PACT Zollverein – At the Frontier of Dance and Performance

At PACT Zollverein in Essen, dance and performance are understood as cross-art forms and fields of research for the present and the future.

The only thing that used to matter here was what came out at the other end. It was the product that mattered, extracting coal as efficiently as possible. Today, work is done in a more process than product-orientated way at the former Zollverein colliery in Essen. To be more precise, it is done in the colliery’s former shower building, where 3,000 miners used to take a shower to wash away the coal dust from their bodies. This is where PACT Zollverein has been established, a very exciting centre for contemporary art that cultivates a sense of play.

Here, artistic work at the frontier of dance and performance is produced and shown, symposia are organised and there is an artists-in-residence programme. First performances and German premieres by established groups, such as Forced Entertainment, Needcompany and VA Wölfl / NEUER TANZ are on the programme. But there is also space for young artists. Laurent Chétouane developed his celebratedDance #1: Study I on ‘Picture Description’ by Heiner Müller at PACT and dancer and choreographer Mette Ingvartsen developed her first works here. PACT is highly successful as an international production venue, with approximately 600 guest performances of its productions taking place in more than 20 countries each year.

Services, creative industries and art

The institution has established itself excellently during its comparatively short history. One of its more recent network partners is the new Centquartre arts centre in Paris, with which PACT cooperates on the university exchange programme “Feldstärke International”. Yet the Essen Centre did not have an easy start. It was created in the wake of the structural change that made the Ruhrgebiet, the nation’s former industrial heartland, a location for services, the creative industries and art. This process was boosted and systematised from 1989 to 1999 by the International Building Exhibition Emscher Park. Art and culture are the raison d'être at the Zollverein, too, a colliery that closed in 1986 and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001.

Back in the 1990s, choreographers had already discovered the potential of the derelict shower building, showing their work here. From 1999 onwards, it was converted into the Choreographisches Zentrum Nordrheinwestfalen. After just a few months, however, the new management were irreconcilably divided on questions of competence. In 2002, the trained boat builder and dancer Stefan Hilterhaus took over as artistic director. Until then, he had headed Tanzlandschaft Ruhr. Two institutions were merged under one roof to form the “Choreographisches Zentrum Nordrheinwestfalen Tanzlandschaft Ruhr”, PACT for short, and the previous focus on dance was extended to include the performative arts. And it may be assumed that the centre’s acronym is no coincidence as its main aim is to build networks and engage in long-term cooperation. PACT is backed by the City of Essen, Land North Rhine-Westphalia and Kultur Ruhr GmbH. It makes as much as 20 per cent of its budget from ticket sales and leases.

Discussing the rapid change processes taking place in the world

Conceptually, the main focus of interest is on artistic processes and their link with the present. The future of dance and performance is discussed in their relationship with other arts, but also with science and research as well as with the rapid change processes taking place in the world. At PACT, movement, including dance, is seen as a research method. Zeitgeist in the best sense of the word breezes through the bright and spacious, yet manageable pithead shower rooms. Stefan Hilterhaus and his active team are seeking the present particularly in what is (still) unknown and unwrought, not in stock phrases. In any case, says Hilterhaus, he is not attempting to take up and serve things that are already there anyway, but to “create something that has yet to develop in the imagination. It is really about promoting art as a form, as design, as a proposition.”

That is how to cultivate a productive atmosphere for thought and development. Talks and workshops systematically extend the avenues of thought about what performance and dance can be, for example at imPACT, an annual symposium Because artistic work begins in training centres, exchange with academies and universities is cultivated, both at regional and international level. “Feldstärke” and “Atelier” give young artists an opportunity to present their work and exchange views. The projects Dance Plan Essen 2010, too, the symposium Explorations and the international university exchange Agora point in this direction. The Dance Plan Essen continues until 2010 and is part of the Dance Plan Germany, which was initiated by the German Federal Cultural Foundation. In spite of its examination of the present and orientation towards the future, history always remains present. It is apparent in the building itself, in its white tiled walls, mirrors and soap dishes, reminiscent of the washroom’s past function. PACT is an exciting hybrid between the future and the past, where, with playful seriousness, work is done on tomorrow’s questions.

