AI and Human Existence

The boundary between humans and machines has become permeable. Are our thoughts still our own—or are they already the echo of algorithmic logic? Can human and technological existence still be separated?

“Am I” is a dance performance that explores this fusion: bodies become an “interface,” a tool and a storehouse, and at the same time a carrier and transmitter of information.

A choreography that neither looks back nostalgically at the past nor submits itself passively to the future.

HERE ≠ THERE is a contemporary dance performance about hope in the face of a world in crisis. Inspired by Byung-Chul Han’s *The Spirit of Hope*, the piece creates a dynamic space that does not provide answers but rather poses questions: Where can hope grow? Through their bodies, closeness, and distance, two performers explore the transitions between the digital and real worlds. In conjunction with live music and lighting design, a fragile landscape unfolds, inviting the audience to think along, feel along, and move along—both inwardly and outwardly. Here, hope appears not as a destination, but as a driving force that reveals itself in the moment—between heaviness and lightness, searching and longing.

HERE ≠ THERE is an invitation to enter new realms of possibility and to explore a fragile sense of hope together—beyond simple truths, yet full of intensity and openness.

The choreographer Mónica García Vicente and the photographer Irving Villegas embark on an installation-choreographic search for the experiences, dreams and difficulties of multi-native dance artists with an international history who have shaped and continue to shape Hanover’s cultural scene. They ask: Are we still the same after all this time in a country that is not our own? Or have we become something new through the fusion of different cultures, our ideas and our creativity? Using dance, projected bodies, audio and photo recordings, they create a visually gripping game that focuses on their ambivalent emotional worlds.

The festival format FOR REAL creates encounters between local dance artists and artists who have a short rehearsal period to challenge their practices and try out new formats outside of their usual production logic.

Inspired by “The House of Bernarda Alba: A Tragedy of the Women in the Villages of Spain” by the Andalusian author Federico García Lorca, “ELLAS” brings to light the mechanisms of objectification and exploitation of the female body and explores ways to reclaim and liberate it through dance. The tanzhaus ahrbergviertel becomes a living, transformative element of the performance. Within this enclosed social space, the three performers use their bodies, movements, sounds, and voices to initiate acts of resistance. The choreography aims to restore the body’s capacity to be touched and to touch, to be moved and to move. “ELLAS” seeks to explore this liberating potential of dance in order to create an open, inclusive space that respects the diversity of human identities and fosters connection.

„Giselle“ is considered a masterpiece of classical ballet. Created in the era of early Romanticism, it is still part of the repertoire today. As in other ballets of the time, the titular female character, with whom the male protagonist, not befitting his station, falls in love, appears as a sexless, virtuous, innocent and dependent being. Admittedly, this image corresponds more to contemporary male fantasies and patriarchal ideals of femininity than to the realities of life for women and dancers in the 19th century.

„I am [not] Giselle“ is a choreographic experiment in search of the real woman in romantic and contemporary ballet. The two dancers embody the complex and contradictory aspects of womanhood and femininity: on, behind and beyond the stage. They explore their own longings and passions and those projected onto them, states of dependence and autonomy, their own bodies as voyeuristic objects of display and subjects of female desire. Choreography, musical composition, costume and scenography create an aesthetic and expressive formal language of self-exploration, not least to give Giselle a stage as a real, complex woman.

The dance itself with „I am [not] Giselle“

“HAMELN. Premiere, world premiere and the model project ‘SPOTTED’ started on Thursday evening at the Theater auf der Bühne (TAB) with ‘I am [not] Giselle’ in an unconventional and furious way.

‘Die Wilis’ – this fantastic ballet from bygone dance days has been radically transformed and its exuberant romanticism measured against familiar realities. Not Giselle. Two women – very close to the audience. Background noise – railway station sound. Metaphor for proximity and distance. And ‘Giselle’, this touching love story of classical ballet reduced to dance. Movement and dance itself as a form of expression.

Sensibilities and the desire to try things out, effects, poses. Experience yourself and your own body. Two women immersed in a game with themselves. Encounters. Show objects – role play and private moments. Outside view and inside view. What makes Mónica García Vicente’s choreography so exciting is the passion for dance and the imagination with which new forms of expression are sought here. The balancing act between the role and being a woman and the role of women always reflected anew, even against old role models. And they take their time – give themselves time. Developing, movements, calmly flowing, which again and again lead seamlessly into a kind of desperate dance of St Vitus.

Play with few props. Two mats – standing ‘up to the neck’ as a wall of water – wash over the two women, wash them away. To become one in exchange. Swap each other. The play with the powerful veil quote from the realm of the Wilis with Myrtha and her flowing robe and rain as an idiosyncratic sound is magnificent. And the veil as an oversized towel. This drying off as such a different form of socialisation is as touching as it is helpless. Equally strange and familiar. Almost like a happy ending – very close, the two solitary figures merging into one.

Bettina Paletta had to stand in for Laura García Aguilera at short notice, more expressive in her movements than Camilla Matteucci, who surprises again and again with spontaneous solos, seemingly more easily even when she is basking in the applause. A bit associated with Cain and Abel. One is a shining light who always stages herself as a showpiece – the other struggles with herself.
Impressive performances from both – carried by a choreography that is imaginatively playful and doesn’t really want anything. Except for one thing: the dance itself.” by Richard Peter

We showed a piece from “I am [not] Giselle” at the TanzSichten open-stage format in the Kunsthalle Faust/Hannover. Laura was unable to perform on the day due to an injury, so Camilla danced her part “with” the video of the performance projected on the wall.