Change of Locations: the Institute has moved to new premises

Film ab!

Under this motto the German Dance Film Institute Bremen celebrated its new domicile from 8 to 10.10.04. Gerhard Bohner points the way. – On the occasion of the opening, dance photographer Gerd Weigelt shows his famous Bohner series. The outstretched arm, the confident tension, the photograph of the dance theatre choreographer of the first hour, leads the visitors from the public area on the ground floor to the production rooms of the institute above. This is where around 50 dance recordings will be cut, television programmes produced and new media tested every year. A laboratory of dance in its connection with the – differently transient – audiovisual media.On the ground floor, video and DVD viewing areas, access to the institute’s electronic dance database. In the windows, video installations and information terminals with the latest news on dance: What is currently being shown in the region? What do the institute staff bring back from the international venues? What does the German Dance Film Institute Bremen have to offer us? Passers-by conquer their forum on the Wall. Film off! Under this motto, the German Dance Film Institute Bremen celebrated its new domicile from 8 to 10.10.04, together with the neighbouring new Bremen Central Library – and dance on the bookshelf was the consequence: cultural celebrities followed the dance not only through the library and the institute. Susanne Linke, Reinhild Hoffmann, Henrietta Horn and also dancers from Johann Kresnik surprised many a bookworm with their performances, powerfully supported by all the city’s dance professionals united in the initiative “DANCE City: Bremen”. Congratulations were heaped on the founder and director of the institute, Heide-Marie Härtel. Dirk Scheper, dance promoter and long-time director of the Akademie der Künste Berlin (West) recalled the beginnings, the “small petite woman who filmed with great agility and discretion” in 1980 at Gerhard Bohner. Anne Neumann-Schultheiss from the Landesbüro Tanz Nordrhein-Westfalen congratulated: “I know what it means to bring something to life, initially without support”, and followed up: “No other institution knows so many colleagues and artists worldwide.” The philosopher Rudolf zur Lippe, who had already given the opening speech 13 years ago, paid tribute to their “work not only on documentation, but also on the creation of Gestalt, and thus a cultural politics of the body.” And added: “You are also involved in this on a human level.” In the Wall Hall of the Central Library, the premiere of the new film by Urs Dietrich “Susanne Linke. Homage”. The film illuminates the facets of the choreographer, captures sound and image in dance – palpated texture. Without the documentation of the German Dance Film Institute Bremen, this film could not have been made and Dietrich mused: “Sometimes I think: Do we have to film now? But years later you’re glad to have the material.” For the first time since the institute’s beginnings, the collected materials are coming together again. Most recently, they were stored in five different locations in the city. The city library donated its disused curiosity, the Compactus sliding shelf system. And the Israeli dancer Ziv Frenkl used the metal companions of the document archive on the ground floor for his thought-provoking performance: he had discovered interview tapes of the dancer Yardena Cohen, born in Palestine in 1910, in the archive. Now the audience heard her voice and Frenkl, tangling colourful threads between himself and the shelves, became entangled with the tapes. Finally his suit fell off him, caught on the colourful threads like the stretched skin of a reptile, the speaker narrated Cohen’s life. A statement on (electronic) (dance) historiography? Patricia Stöckemann read from her book about Kurt Jooss. Ulrich Scholz presented the first completed choreographer portraits he is realising for the multimedia intranet project Dance on Demand. Around it the photo gallery of the choreographers who wrote and are writing dance theatre history in Bremen: Kresnik, Bohner, Hoffmann, Linke, Dietrich. They all point the way to the intensity of dance and beyond. The audiovisual documentary reflects this quality back, also to the places of its creation. And that the German Dance Film Institute Bremen, in the person of Heide-Marie Härtel, is committed to this meaningful and sensual idea became clear once again during the days of this festive inauguration.