Esther Boldtworks as a journalist and freelance theatre critic, inter alia for nachtkritik.de, taz, ballettanz and Theater

der Zeit.

Translation: Eileen FlügelCopyright: Goethe-Institut e. V., Online-Redaktion

March 2009

Any questions about this article? Please write to us!online-redaktion@goethe.de

Related links

PACT Zollverein Tanzplan Essen 2010 Ruhr Triennial RUHR.2010 – Kulturhauptstadt Europas (The Ruhr Metropolis – European Capital of Culture 2010) A Place for Ideas – Schwankhalle Bremen

The Schwankhalle in Bremen opened in 2003: providing a venue for their own dance- and theater-productions and for a largely still fledgling scene. Today, it sees itself as a venue that stages Bremen productions created through ongoing exchange rather than by specific groups. As well as its own productions and coproductions, intervention in urban spaces and discussion formats will play a greater role in the future.It all began at the theatre in Bremen. Two groups emerged from the theatre’s youth club and dance theatre’s young choreographers in the 1990s which were to influence the Hanseatic city’s independent scene: the Junges Theater Bremen and the steptext dance project. The search for a place of their own seemed almost hopeless when at the start of the new millennium a shock ran through the city. Bremen

applied to become a European Capital of Culture 2010 – with its own artistic directors. There was much experimentation and initiative, including the idea of the Theaterhaus.

In cooperation with the department of culture and two other groups, the MusikerInitiative Bremen and Quartier, a district association, people went about setting up, planning and renovating the Schwankhalle. The building opened in 2003, providing a venue for their own productions and for a largely still fledgling scene. The loosening of ensemble structures enabled contracts to be signed with external artists, thus establishing links between them and the Schwankhalle. Today, it sees itself as a venue that stages Bremen productions created through ongoing exchange rather than by specific groups.

Young art in the Neustadt district

The extensive premises of the Remmer brewery on Buntentorsteinweg in the Neustadt district, which was built in 1837, has been successively renovated. The Schwankhalle complex is situated between the brewery, which houses a restaurant and apartments, and the fermenting and storage cellar, which now houses the municipal gallery. There are two multi-purpose theatres, linked by a high glass foyer.

The structure was simplified last year to make more room for art. A non-profit association runs the building and the management is shared by a – rejuvenated – team consisting of three artistic, three operational and three business members of the board. None of them works there full-time. The venue, says founding member Carsten Werner, sees itself as a “network partner and workplace for freelancers who are involved in various ways,” and that is also true of its own employees, who work at events such as the Breminale summer festival and elsewhere. A new project, “The social situation of freelance artists,” is on the programme, and it, too, aims to be a lobby for freelancers. It includes training and time out as well as discussions on occupational profiles and remuneration.

steptext: a success story

Back in 2003, the Tanzensemble renamed itself ‘dance project’. Since then, the founder of steptext, Helge Letonja, who has danced with various companies including those of Susanne Linke and Jan Fabre, has been extending the group’s potential and fields of work. Alongside Letonja, co-director Günther Grollitsch and company member Augusto Pineda also choreograph. They also supervise the tanz_bar integrative training project for artists, especially young artists, a one-year preparation for artistic training. The company cultivates its repertoire, which is unusual for smaller groups. Pieces stay on the programme for a year or two and tour much more frequently than usual at home and abroad. This is also the result of partnerships with theatres in France, Italy and Canada. Darkland, which may be seen at the TANZ Bremen festival in April, will soon be seeing its twentieth performance.In the context of restructuring, steptext now organises dance in the Schwankhalle with a small team of its own. It is also the organiser, producer and co-producer (with producers including Ben Riepe) of a number of cooperation projects in which it is a participating company and partner. A new residency programme, KoresponDance Europe, began at the end of last year with three institutions from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and France. It supports young artists by providing residency programmes and staging small

productions at festivals taking place at each of the locations in turn. The Xtra FREI festival, part of the Bremen Tanzplan-vor-Ort (Danceplan on Location) project, will take place for the fourth time in June 2010. Letonja, who manages the festival, is very keen to continue it beyond the term scheduled for Tanzplan, as it offers young talented choreographers from Germany the rare opportunity to include pieces in their repertoire again.

