Bodily Me – Bodily Us
Pau Aran/ Helge Letonja with the Ensemble Of Curious Nature
“Do not ask me who I am, and do not tell me I must remain the same.”
(Michel Foucault)
Who has never experienced tension between self-perception and the social gaze? Feeling as If in the “wrong body” becomes, as a shared human experience, the starting point for artistic inquiry. The friction between the perceived body and social images of the body—which often causes suffering—becomes here a spark of creativity and a search for healing.
Following the production Skin Deep by Helge Letonja and Tù Hoang, OCN deepens its exploration of bodily experience. Here, the immediate experiences and physical memories of one’s own body are set against social judgments and attributions that often restrict and divide. The “self” as an individual in confrontation with the group, with society—a pair of opposites, a field of tension, two entities that influence one another, one constantly in danger of losing itself in the other. Bodily me—bodily us. How do we relate to traditional views of the world and humanity?
Choreographer Pau Aran, a longtime dancer with Pina Bausch, and Helge Letonja, the ensemble’s artistic director, explore the body’s self-perception through dance with the company Of Curious Nature. The two choreographers are united by the conviction that dance can reveal how much changeability and movement the self should be allowed, and how the self can find a home within a community.
Pau Aran uses the adaptability of plants to light, climate, and environment as a metaphor for this artistic exploration. He compares the self to the ecosystem of which it is a part: diverse, changeable, influenced by external stimuli, and internally engaged in ongoing negotiations between desire, environment, and self-perception.
Helge Letonja views the body as a vessel and examines forms of expression and action in movement and how they solidify: evolution, social experience, traditional images, and the transmission from generation to generation. To avoid personal or external fixations, he works with the dancers to find a movement language connected to the inner self, understanding relationships with other bodies as resonances or dissonances.
OCN creates space between nature and culture and, through dance, opens pathways to an appreciation of every energetic self.
Choreography: Pau Aran, Helge Letonja | Choreographic Assistance, Training Direction: Albert | Dance: Lys Cabral, Wan-Yun Chen, Jed Nagales, Agathe Mas, Panna Poszony, Tiago Reis, Daniel Sabia, Pere Sansaloni Servera, David Schmidt, Carolina Verra | Lighting Design: Carlos Heydt | Costume: Isabel Peña | Photos: Marianne Menke
Technical Direction: Nathaniel Johnson | Dramaturgical Support: Anke Euler | Production Management: Moritz Petri | Film & Media: Médoune Seck | Management: Kerstin Witges
A production by TanzRAUM Nord in co-production with steptext dance project. Funded by the Fonds Darstellende Künste with resources from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, by the Senator for Culture of Bremen, and by the Waldemar Koch Foundation, Bremen.