You can find a
trailer for the performance ↪
here.
An
interview with Kareth Schaffer & ninus you can find ↪
here.
Bee Dances presents the first collaboration by the Indonesian choreographer ninus and the Berlin-based choreographer Kareth Schaffer. Moving into the digital realm as a livestream at the end of February 2021 for reasons familiar by now,
Bee Dances is an embodied exploration of what cultural exchange can mean in postcolonial times. How are different dance techniques inscribed in the bodies of the six dancers—from Indonesia and Europe—and how do flows of physical knowledge spread around the globe?
Bee Dances maps the interconnections between contemporary dance as is often performed in Berlin and traditional Indonesian dance techniques, tracing their interrelations through a series of interventions, interviews, reconstructions, and new choreographies. The famous Balinese love duet by I Mario, Oleg Tamulilingan, is a key reference, as is the “waggle dance” of Asian and European honey bees (apis cerana and apis mellifera), first correctly described by German zoologist Karl von Frisch. The six dancers are accompanied by live music by Klaus Janek as well as by composer I Wayan Gede Purnama Gita’s gamelan musicians, whose digital presences float through the performance space of Uferstudios 1 on moving projection screens. Developed in the austere confines of the Berlin winter lockdown,
Bee Dances explores notions of responsibility and proximity through a probing mutual pollination of movements, concepts, languages, histories, physicalities, and performers.