Intervention and discourse

What we see at the Schwankhalle is that art should get involved. As well as its own productions (including pieces by Juli Zeh and Sibylle Berg) and coproductions (including with Lubricat, showcase beat le mot and Theaterhaus Weimar), intervention in urban spaces and discussion formats will play a greater role in the future. The theatre is continuing its cooperation with Stadtgrün Bremen, which is responsible for Bremen’s public green spaces, in the kunst_freiraum_stadt series, which starts in the spring. It is about urban landscapes and social coexistence within a wide range of processes. To accompany the series, local and external experts will be examining “opportunities for urban development” in the Bremen 2010 series. An exhibition will be held in cooperation with the Professional Association of Artists and a series of guest performances by artist and performer Tim Etchell will take place in September.The theatre aims to provide incentives through its Writers and Producer’s Award, which offers prize money (of 15,000 euro) for the idea for a play/project and with OUTNOW!, a multi-genre festival for young artists to be held in May. Says Carsten Werner: “We see ourselves today less as a theatre than as a place for ideas, we want to create contexts and a framework in which something can be evolve.”

Edith Boxbergeris a sociologist and has been writing about dance and contributing to newspapers, magazines and

publications for many years.

Translation: Eileen Flügel Copyright: Goethe-Institut e. V., Online-Redaktion

February 2010Any questions about this article? Please write to us!

online-redaktion@goethe.deRelated links

Schwankhalle Steptext Tanzplan Bremen Zeitraumexit – Venue for Interface Art in Mannheim

For eleven years the Mannheim art house Zeitraumexit has been a venue for open art forms and has proved – not only with its festival “Wunder der Prärie” (Wonders of the Prairie) - that ambitious performance art and experimental dance also find an audience outside the big cities.Anyone who offers interface art, crossing the borders between performance, dance, video, drama and

visual art, embarks on a daring venture, fraught with risk even in the metropolises. Audience development, recognition and financial support take time, particularly in Baden-Württemberg’s city of Mannheim, a place where experimental artists en route from Zürich to Hamburg rarely strayed before the year 2000. And yet at Zeitraumexit the daring venture has become a success story - the wonders of Mannheim. To be more exact, the Wonders of the Prairie...

The story that began in a backyard in the year 2000 has been crowned with success precisely because the artists’ initiative consisting of Gabriele Oßwald, Wolfgang Sautermeister and Tilo Schwarz never allowed itself to be deterred from its aims. The festival has long since become firmly established in both local and inter-regional cultural life. Furthermore, the curator trio also shows cross-genre performance art in small formats, for example, frisch eingetroffen (just in), Flimmerkiste (Gogglebox) or B-Seite (B-Side).

At Zeitraumexit Stefan Kaegi from Rimini Protokoll founded hisAmeisenstaat (Ants’ State), while other artists from the international scene such as Gob Squad, Urban Lies and Heiner Goebbels have also made their way to North Baden, now the Metropolitan Region of Rhine-Neckar. Following the move to the harbour district of Jungbusch where more spacious premises were available in a listed building, a former grain mill and local landmark of industrial architecture, hence with a certain big-city flair, creative processes continue to be implemented at interfaces, theoretically well-founded and skilfully crafted.

Space and movement

In this dance plays a great role: “We are interested in dance that adopts a very critical approach to its forms, and in dancers who approach space individually,” is how Gabriele Oßwald outlines her concept. The extent to which the artists take account of the still by no means optimal spatial conditions was already manifested in 2006 in the original site of the art house. For the programmatic aim of crossing borders, which applies in equal measure to genres and to visual experience, Susanne Schorr developed a performance inspired by the lack of space as part of the newcomer series frisch eingetroffen (just in). Under the titleRaumbegehung (Walking round a room), attired in a black leotard, she performed in the studio’s atrium which is surrounded by concrete walls. On the “fourth wall” were painted two upside-down black silhouettes of the dancer: only in the image could the force of gravity be overcome, whereas the real-life dancer stormed angrily against the walls and railed, literally, against the limited framework of her possibilities.

