New Season 2024-2025
Today, Boris Charmatz, the artistic director of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch and of Terrain, and Dr Daniel Siekhaus, the Tanztheater’s managing director, presented the programme for the new 2024/2025 Season. They also provided details of the Tanztheater’s performances at the Avignon Festival in June and July 2024.
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch + Terrain at the Avignon Festival 2024
With Boris Charmatz having been named as “Artiste Complice” of the 78th edition of the Avignon Festival, the choreographer’s work with the ensemble of the Tanztheater Wuppertal and his French structure Terrain will be a programmatic focus of the entire festival. The programme includes a wide spectrum of works, ranging from CERCLES, a participatory Franco-German project created as part of the festival, to open-air performances of Liberté Cathédrale and Forever (Immersion dans Café Müller de Pina Bausch), a new production conceived by Boris Charmatz. The latter is an exploration of Pina Bausch’s legacy, offering pluralistic readings of Café Müller in a newly configured constellation of time and space that allows the audience to immerse itself in one of Bausch’s most famous works. The festival will also present a Pina Bausch film marathon as well as various discursive formats. Elizabeth Diller, the architect who has been commissioned to design the future Pina Bausch Centre in Wuppertal, will present this pioneering project in a public discussion as part of Café des idées.
CERCLES
29, 30 June and 1 July 2024, Stade de Bagatelle (football pitch)
With CERCLES, Boris Charmatz is creating a large-scale participatory project in Avignon and later in Wuppertal, using the same choreographic material. During a three-day open-air workshop, which is open to the public, he will develop a score of circular dances with a group of 200 dance enthusiasts from different social contexts in Avignon, aged between 16 and 74 years.
Choreographic material: Etude révolutionnaire by Isadora Duncan, Boris Charmatz, proposals by Régis Badel inspired by traditional folk dances, Magali Caillet Gajan, Guilhem Chatir, Ashley Chen, Olga Dukhovna, Çağdaş Ermiş, Julien Gallée-Ferré, Simon Le Borgne, Johanna Elisa Lemke, Azusa Seyama-Prioville, Asha Thomas, Solène Wachter.
The Wuppertal premiere will feature 200 participants from Wuppertal aged between 17 and 89 years, as well as students from Essen and Cologne. It will take place on 22 September 2024 at the Höfen sports field in Oberbarmen, followed by a DJ-set by Julia Lanoë aka Rebeka Warrior.
The project CERCLES – a co-production with the Avignon Festival – is part of the preparatory phase of the Pina Bausch Centre, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the City of Wuppertal, the Kunststiftung NRW and the Stadtsparkasse Wuppertal.
With special thanks to the Sport und Bäderamt – especially Mrs Szlagowski and Mr Pollmeier for the opportunity to perform CERCLES on the Höfen sports field and for allowing rehearsals to take place in the university hall. Thanks also to the TuS Grün-Weiss Wuppertal 89/02 e. V. club (Höfen sports field club) and to Mr Scheuermann-Giskes and Mrs Langer for allowing rehearsals to take place in the Hesselnberg sports hall.
Liberté Cathédrale
5, 6, 8, 9 July 2024, Stade de Bagatelle (football pitch)
A choreographic storm, danced and sung by performers of the Tanztheater Wuppertal and Terrain, pervaded by the powerful sounds of the organ, bells and silence.
World premiere 8 September 2023, St. Mary’s Cathedral, Neviges; the first new creation of Boris Charmatz with the ensemble of the Tanztheater and guests.
Production Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch + Terrain Boris Charmatz
Supported by Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels and the Kunststiftung NRW
Co-producers: Théâtre de la Ville, Paris; Maison de la Danse, Lyon / Pôle européen de création as part of the
Biennale de la danse 2023, théâtre.s de la Ville de Luxembourg, Factory International Manchester
Forever
(Immersion dans Café Müller de Pina Bausch)
14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21 July 2024 La FabricA
13:00 to 20:00 Uhr, we recommend staying for around 2 hours
Performances of Café Müller in different casts (featuring a total of 25 dancers from different generations) alternate with so-called ‘fragments’, in which dancers tell stories, dance, remember, recite texts and more (currently in development).
