Andrea Peña & Vanessa Goodman DOPPELPROGRAMM: UNTITLED I & CONTAINER – Festival TANZ Bremen

UNTITLED I Eine feine, genaue Studie über Einzigartigkeit. the dance current // CONTAINER … erforscht Erbe, Kultur und Widerstandsfähigkeit. Vanessa Goodman

UNTITLED I
“A picture of a man. But the picture alone doesn’t do it, so he has to be active. And being active means wanting to get better. Faster. In whatever. So repeat! What the dancer François Richard performs in the solo UNTITLED I and Andrea Peña worked out with him is a tirelessness in what is actually senseless activity. This figure on stage constructs movement phrases out of swings, jumps, rolls, bends, and it runs; or is it itself built, guided, laid down and raised up? As if this muscular, fleshy being had no personality, was only a surface, the title calls it “Untitled”. The “I” behind it, says the choreographer, is an “I” for “I”. For it is, after all, a human being. “We speak of being human in our own way with this work”. TanzBremen

As a trained industrial designer, the Canadian choreografin Andrea Peña is interested in cross-genre work, in the relentlessly recurring movement sequences of everyday life shaped by objects, and in vulnerabilities. Colombian-born, she was first a dancer in major Canadian companies, founded her own label ANDREA PEÑA & ARTISTS in 2014, and has since won several awards.

CONTAINER
“She is never alone, but is the only person on stage. Canadian choreographer and dancer Vanessa Goodman’s solo CONTAINER unfolds the relationship of a person, a woman, to her inside and to an outside. It seems to be a struggle with expectations. It dances Andrea Peña, who stands there in her boots like a defensible Super Woman; she strides forwards, backwards, forwards, she is buffeted, bent, struggles through a matter that presses against her body, invisible. Frees herself – almost. Paths of light open up to her, crossroads too. But like a forbidding pointer, such a bar of light threatens her. It swings. Sharp scythe blade. A Yiddish good-humour song frames the solo: “Chiribim Chiribom”. Its cheerfulness gives the dancer the rest. The end. Beginning.” DanceBremen

VANESSA GOODMAN, artistic director of Vancouver-based company ACTION AT A DISTANCE DANCE SOCIETY, worked as a dancer after graduating. The 2013 Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award enabled her to produce her first full-length piece as a choreografin. The works are meant to reflect the human condition and use dance to break down contemporary experiences, she writes about her company.

The team of the German Tnazfilmminstitute Bremen documents the double performance.