Thinking outside the box

Despite creative space utilisation and notwithstanding the most outstanding characteristic of Zeitraumexit - i.e. the ability to think outside the box – Curator Oßwald does know that “there are things we would have liked to show in the past eleven years but for which we simply had no suitable space.” And, nevertheless, the diversity of the art house manifests itself precisely and particularly in dance. In 2010, under the titlegnadenlos zwei (relentlessly two) , three performances were dedicated to togetherness, the pas de deux in contemporary style. InRomance-s by the Franco-Swiss company 7273, Laurence Yadi and Nicolas Cantillon morphed the strutting, posing and mating behaviour of classical ballet poses into minimalist pantomime.“We are most interested in works that cannot be categorised so clearly,” says Oßwald, referring to their own production A talk (2011) by the Swedish dancer Alma Söderberg and the German physical actress Jolika Sudermann, but also to such diverse guest performances as those of Two Fish, Anna Huber, Kristýna Lhotáková, Doris Uhlich and Verena Billinger & Sebastian Schulz.

Movement technique and its reflection

Also far removed from traditional dance was the movement ingnadenlos zwei by the Duo Wilhelm Groener with Zufall und Gnade(Coincidence and Compassion) - with regard to the interface of movement technique and medial reflection. “We want threshold works that search for the roots of body work,” she says in explaining why this piece was invited and goes on to clarify her programmatic aims: “In dance I am particularly fascinated by the radicality of calling into question the existing canon which, in my opinion, has fallen as the last bastion of a traditional understanding of art. You can see this, for instance, in the training situation or also in the audience reactions. We often hear the question ‘So where was the dance?’”.Quite relentless in their movement frenzy, in contrast, were Angela Schubot and Jared Gradinger with What they are instead of. With clearly sexually-oriented fighting games and compliant gestures of submission in a performance of high-quality dancing, they showed how lonely a person still is, even the most intimate togetherness.At Zeitraumexit little remains – quite deliberately – of the aestheticised sensuality still often expected in dance: “We have nothing to do with the cliché of beautiful bodies moving to music. Dancers have to decide whether and with what intention they want to meet expectations,” says Gabriele Oßwald. A place for open experimentation indeed …

Ralf-Carl Langhalsis editor for cultural affairs in the spheres drama and dance at the Mannheimer Morgen. Previously he was a freelance critic i.a. for Die Welt, Frankfurter Rundschau, Nachtkritik and Theater der Zeit. He is a juror in

the Nationale Performance Netz Theater.

Translation: Heather Moers Copyright: Goethe-Institut e. V., Internet-Redaktion

September 2011Any questions about this article? Please write to us!

internet-redaktion@goethe.deRelated links

Zeitraumexit Wunder der Prärie (Wonders of the Prairie) tanzhaus nrw – Europe’s Dance Policies Made in Düsseldorf

In a country like Germany, where dance is booming as never before, there is only one dance house. Its founder is Bertram Müller. His remit is not only to promote understanding of the art of dance but also to ensure that its structures are improved.In Germany there is more than one opera house, more than one theatre, but in this republic you will not find more than one dance house. That there is one, at least, is due to the efforts of Bertram Müller, who between 1996 and 1998 left no stone unturned in his campaign to have the 4,000 square metres of Germany’s oldest tram depot in Düsseldorf converted into a dance venue. France had long since (in 1980) developed the concept of its nineteen Centres Chorégraphiques National, which are directed by the choreographers themselves – this, too, is inconceivable in Germany. To this day there is not one institution that is directed by a dance artist, apparently because in this country exceptional staying power is required - as in the case of the 64-year-old Bertram Müller, who launched his initiative in the winter of 1977. He joined the “Werkstatt” in Düsseldorf, an association in which artists gave courses for amateurs. This principle still holds good today. The popularity of the “Tanzhaus Akademie”, directed by Dorothee Schackow, testifies to the citizens’ affection for their dance house. No matter what style of dance, from ballet to belly dance, from capoeira to children’s dance, there are no holds barred and never a dull moment in the six studios, conveniently situated near Düsseldorf’s Central Station – nowhere else in Germany will one find such an intensive pedagogical eros luring the citizens onto the dance floor.

