Doris Uhlich

“Uhlich allows her protagonists a mild, self-ironic distance to their own fates: a remarkable performance by a remarkable artist.” Salzburger Nachrichten

“A moving evening that proves a comeback can also be quite relaxed. Don’t miss it! Kronen Zeitung

“In the ballet system, starting at the age of 40 a dancer no longer fits the image of lightness and eternal youth. Yet there is still potential and trained strength in the bodies that no longer have a spot on the opera stage. I’m interested in unearthing this fallow potential and re-orientation of it in my contemporary dance system without judging my system better.” Doris Uhlich

Choreographer Doris Uhlich’s Come Back brings five former ballet dancers from Vienna’s State Opera and People’s Opera back to the brut stage long after the end of their dance careers. The dancers spent a year working with Uhlich on a futuristic archaeology: based on internalised hierarchy and ballet’s rigorous physical techniques, which came second nature to them back in the day, this work wasn’t about some nostalgic retrospective or about personal failures, but rather focused on risky perspectives: what power is in these disciplined bodies, transformed by time, in the here and now? Where can this power be discharged today? How can you make an internalised system flexible? While their contemporaries were revolting against the current system at the end of the 1960s, they were training at the bar. Did they follow this time of change? Were they aware of the changes going on outside? With their Come Back these former dancers are founding their own radical and self-ironic revolutionary movement as pensioners. Their material: politically volatile figures that are shaking at the disciplining of their bodies, searching for utopic landscapes of movement, and who view their limits as a political opportunity. Come Back is the third instalment of a trilogy in which Doris Uhlich explores the historic development and the stringent forms of classic ballet. In SPITZE [Pointe] (2008), Uhlich grappled with the idea of dance en pointe and the romantic idealisation of the ballerina. In Rising Swan (2010) Uhlich allowed the Dying Swan by Anna Pavlova to rise again in the present and related it to the ebb and flow of world affairs.
www.dorisuhlich.at

Following the premiere on 16 January discs will be jockeyed in the Bar im Künstlerhaus: the incredible sparkling DJanes Ruth & Andrea spin Sixties, disco, and queer pop*. Come, dance and celebrate!

Audience talk on 24 January following the show.

Choreography Doris Uhlich Dramaturgic collaboration Constanze Schellow Lighting Monika Gruber Sound Gerald Pappenberger Interior design Alexander Schellow Artistic consultation Yoshie Maruoka Production Christine Sbaschnigg | insert (Theaterverein) With Marialuise Jaska, Susanne Kirnbauer, Percy Kofranek, Renate Loucky, Violetta Springnagel-Storch

A co-production of brut Wien, De Internationale Keuze van de Rotterdamse Schouwburg Rotterdam, Festspielhaus St. Pölten, Göteborgs Dans & Teater Festival Gothenburg, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt am Main, NXTSTP, steirischer herbst Graz. With the kind support of the European Union’s Culture Programme and the City of Vienna’s Department of Cultural Affairs. Thanks to Judith Staudinger, Elisabeth Schack, Armin Anders and Andrea Salzmann.

€ 14/€ 8/€ 6 with the brutkarte*