Inspired by “Bernarda Alba’s House. Tragedy of the Women in the Villages of Spain” by the Andalusian author Federico García Lorca, “ELLAS” visualises the mechanisms of objectification & exploitation of the female body and shows ways of its reappropriation & liberation through dance. The tanzhaus ahrbergviertel becomes a living, changeable element of the performance. The three performers initiate actions of resistance in this closed social space using their bodies, movements, sounds and voices. The choreography aims to give the body back its ability to be touched and to touch, to be moved and to move. “ELLAS” wants to explore this liberating potential of dance in order to create an open, inclusive space that respects the diversity of human identities and enables relationality.

Audience talks & opening acts!

In addition to the performances, there will be audience talks after the premiere and derniere as well as opening acts before the September and October performances:

Audience talk with choreographer and ensemble

On 16 August (premiere) and 22 November 2024 (dernière), the mónica garcía vicente DANCE PROJECT invites all audience members and interested parties to talk about the piece in a follow-up discussion with Mónica García Vicente and her ensemble. Duration approx. 30 min.

Opening act by CDC dancers

What is an Opening Act?
Artists performing before the main act.

The idea for the opening act came about through Mónica García Vicente’s Connection Dance Center (CDC). Four dancers from the CDC 2024 have the opportunity to create their owninterpretation of the choreographic process of “ELLAS” to the stage.

What is the CDC?
The CDC is an annual project lasting several months in which young dancers have the opportunity to gain professional experience in the world of dance under the watchful eye of choreographer Mónica García Vicente.

Cast: Rama Al Aisami, Jacqueline Grothey, Lena Steinhuber, Ulrike Zeuner

6:30 pm Opening act by CDC dancers
7:00 pm Break
7:30 pm Main act: ELLAS

„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’ got off to an unconventional and furious start with ‘I am [not] Giselle’ on Thursday evening at the Theater auf der Bühne (TAB).

‘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.

The dance performance Mary Frankenstein is an artistic exploration of the multi-layered and contradictory facets of the human and the monstrous. The choreography embarks on a search for an aesthetic and dance language of the monster as the “enclosed excluded” and questions our concepts of normality and order, of humanity and being human, as well as how we deal with the repressed and the alien in ourselves and our society.

The reference point is the author of the Frankenstein novel, Mary Shelley, who in our dance performance Mary Frankenstein merges into one with her two literary creatures, the egomaniacal scientist Viktor Frankenstein and his “monster”.

The dance installation with the subtitle „Making Monsters“ shows poetic images of the monstrous and questions its origins and conditions of origin.

Three 12-minute performances were shown simultaneously at three stations in the Kesselhaus/Hannover.

In the context of TANZtheater INTERNATIONAL festival we gave insights into the current rehearsals for the dance performance “Mary Frankenstein” at the “Audience Whisper” (at Ballhof Eins, Hannover).

Being restricted – and yet free. Immobile in body – flexible in mind. The artists Jean-Dominique Bauby (writer), Ezio Bosso (composer) and Frida Kahlo (painter) were each physically limited in one way or another and still managed to break out of their immobility with the help of art. With their biographies, their art, and their strength, they provide the inspiration and the starting point for this dance performance.

“Immobilità” shows a collage of impressions and images on the subject of physical limitation and the mobilizing potential of art. The dancers act in a black and white world of thoughts from which they cannot break out. The colours of the video installation, which was developed with the help of aleatoric techniques, offer a colourful ray of hope. An interplay of emotions of inner turmoil and tension is created. The illustration of heaviness and lightness of our imagination.

The uncertain time of the pandemic has also influenced the creation process of the piece. It has made clear, we can feel immobility on an individual, social, on a physical or spiritual level. And yet, we can find joy in life in times of restriction and stasis. The certainty remains, no matter how constricted we feel, our creativity makes it possible for us to be mobile.

“Dance of the people and the letters”

“Mónica García Vicente has composed a great evening at the Theaterwerkstatt. […] She has cleverly subdivided her production into a series of miniatures instead of offering a grand narrative. At the center of the hour-long dance performance is what Loris Zambon, one of the three dancers, right at the beginning, hoarsely and cautiously asks, both to confront and to come together, in speaking and in dancing: corps et esprit, body and spirit. The title of the evening “Im/Mobilità” gets to the point. It is about how the struggle of the body can look like when the head wants to force it to return to life. […]

Vicente presents her audience with an enchanting poetics of suffering and the desire to live. […] This is what this touching evening tells us about, about loss of meaning and the efforts to find it again.” by Frank Kurzhals

“[…] Immobilità is ambitious dance theater. It sparkles with inventiveness and dynamism.

And: Choreographer Mónica García Vicente […] has been able to engage excellent dancers. With Simone Deriu, Loris Zambon and Bettina Paletta an experienced and technically highly skilled trio creates the evening. […]” by Kerstin Hergt

_on the tracks of mary wigman

With “FORMA” we explore the liberating potential inherent in dance as an art form in the 21st century. Choreography, dramaturgy and musical composition are based on Mary Wigman’s concept of the body that has become an instrument and a mirror of the inner emotional experience.

In “FORMA” Mary Wigman’s artistic concept is updated and expanded. Starting from the self-bodily exploration of the basic emotions fear, anger, joy, sadness and shame – with creative media such as spontaneous writing and painting in different places – ways of liberating the body from domestication and reification to living movement and encounter are sought.

“Mónica García Vicente moves her four excellent dancers in the footsteps of a legend: Mary Wigman […] great details about a world that seems so much in motion that many lose their footing. […]

The entire team succeeds in Forma surprising and convincing images.” by Thomas Kaestle