“Our theatres are europhobic”

In view of the rather mature age of its founder, plans are currently under consideration to transfer the dance house to the local authority and to classify it with opera and theatre. The tanzhaus nrw could thus become the 37th theatre institutionally funded by the state of North-Rhine Westphalia. Not that it didn’t receive funding up to now, but the current subsidy of €10 per sold ticket is very low. “If they were to raise this subsidy to the amount that theatres usually receive, then we could invite the top league to both the large and the small stage of the dance house every evening - William Forsythe or Marie Chouinard“, says Bertram Müller. And he adds, “If the city is clever, with the tanzhaus they could acquire a structure that could be transferred to other institutions“, for, as he goes on to explain, “Our theatres are europhobic.” They are not open for the international exchange of artists, he says. They

keep their ensembles, their workshops and a huge apparatus to administer their ensembles and their workshops.

Bertram Müller, president of all dance houses

Lean structure is not the only feature that was established with the tanzhaus nrw. Its stability is due above all to the European network. In the 1990s there was still what was termed “intercultural exchange” and “multiculture” – first dance guest performances from all over the world and dance courses with exotic flair such as African dance or the festival “Orientale” were, however, not merely a reflection of the zeitgeist. Bertram Müller has always been committed the European integration of dance. Today he is president of the European Dancehouse Network, an amalgamation of similar dance houses such as Mercat de las Flors in Barcelona or the Dansenshus in Stockholm. Here the aim is not only to skim the wordwide market for major dance productions without risk, but also to supply young talents with better production conditions and an infrastructure. In addition to providing rehearsal rooms, Bertram Müller has recently created an international dance agency at the tanzhaus nrw in order to facilitate access to the market for dance artists from North-Rhine Westphalia. The fact remains, however, that most dance events in Germany rely on imports.

Europe joins the dance – to the tune of €2.2 m

For this reason Müller and his European Dancehouse Network have launched an initiative with the name “Modul Dance“. Eighteen partners, dance houses from Barcelona to Cyprus, drafted the plan, funded by the European Commission with €2.2 million, to sponsor about sixty free dance companies - with a total volume of € 4.5 million. The European dance houses, from the small Isadora Duncan Center in Athens to the large The Place in London, are issuing 62 invitations to enable the companies, each of which will be accompanied by a well-known mentor, to develop productions that can go on tour, with a support structure in research phases, residencies and intensive rehearsal periods.

Globetrotting lobbyist wanted

Since the tanzhaus nrw is more than just a large building in which curated festivals, contemporary dance art (programmed for years by Stefan Schwarz), the state-sponsored initiative “Take Off: Junger Tanz” for children and teenagers, as well as important exchange programmes with China and Korea take place, it does not really resemble any other theatre. It is perhaps more like a base camp or a guest house from which – almost invisibly – threads are spanned throughout the world in order to strengthen dance on a political and economic level. When Bertram Müller leaves the tanzhaus one day, then the search for his successor will have to focus on finding not a director but a globetrotting lobbyist – someone who can carry on his life’s work in this vibrant art structure “tanzhaus”, which has remained quite unique in Germany.

Arnd Wesemannis editor of the journal “tanz” and his most recent publication is “Immer Feste Tanzen – ein feierabend!“ in

transcript-Verlag.

Translation: Heather Moers Copyright: Goethe-Institut e. V., Online-Redaktion

September 2010Any questions about this article? Please write to us!

online-redaktion@goethe.deRelated links

Tanzhaus nrw Dance in Potsdam

For dance, fabrik Potsdam is a “lighthouse” in the huge expanses of Brandenburg. Following the withdrawal of the German Federal Cultural Foundation from the Artists-in-Residency programme, politics once again has to be convinced what dance is really capable of achieving.

