Making Dances - Dancing Replies: Story (1963)

From the old, we learn new things, a Japanese proverb says. This inspired Ty Boomershine and his company Dance On Ensemble to a special project. Dance On Ensemble invited four exciting contemporary choreographers to create their own versions of three iconic dance works, by Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and Lucinda Childs. Tim Etchells, Mathilde Monnier and the young duo Ginevra Panzetti & Enrico Ticconi 'reply' to a dance classic and thus link up dance history with the present.

Dance On employs dancers who are 40 years of age or older and who worked with some of the biggest names in dance history. -|-Miki Orihara danced with the Martha Graham Company. Boomershine worked with dance innovator Merce Cunningham and with Lucinda Childs. Their movements and dance language were etched into their dancers' bodies, as it were. Dance On now wants to pass on these personal experiences to new generations of creators and audiences.

In the 30^th edition of Julidans, Dance On Ensemble responds to three historical works with three new answers. The audience gets to see two performances: both the iconic work and the new interpretation.

Martha Graham (1894 -1991) is regarded as the grandmother of modern dance. With her own dance company, which she founded in the 1930s, and her own completely new dance technique, she challenged the strict rules of classical ballet with its formalised postures and positions. For Graham, dance should not be a preconceived form, but a free expression of the deepest feelings and emotions. The movements had to originate from there. With her expressionist dance, or psychodrama, she laid the foundations of modern dance.

In Etchells' installation, we see Miki Orihara, who danced with Martha Graham's company herself for almost thirty years. In his theatre work, Etchells engages into a serious and playful dialogue with existing works of art and artists, constantly moving between theatre, visual media, music or text. -|-For example, he created a composition and a series of publications under the title Unsound Method (After Conrad) as a reply to Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness. The live performance/video Untitled (After Violent Incident) was a direct response to Bruce Nauman's installation Violent Incident.

Together with Miki Ohari, Etchells wants to enter into a dialogue with Graham and her work, and in doing so, also look for the tensions, contrasts, and different ideas in that work.

Suddenly, any movement could be dance. That was unprecedented! It was a liberation, but also a shock for the conservative dance scene. In the 1950s, the American Merce Cunningham was one of the pioneers who drastically renewed dance. He put aside the codes and rules of academic dance and opened up the language of dance. He did not tell a fairy tale or a story in a realistic setting, but based his abstract choreographies on the rhythms of music (by minimalist John Cage, for example), the movements of the ocean or the swarming of people in the streets of New York.

What can we learn from Cunningham's work today? As part of the Dancing Replies project, the Berlin-based company Dance On invited an exceptional French dance maker: Mathilde Monnier. She gives her reply to Cunningham's Story from 1963.

-|-If anyone knows how to constantly renew herself and her repertoire, it is the French choreographer Mathilde Monnier. The fact that you don't know what to expect makes her a maverick in French dance. At the same time, she is a big name in the international dance scene. Since 1994, she has headed the Centre Choréographique in Montpellier. Her work is abstract and conceptual, playful and fascinating. In her dance, she explores the legacy of the past to build a bridge to the future.

bodies, as it were. Dance On now wants to pass on these personal experiences to new generations of creators and audiences.

Deep Song
Deep Song is presented by arrangement through Martha Graham Resources, a division of the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, Inc.
choreography and costume Martha Graham
music Henry Cowell
lighting design reconstruction David Finley
restaging Miki Orihara
with Miki Orihara
lighting Martin Beeretz
sound Mattef Kuhlmey

Everything/Nothing
neon Installation Tim Etchells

Amsterdam Story, A re-imagining of Story
choreography Merce Cunningham
additional choreographic directions and material developed by the Dance On Ensemble directed by Daniel Squire based on the 1963 dance Story, choreographed by Merce Cunningham.
An indeterminate work that is reconfigured for each performance using both random operations and decision making during the performance.
Supported by the NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ International Guest Performance Fund for Dance, which is funded by the Federal
Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
This production of Amsterdam Story is presented under license from the Merce Cunningham Trust.

cast Ty Boomershine, Emma Lewis, Gesine Moog, Miki Orihara, Tim Persent, Marco Volta, Jone San Martin
live music Mattef Kuhlmey
artist Anne Jan Reijn
stager Daniel Squire
lighting design Patrick Lauckner/Falk Dittrich
sound design Mattef Kuhlmey
costume Sophia Piepenbrock-Saitz
assistant to the director Clarissa Omiecienski
technical director Martin Beeretz

-|- never ending (Story)
choreography Mathilde Monnier
cast Ty Boomershine, Emma Lewis, Jone San Martin, Gesine Moog, Marco Volta
lighting design Martin Beeretz
sound design Mattef Kuhlmey
artistic collaboration Stéphane Bouquet
costume Mathilde Monnier
assistant costume Nora Stocker
technical direction Martin Beeretz

Dance On / General Credits
artistic director dance on ensemble Ty Boomershine
managing director Diehl+Ritter Madeline Ritter
technical director Martin Beeretz
technical support Vito Walter
production manager Isa Köhler and Hélène Philippot
assistant production Pauline Stöhr
photography and video Jubal Battisti
communication Johanna Lühr

DANCE ON is financed by the Commissioner for Culture and Media of the German Federal Government, the Senate Department for Culture and Europe of the State of Berlin
and co-financed by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union within the framework of DANCE ON, PASS ON, DREAM ON.