Berst

2001, 6 dancers, 70min, 12x12

horeography: Christoph Winkler Dance: Lydia Klement, Anja Hempel, Kazue Ikeda, Miriam Kohler, Heini Nukari, Peggy Ziehr Music: Ulf Langheinrich, Panacea, Fennesz, The Doors Production: Christoph Winkler Funded by the Senatsverwaltung für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur.

"Berst" deals with a paradox: dancers always act on stage as thinking and feeling personas. Their actions are always actions onto themselves as they are themselves the embodiment of their art. And yet while dancing, the dancer as subject is perpetually second to the dancer as she who is dancing, because dancing bodies are anonymous, they are never a person, they are, as Mallarmé writes, "always only emblem, never somebody…”. "Berst" tries to create transitions. It demands "confessions" from its performers so as to free them from anonymity. Speech and dance are closely related but do not mingle. But in the texts’ wake, an explosive dance comes into being, a dance whose ephemeral occurrence is marked or cartographed by intellectual thinking. This allows for the discovery of the reserves and potential of feelings and formulates the question: how can you dance, therefore live. Feelings once again prove to be an ephemeral phenomena, and "Berst" again loses its dancers to the dance.