Walls as smooth as glass, like in a lift. Just enough room to turn around. Two men are dancing in a space just a meter long, that has to suffice. Pandora 88 is the title of the piece by the fabrik dance company in Potsdam. The viewer’s gaze is fixed on a clinical prison, a strictly rationalised room, a frighteningly narrow refuge. In February 2011, the fabrik company is on tour at the Fadjr Festival in Tehran, in a society where room for manoeuvre is similarly limited. For eight years, fabric Potsdam’s cofounders Sven Till and Wolfgang Hoffmann have been showing the essence of their own claustrophobia, adjusting to a lack of freedom. That is something that is universally understood. Also in Potsdam. Here, on the banks of the River Havel, the company’s third co-founder, Sabine Chwalisz, is currently seducing a group of women over forty to take part in the adventure of taking their own space as they did just after the political and social transformation back in 1989. That was when Sabine Chwalisz, Sven Till and Wolfgang Hoffmann discovered the empty factory and founded the fabrik Potsdam as an International Centre for Dance and Movement Art in Brandenburg, as it is now called.

Spatial experiences

The art of making space for oneself, particularly in Brandenburg, where space stretches out to the horizon, may sound absurd. In fact, however, there is just one other tiny dance company in this huge flat federal state, in Cottbus. Without fabrik Potsdam and its attempts to re-establish dance, also in Frankfurt an der Oder and Eisenhüttenstadt, which have lost their own companies, nothing much would move in Brandenburg any more – except the ubiquitous wind power plants. That view is shared by the

former Mayor of Potsdam Matthias Platzeck: “Just stay then,“ he told the squatters. While the flat building gradually acquired six studios and a stage, the fabrik company was more and more in demand internationally: The company travelled the word. In Potsdam people asked themselves “Where are you?“

Together with the German Dance Platform, the goals were set anew. Having themselves been given the right to stay, the residents invited dancers from around the world to come to Potsdam for so-called residencies. Close to Berlin, it was an excellent place to work, “as much as 24 hours a day sometimes,” says Sabine Chwalisz in the relaxed café of fabrik Potsdam. The pleasant equality of guests and their hosts allows work to be unhurried and reflected. The artists are on their own and can experiment with and develop their distinctive styles. Funding for this art comes from Federal Government and Land Government funds, each of which provided half of the funding. Until 2010. Now the fabrik is in the sole possession of Brandenburg and Potsdam and their visions of a “lighthouse” for dance.

Between Scylla and Charybdis

“Lobbying and cultural committee meetings“ are the order of the day for me, says Sabine Chwalisz. The Tanztage Festival in May brought international accolades, first for the company and then for fabik Potsdam. But what use is the best visibility from afar if well-to-do townspeople do not understand the results of their choreographer-in-residency’s work, in spite of so-called “Working Weeks of Choreography” and the Herbstleuchten Festival. The audience has “hardly any experience of dance” says Sabine Chwalisz, like in all of Germany’s medium-sized towns. And, like everywhere else, children’s enthusiasm helps. They have set up their own company in Potsdam and are confronted with dance from the fabric at school. “It’s funny,“ says Sabine Chwalisz, “that people are now even demanding that teachers be more like artists,“ to promote children’s creativity, “but when there is to be a dance performance with real artists, there is firstly a lack of understanding and secondly a lack of money.“ This is where the fabrik company comes in again. It works internationally with choreographers such as Malgven Gerbes, Andrew Dawson and Jess Curtis. The pieces never reach the heights of academic discourse on contemporary dance otherwise so much aspired to, but nor do they produce “Stage Bollywood”. Rather, cooperations continue to be created in a calm and peaceful setting, in studios that are not available for just four hours, and in an atmosphere that reminds us that dancers can feel so much at home in Potsdam that they are allowed to research their own work and even to question it.

Arnd Wesemann is editor of the journal tanz and his most recent publication, by transcript-Verlag, is “Immer Feste Tanzen -

ein feierabend!

Translation: Eileen Flügel Copyright: Goethe-Institut e. V., Online-Redaktion

January 2011Any questions about this article? Please write to us!

online-redaktion@goethe.de

Related links

fabrik potsdam The productive Energy of Diversity – The Muffatwerk in Munich

The Muffatwerk, founded in Munich in 1993, offers a wide-ranging cross-genre programme, and it is an international cultural hub.Just follow the buzz on a dark night. That is how directions to the nocturnal Muffatwerk might read. The water in the Auer Mühlbach stream, which served to cool the former steam power plant, rushes up against a barrier here. From a distance, the art nouveau industrial building, which lies in the shadow of tall trees, has something spellbinding, fairy-tale-like about it. Anyone finding their way here for the first time feels as if they were making a discovery. Yet the Muffatwerk is anything but an insiders’ tip – it is a place where Munich is metropolitan.

