Funny and exciting, it will be part of the show!