“Scripted Smalltalk” is a 60 min performance where the audience is reading scripted dialogues. The scripts are mostly about the scripts themselves intermingled with other trivial or existential matters: tv series, common fears in theatrical situations that involve audience participation, boredom and fun, love, chaos and communication, whatever. There is no action on stage, the choreographer/author distributes scripts and microphones and halfway into the show brings candies and vodka. This performance is “choreography” in the literal sense of the word – writing of the chorus.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

photos by Ouidade Soussi-Chiadmi

Co-production Tanzquartier Wien 2009 and Wiener Tanz und Musik Bewegung

Performances:

Arteleku San Sebastian 24. February 2012 (in Spanish)

Kanuti Gildi SAAL 2, and 3. February 2012 (in Estonian)

Tanzquartier Wien, FEEDBACK Festival 19. November 2011 (in English)

MDT Stockholm 27.August 2011

Laboratoires D’Aubervilliers 31. April 2011 (in French)

EXCERPT

Review in DN (in swedish)

Once Upon is a performance of very small things in a theatre. A kind of an inverted Estonian fairy tale that puts an emphasis on time, extended duration, stating the obvious and all the missing elements in a narrative.

They say folks that can manage big things never can manage little ones.
A proper fairy tale told by a narrating princess. 
A handheld dinosaur speaks prophetic wisdom. 
A mesmerizing adventure video uncovers ancient truths. You’ll see it all in: Once upon.
PS: including special appearance cat, dog and bird in ABSOLUTE DARKNESS!!!

Coproduction Kanuti Gildi SAAL, Imagetanz Wien 2006

with the support of Kulturabteilung Stadt Wien

dramaturgical advice: Berno Odo Polzer

50 min

NIMK

Xing 2010

reviews: Helmut Ploebst in Corpus (in german), Petr Karlovsky in Tanznetz (in English), Tiiu Laks in Eesti Päevaleht (in Estonian), Hanno Soans in Postimees (in Estonian)

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

A Text is a List of Effects of Being Exposed to the Vacuum of Outer Space und eine Parataxe ist eine in sich selbst faltende Falle. Readings of “The Ninth Biospherian”

From 1991 to 1993 eight people lived in a monumental greenhouse in the middle of the Arizona desert. The closed ecosystem of Biosphere 2 provided the team with oxygen and food and had been planned as a test site for future space colonies. Roni Layerson’s science fiction novel The Ninth Biospherian approaches this utopian space age ruin as dispersed collection of articles and fragments. To date, this predominantly paratactic text about an imaginary ninth crew member has practically been considered unreadable – not to speak of staging it. In their reading, Juurak and Mayer unfold the book‘s list-like excesses and place its parataxis into the big empty void. A persistent rumour has it that one instantly dies in the vacuum of outer space; yet for one or two minutes a fascinating scene can be observed.

“So who is this Ninth Biospherian but a final inversion of the mechanisms in Solaris, the dystopia of that dystopia? In Solaris, every crew member is haunted by its memories come alive, sent by the enigmatic planet below the space station. In The Ninth Biospherian, there is no crew left and the space station is the haunted image of planet Earth’s own replica. The eponymous figure is an evacuated ghost, a memory left in the vacuum of time, the non-echo of the past’s future.” Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future

By and with Krõõt Juurak and Ralo Mayer

Sound concept Andreas Berger/Glim

90 min

Co-production: Juurak/Mayer and brut Wien. With the support of the Cultural Department of the City of Vienna and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture

PerformIC  1.July 2010 Introduction

Review in Corpus by Fahim Amir