The pulse of the place is fast. Artists from more than 120 countries of the world come and go here at some 500 to 600 events each year. There are choreographers such as Jan Fabre, Meg Stuart and Vim Vandekeybus, theatre people from Christoph Schlingensief to Tim Etchells of Forced Entertainment, jazz and pop greats from Herbie Hancock to 2raumwohnung, and writers such as Salman Rushdie and Peter Esterhazy. There are international festivals of multi-media, dance, literature and new music in turn. ab.

Dietmar Lupfer and Christian Waggershauser, founders and managers of the culture power station, which has been a limited liability company for 17 years, have dared to make their mark by other means than through clear political or aesthetic premises. Their aim is to “establish an urban feeling for life and to put on a programme that reflects social reflection and a basic humanist attitude,” as Lupfer carefully puts it. The venue has long been an internationally popular meeting place of the in-scenes in fields ranging from youth culture to the avant-garde. And the concept, which takes the form of a public-private partnership, is also a financial success. In bearing a large share of the operating costs, the city of Munich meets between 20 and 30 per cent of the overall budget of up to two and a half million euro per year. The rest has to be earned. The takings from performances by popular artists enable the Muffatwerk to show experimental productions too. In return, the city has the right to use the venue on a hundred days each year, benefiting local artists as well as festivals. That works to the satisfaction of both parties.

Earned luxury: Richard Siegal is the third Artist in Residence

Choreographer and dancer Richard Siegal is the third Artist in Residence in the Muffatwerk’s programme. The Muffatwerk cannot always afford to award a residence. Rui Horta was the first Artist in Residence after his company fell victim to Frankfurt’s budget cut fiasco. He has meanwhile created an important interdisciplinary dance centre in his native Portugal, o espaço do tempo (space of time). For Richard Siegal and his production organisation, The Bakery, the Muffatwerk has already been an important cooperation partner in developing multimedia pieces in connection with a motion-capture programme. Siegal discussed the results of this intensive work with an interested, varied audience in April 2010.

„ “The unusual combination of an ability to engage in discourse and a high standard of dance,” is what artistic director Dietmar Lupfer values about Siegal. His work with bodies and technique, action and manipulation fit into the concept well, as the organisers are explicitly interested in establishing a media conscience. They are working intensively to keep up with progressive developments in the fields of new media and social installations. The interdisciplinary symposium NEURO – Networking Europe has visited the Muffatwerk and the installation artist Chico Macmurtrie was Siegal’s predecessor as Artist in Residence. Ulf Langheinrich’sHemisphere, too, a media biotope, made a stop-over here on its way from Rome to the Martin Gropius Building in Berlin.

Cultural funding has its limits, but makes sense

Business partners Waggershauser and Lupfer do not see themselves as part of the cultural industry, something they regard as a contradiction in terms. The public purse should continue to be the main source of funding for cultural projects. The Muffatwerk too, applies for various funds for specific events and cooperates with foundations and cultural institutions, as well as staging coproductions with groups such as the PACT Zollverein and the Mousonturm. The city of Munich also provided funding in two instalments for the renovation of the protected industrial building. The Muffatwerk meanwhile operates on an area of more than 3000 m², which includes the large Muffathalle, a former turbine hall equipped with complex and flexible stage technology, as well as two state-of-the-art studios, and the Ampere Club with its stunning design, a more intimate event room for up to 400 visitors which opened in 2005. There is also a café for cool days and a beer garden next to the Isar for sunny days. Richard Siegal also enthuses about the possibilities of the venue. Recently-approved three-year funding from the Culture Department could make his wish for a new network in Munich come true. And perhaps the Munich scene’s dream that the city could become an internationally relevant location for contemporary dance could also finally come true.

Astrid Kaminskiworks as a freelance writer and journalist. She writes about literature, dance and performance for daily

newspapers and specialist journals.

Translation: Eileen Flügel Copyright: Goethe-Institut e. V., Online-Redaktion

May 2010Any questions about this article? Please write to us!

online-redaktion@goethe.deRelated links

Muffathalle