display life

The investigation of spaces is one of the central, constitutive characteristic of dance and every space – be it a utopian, virtual or a real, concrete, material space – carries its own narrative in it. No space is neutral and empty. As Michel Foucault wrote: “We live, we die and we love in a structured, multi-partitioned space with bright and dark spots in it, with various planes, levels, recesses and projections, with hard and with soft, easy to penetrate areas.”

display life unrolls multiple universes in a single room, creating space and anti-space and confronting two inherently irreconcilable concepts therein: the nomadic and the sedentary, the microscopically exact and the approximate and incomprehensible.

Driven by the desire to escape from the clichés, the boredom and the trite phrases that we call life, the dancers (Jutta Hell and Dieter Baumann) transverse these spaces and anti-spaces. They disappear and reappear. And along the way, they create rhythms, situations, sounds and intervals of time. Intended and past existences mix until all lies exposed: freed of meaning, on display.

A Tanzcompagnie RUBATO production, supported by the City of Berlin – Department for Cultural Affairs.