Dasniya had a residency at Ballhaus Ost the last couple of months, thanks to pandemic and pandemic arts funding. I got to see a private showing last weekend, with Tara (yup, Tara!) and Yui. Yeah I’m a long-time fan of her work and Glutamat confirms it.
That’d be me, Francesca d’Ath, and my toes, yesterday while biking to rehearsals.
Pandemic and very delayed sensible government response allowing, I’m performing at Sophiensaele next week. A double bill of two solos, the other with Claudia Tomasi, and both started with Isabelle Schad way back in January.
I don’t know if we’ll even get to perform next week, carrying on like we will, and it feels dead weird to be art-ing while shit goes exponential in Neukölln, Berlin, Germany, Europe … In case we don’t or if we do, here’s me looking well tasty.
And for everyone who saw that poster around Berlin-Mitte, yes, that is me, yes that person is trans femme and serving deep trans femme energy, and yes, even a glance at a poster of me will turn your children trans.
Me back performing again.
I pretty much had made peace with moving on from dance and all in the last couple of years, enjoying training for myself and finding myself at a distance to those worlds. Then, late-last year, Isabelle said, “You’re doing a solo!”
We’ve been rehearsing irregular weeks since late-January, slowly building a work that finally got a formal-ish public outing on the weekend in Isabelle’s studio at Wiesenburg (masks and physical distancing and pandemic attentiveness obviously). First time performing in more than two years, and, after a decade living in Berlin, first time I’ve performed here — in a formal, dance scene context at least, not counting small, more private art-ing.
It’s been huge, a lot of work physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and a lot of responsibility in being seen. Being seen by both the audience, some of whom recognised parts of themselves in me, and understand what that means, and being seen by those who came before, aunties, mothers, old ones who visited, who I called on ’cos I needed their strength and support and approval, and I needed them to see me, us like this. And my babaanne, wandering around after just out of sight. I am grateful for them all, and for those who came up to me after, who were the ones I needed to fully see me, and who I needed to see also.
Another pause now, then — as always, pandemic allowing — at Sophiensaele in early-November.
Something Dasniya Sommer has been working on for an age and I really wanted to see her première (thanks poverty): The Männy at Staatstheater Hannover. Really, she’s gone to another realm of hectic with her rope work.
Under the railway bridge at the east end of Kaskelstraße, just before the entrance gates to B.L.O. Ateliers, glowing seductively at midnight as I left Berlin is not Bayreuth. Vol. 1: Tannhäuser.
Das Helmi on tour, all the way out east to Lichtenberg, in the shallow parabola of northern Rummelsberg right by S-Nöldnerplatz, where the rails form a curved triangle around the old railway workshops backing onto the roundhouse and railway turntable to the east, now typically Berlin ateliers and halfway to forest of the B.L.O. Ateliers.
Festival time. Wagner festival time. Berlin is not Bayreuth. Vol. 1. Six hours of Tannhäuser spread across at least four stages, meandering through the dishevelled brick and concrete buildings and fastigiate black poplars charging thirty metres into the dark, cloudless evening sky. Peter Frost wrecking it singing dodgy Schlagermusik, Cora Frost doing the same as a Pope to ruin The Young Pope. glanz&krawell (I think) working their way through the long shouty bits with proper opera singing. Das Helmi with their always always glorious, monstrous, chaotic stagings, scaring off people who though it was going to be, y’know, opera, culture and shit, instead of what the fuck is happening here, how did I find myself on stage slapping a stranger’s arse with twelve other people doing the same I should’a left when the Pope started kissing people’s feet kinda thing.
Mad thanks to Dasniya Sommer for getting me in, reminding me of a Berlin I utterly love, deeply pagan and animist, rough as guts and no intention of ever changing.
Live on June 30th, a digital archive for Australian cyberfeminist collective, VNS Matrix / Merchants of Slime.
’90s-period CRT phosphor colours, monospace fonts, highly structured and interlinked data, emerging from over a year of conversations and work with the Merchants of Slime. Deep adoration for Web 1.0 aesthetics, sliding into contemporary possibilities for accessibility, interaction, responsiveness, and clarity.
By far the largest project I’ve undertaken, handling archival data management, utterly masses of PHP, JS, and CSS, and teasing out over months the design, aesthetic, and movement through hundreds of pages and thousands of media files – all while trying to keep it properly accessible, semantic, responsive, logical, even simple, while the phosphor burns the screen.
Heaps big thanks to Virginia Barratt and VNS Matrix for going, “Yeah, Frances is what we want.” And hectic reps to research assistant Clare Bartholomaeus for all the scanning and cataloguing.
Phosphor burn digital archaeology slime archive for the 21st century, cunt.
I saw the second full run-through last Sunday of Isabelle Schad’s new work, Reflection, wrapped in the proscenium arch on the HAU1 stage. Everything I could hope for in the continuation of her group works. Opens May 30th.
Isabelle Schad / Reflection / HAU1
Thursday, 30.05.2019, 19:00, world premiere, HAU Hebbel am Ufer (HAU1)
further performances:
31.05.2019, 19:00
01.06.2019, 19:00
02.06.2019, 19:00A group of performers negotiates the theatre as a space for social gathering, (re)presentation and an apparatus whose motors interact with the biomechanics and different energies of the human body’s movements. Reflection is the last part of a trilogy on the collective body. From the community that we form (Collective Jumps) to the analogy of nature (Pieces and Elements), Reflection brings the focus to energetic and physical forces that make us move and the importance of the singularity to move others.
Credits:
Concept & Choreography: Isabelle Schad | Co-Choreography & Performance: Jozefien Beckers, Barbara Berti, Frederike Doffin, Ewa Dziarnowska, Naïma Ferré, Josephine Findeisen, Przemek Kaminski, Mathis Kleinschnittger, Manuel Lindner, Jan Lorys, Josh Marcy, Claudia Tomasi, Nir Vidan, Natalia Wilk | Dramaturgical & Artistic Collaboration: Saša Božić | Artistic Assistance: Claudia Tomasi | Composition & Sound: Damir Šimunović | Light Design & Technical Direction: Emma Juliard | Costumes: Charlotte Pistorius | Costume Assistance: Maja Svartåker | Theoretical Collaboration: Elena Basteri | Production Management: Heiko Schramm | Production: Isabelle Schad | Supported by: Wiesen55 e.V.In the frame of Performing Arts Festival Berlin / 28. May to 2. June 2019 / Performing Arts Festival Berlin 2019
more informations: Isabelle Schad / HAU
For realz. That good.
