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Schubot/

Gradinger

THE NATURE OF US

2019

"The Nature of Us" is a declaration of love to Nature. Not in the sense of an exaggeration and glorification of the supposed other, but as an open turn and equal encounter with it. With the aim of initiating a change in collective consciousness, the new choreography by Jared Gradinger and Angela Schubot in conjunction with five human and ten plant performers is a sensitive plea for the dissolution of the human-nature dichotomy. “The Nature of Us” is the third part of Angela Schubot and Jared Gradinger’s new cycle of work in co-creation with Nature. Here they have invited both human and plant allies as well as a sound and light gardener and finally the audience into a post-human group choreography. On stage, a soil-less garden with multiple voices emerge from sounds and bodies. “The Nature of Us” searches for a consciousness that neither suppresses nor exaggerates Nature, instead, makes space for a co-creative polyphony.

Concept and Choreography: Angela Schubot und Jared Gradinger

in co-creation with Nature


Von & mit: Comfrey, Andreea David, Fern, Geranie, Goldrute, Jared Gradinger, Chestnut, Clover, Lavender, Roberto Martínez, Moss, Andrius Mulokas, Liz Rosenfeld, Datura, Anouk Thériault, White Sage and others


Light Garden: Annegret Schalke


Sound Garden: Stefan Rusconi


Costume: Claudia Hill


Costume Assistants: Diane Esnault, Emilia Patrignani 


Artistic Collaborator: Sigal Zouk


Coaching: Shannon Cooney


Assistant: Sofia Fantuzzi


Photo: Rachel de Joode


Presse, Production: björn & björn
Produced by Angela Schubot and Jared Gradinger. Co-production HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Ponderosa, and Nature.

Supported by Hauptstadtkulturfonds

Weasels, trolls, anteaters, mumins? In addition, chirps, marbles, whispering - like melodic echolalia of an unknown language without speaking, without the compulsion of grammar, more like something pearly, something that grows in a vegetative pulse but never becomes a pure rhythm, more like the modulation movements of a humming ecosystem. Later, the chimella shells turn into music that sounds like the child touching time*, like repetitive snippets of lullabies of another species or perhaps more of a new entity that removes the compulsion of taxonomies - not like a snake, the skin, but like two bodies that lay down their bodily boundaries, like the attempt to do so, commented by this symphonic jazz number: Does anyone laugh at the pathos of desire to become one? So much desire at all between persuasion, bewitchment, violence and mountains of loudspeakers - a festival of survival that has nothing reassuring about it, a solidarity in the unknown that turns into intoxication, and right in the middle: oases of quiet intensities. (Four point Five: Writing on Dance)
 
 
Breathing, heaving, panting: are they pumping each other up with new breath or are they sucking all the air from each other’s lungs?
The connection by the mouth may be a communal attempt at supporting the weak in solidarity, but it may just as well be a fight for survival, with the strongest emerging victorious. They are rough, they are raw, they are fearless, sharing secrets and hissing excitedly in each other’s ears – I, too, want to hear! Wild and. The energy is high, the performers are high, the audience is high – save the man in green who has fallen asleep in the corner. (Four point Five: Writing on Dance)

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Photo by Dieter Hartwig
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Photo by Dieter Hartwig
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Photo by Dieter Hartwig
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