DANCE/Vienna
ImPulsTanz Festival
July 8 - August8

Brilliant showcase of international dance works, brought together in Vienna. The "Festival Lounge" starts up on July 15 at quarterier21, then runs concurrent to the dance program, giving people a sexy central place to meet up. Heavy on soul/world dub/jazztronica.

The festival also features "tradeMARK"; a series of informal interactions/performances with choreographers, to view works-in-progress.

Held at Arsenal/Art for Art, "tradeMARK" takes place every Tuesday at 6:30pm. Tentative program:

July 13, Raimund Hoghe and Helmut Ploebst
July 20: erikM, Mathilde Monnier, Nuno Rebelo
July 27: Alain Buffard, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Damien Jalet, David Zambrano
August 3: Isabelle Ginot, Benoit Lachambre, Helmut Ploebst, Frans Poelstra

Main program/Highlights:

"Once"
July 11, 9pm - Volkstheater
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker

A record player, a chair, a thermos flask - and dancer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. An old vinyl record: Joan Baez in concert, 1963.

The dancer wears a blue dress, like the one worn by the singer on the cover. She turns on the record player - a plea from the past, directed towards the present.

With precision and simplicity, De Keersmaeker levels her gentle accusation at a ghostly audience, both past and present: in the interim, she seems to say, we've learned nothing.

Created before the war against Iraq, "Once" is a manifesto, the Belgian choreographer's touching statement against arrogance, destruction and war.

"ZZ"
July 17, 9pm - Odeon
Akemi Takeya

An ordinary table glass is singing. The dancer's fingers move along its edge, an unearthly melody fills the room. In her piece "ZZ" choreographer Akemi Takeya successfully unites sound and movement; we watch her dancing the water, and drinking the dance, summoning and assembling splinters of memory. Takeya's presence on stage is captivatingly intense; a restrained and emotionally taut performance.

"déroutes"
July 21, 23, 9pm - Odeon
Mathilde Monnier/CCN Montpellier

A network of hidden relationships develops onstage. Thirteen dancers, male and female, encounter each other and start to walk, at random.

Mathilde Monnier's piece "déroutes" is based on Georg Buechner's "Lenz", yet the original piece is ground out under the weight of countless steps, scattered to form a pattern of hooded cues, deleted movements, reluctant steps and random time/traffic pattern units.

Within this apparent chaos ("déroute"), however, are stable, geometric patterns. Electronica icon eRikm contributes a live score.

"Publique"
July 26, 9pm - Volkstheater
Mathilde Monnier/CCN Montpellier

More Mathilde...This time, Monnier's group piece, "publique," focuses on a public phenomenon: dancing in a club. Here, dance is deconstructed to become a chronology of gestures, common property in a world governed by rhythm, allure and infatuation.

"No Comment"
July 28,30, 9pm - Akademietheater
Jan Lauwers with Needcompany

"No Comment", the latest production by versatile Belgian artist and founder of Needcompany, Jan Lauwers, presents portraits of four women and their rebellion against rigid gender roles and images.

A Bali dancer (Grace Ellen Barkey), describes the death of her fuller self, when the audience expects her to conform to a one-sided image: they want nothing more from her than sensuality, passivity and exoticism.

Somewhat ironically, the publicity still being used to promote "No Comment" is -- yep. The Bali dancer who's trapped by her own beauty.

The irony of the irony, if that's possible, is that the conscious selection of the still underscores the point being made in the piece, in the first place. Jan Lauwers is one subtle guy. But moving on...

Next, "Salome" (Anneke Bonnema) tells a tale of violent orgies that caused the death of several young girls and her own sister, yet she's curiously removed from the trauma, behaving as if all this happened to some other person.

Terrorist Ulrike (Viviane De Muynck), is a ticking time bomb, losing her self to a cause greater than her own identity.

She�s haunted by images, and struggles to separate cause and effect. All alone, in a department store, she begins her final mission...

In the fourth and final piece, Tijn Lawton dispenses with words. By means of body language alone, she creates an expressive self-portrait taking the shape of one solitary dance solo which repeats itself in tense, infinite loops.

A rational, unsparing stocktaking of four different lives and ways of life, all full of violence, love, death and eroticism.

"Tempus Fugit"
July 29, 31, 9pm - Volkstheater
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Les Ballets C. de la B.

Time flies, carried by a wind of irretrievable moments. In his latest piece, 28-year-old Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, choreographer of "Foi", concerns himself with the rhythm and speed of time, fascinated by its pattern of repetition and déja vu.

In "Tempus fugit", created in collaboration with Tanztheater Wuppertal (Pina Bausch), eight dancers, male and female, three singers and a group of musicians dive into the sea of time, exploring caverns of timelessness in dance, commenting on our experience of present time, our relationship with the past and future, blurring the boundaries of cultural ties and national identity. He also explores our perception of time: how quickly hours of pleasure pass, and how slowly those we spend waiting or in pain.

Find it/main venues:

Akademietheater
Lisztstrasse 1
Get info: (01) 51444- 4740

Odeon
Taborstrasse 10
Get info: (01) 216-51-27

Volkstheater
Neustiftgasse 1
Get info: (01) 523-35-01-331

Arsenal/Art for Art
Ghegastrasse, Objekt 19
Get info: (01) 514-44-5412

Festival Lounge (10pm-3am)
Ovalhalle/quartier21, Museumsquartier
Museumsplatz 1

Find more dance features in the July 2004 issue of "Arte Six".