With the kind permission of the Pina Bausch Foundation.
Film screenings, discursive formats and more
3 July 2024 Territoires cinématographiques, Kino Utopia; Screenings of two films created by Boris Charmatz and César Vayssié: Les Disparates & Transept; 7 July 2024 Café des idées (public discussion) with Emma Bigé, Emanuele Coccia and Elizabeth Diller; 9 July 2024 Boris Charmatz participates in Rencontres Recherche et Création (encounters of research and creation) with the Agence Nationale pour la Recherche; 16 July Ciné-Marathon Pina Bausch, Kino Utopia;
With the kind permission of the Pina Bausch Foundation.
Revivals and restagings of pieces by Pina Bausch
The Tanztheater Wuppertal is restaging The Seven Deadly Sins, accompanied by the Wuppertal Symphony Orchestra under the musical direction of Jan Horstmann, after the last series of performances with Ute Lemper and Meret Becker had to be cancelled in 2020 due to Covid-19. Josephine Ann Endicott and Julie Shanahan are the rehearsal directors for the new production of the two-part Brecht/Weill evening by Pina Bausch (12–21 April 2025).
The ensemble will also present revivals of Viktor (25–27 October 2024), Kontakthof (23 November – 1 December 2024) and Água (24 January – 2 February 2025).
The Wuppertal Opera House as a living dance archive 20 danseurs pour le XXème siècle et plus encore
For Boris Charmatz’s 2012 project 20 danseurs pour le XXème siècle et plus encore, dancers and performers from different dance backgrounds and generations will take over the Wuppertal Opera House (25, 26 and 27 April 2025). They will perform in corridors, rooms, corners, courtyards and staircases, presenting iconic solos by various choreographers from the 20th century and beyond. The audience is invited to enjoy a promenade performance lasting several hours, in which they can discover dances and artistic styles ranging from Chaplin to Forsythe, Isadora Duncan to Krump, Valeska Gert to Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Balanchine to – of course – Pina Bausch. It is an opportunity to build your own, living dance archive. The project, which has already been shown in various constellations at many very different venues around the world – including MoMA Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern in London, Bozar in Brussels, Tanzkongress Hannover, the Festival d'Automne in Paris and at the Triennale in Milan – is also suitable for children and families.
Tours and international performances 2024-2025
The ensemble will tour to Adelaide and Vienna with Club Amour, to Luxembourg and Taipei with Liberté Cathédrale, to London and Paris with Vollmond, to Lille and Vienna with Nelken and to Copenhagen and Aarhus with Kontakthof.
Pieces by Boris Charmatz from his repertoire with Terrain, his French structure, will be performed in Metz, in the Hauts-de-France region, in Brussels, Madrid, Belgrade and Málaga.
Wuppertal dances!
Dance in schools, care homes, educational institutions, open-air and more
In addition to the large-scale participatory project CERCLES, there will be more educational and outreach activities in Wuppertal from the coming season onwards. Julia Honer is currently developing an engagement programme in close collaboration with the ensemble of the Tanztheater. Her new role was created firstly, because the aspect of participation and education have always been intrinsically important to the art of Pina Bausch and Boris Charmatz, and secondly, because we want to make the art form of contemporary dance, and particularly dance theatre, more accessible to a wider public. The programme will address people who have previously had little or no contact with dance as an art form. With CERCLES, we have been expanding our geographical reach to include the region between Wundertal in Sonnborn and Oberbarmen. Correspondingly, we are now expanding our educational programme to reach places where (so far) very little dance has taken place. We will work with schools, care homes, educational institutions and other organisations. The collaboration between the Tanztheater and Terrain will also lead to more outreach and exchange projects between Germany and France.
To find out more, please contact julia.honer@pina-bausch.de
Press contact
Ursula Popp
Referentin für Presse- Öffentlichkeitsarbeit und Marketing
+ 49 (0)172 882 37 18
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