icon | 2010 & 2011
Videotrailer (QuickTimeFilm, 15 MB)
Performances: 22., 23., 24., 25. Juni 2011, 21.00 h
DOCK 11, Berlin, www.dock11-berlin.de
14th European Dance Festival Cyprus: 29. Juni 2011, 20.30 h
Rialto Theatre, Limassol, Zypern, www.rialto.com.cy
Concept: Walter Bickmann, Doris Kolde
Choreography/ Production: Walter Bickmann
Dance/ Creation: Lydia Klement, Stella Zannou, Erol Alexandrov, Andy Zondag
Choreographic Assistence: Lydia Klement
Video: Walter Bickmann, Doris Kolde
Lighting Design: Asier Solana Arce
Press Work: k3 Berlin
Subsidized by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds
and the Bezirksamt Pankow von Berlin/ Amt für Kultur und Bildung
Produced at and supported by DOCK 11 EDEN*****
The dance performance “icon” adresses aspects of identity, sovereignty, intimacy, and publicity in the context of personal interaction and communication. How do digital media and their tendency to abstract and rationalize influence our communication processes? What effects does the loss of physical presence have as we open up new areas of action and experience in the internet?
In his projects, the choreographer and video artist Walter Bickmann brings a complex structure of visual, sound, and movement layers to life. Film projections become an integrated part of the live performance and allow for an additional, virtual dimension of expression that goes beyond the limits of reality and creates unexpected viewpoints of atmospherical density.Press: [...] Die projizierten Bilder erweitern die physische Präsenz, sie erleichtern es, verschiedene Stimmungen gleichzeitig zu erzeugen: Während die Tänzer sich auf der Bühne bewegen, werden Bilder ihrer tanzenden Körper per Video auf die Wand projiziert. Die technisch erzeugten Bilder sind dabei ebenso stark wie die Live-Performance selbst. Diese Verdoppelung lässt uns die Tänzer näher, zerbrechlicher und zwiespältiger erscheinen – denn den realen Körpern trauen wir ganz andere Emotionen zu als ihren Abbildern. Das lässt die Tänzer aber auch als empfindende Menschen stärker in den Vordergrund treten [...]
Marianne Burki, Neue Zürcher Zeitung 03.09.2011
[...] Seine (Bickmanns) Stärke ist die völlige Abwesenheit von Ironie. Seine choreographische Kunst: Bilder ohne doppelten Boden, fulminante Hingabe an das Handwerk. [...] Es ist der Film, der zweite Blick des Technischen, der den ersten Blick auf den Körper zu Sinn und Gefühl trägt. [...]
Arnd Wesemann, tanz Juni 2011
White Noise/ Walter Bickmann’s new production at DOCK 11 turns the dancer into an “icon”. The room itself already holds tension. On the back wall four white screens are mounted. The floor is covered with white marley. The screens and the marley in their clarity chafe against the raw brick walls in the performance space of DOCK 11. Blurrily fragmented and jerkily slow, a camera moves over bodies, heads, and hands. It’s about people, their reflections in the video, the interaction of image and reality, what Walter Bickmann develops as “icon” in the course of an hour, solidly and quietly. [...] The first highlight is Zannou’s floor solo, which starts with a pointed finger of a lifted arm, using the arm as a motor. The body gets twisted into unreal sculptural figures, with an increasingly larger and faster tumble across the floor. Again and again in what follows, bodies are looking to burst open their limits. Taking over Zannou’s play with hands at first, the three dancers then fall into prismatic patterns, shaping them into liminal beings, grown together at the heads. That leads to two parallel duets, one head to head, the other with linked legs. Simultaneously their video images are sitting in tight chambers. What Bickmann created in this live dance alone, in terms of the organically woven togetherness with no loss of contact is unique in the Berlin scene. [...]
Volkmar Draeger, Neues Deutschland 29.06.2010