Rosemary Butcher

Audience engagement formats with Rosemary Butcher
Meeting of Minds: 16.8. | 17:00 | Akademie der Künste: Rosemary Butcher & Susan Leigh Foster
Meet the Artists: 02.09. | after the performance | HAU1
Dance Circle: 03.09. | after the performance | HAU1

This double bill at the Akademie der Künste consists of a new video installation and a live performance which reflect on memory in relationship to the present and future. “Secrets of the Open Sea”, a triptych video installation, circles around the tension be- tween loss and recovery and creates a sculptural and immersive experience around the concept ‘desolation of things past and decayed’. Butcher’s inspiration for the work was the story of a small community in Beirut who had been lost at sea and whose identity was only established after photographs found under rubble following a demolition of buildings were analysed. References to and from the past remain integral to the work which functions as an active ‘searching’ for ‘lost legacies’ that the spectator engages in.

Similarly the performance “The Test Pieces” is about searching for what remains, while at the same time questioning the perception of a performance as an event. Five dancers arrange ropes in an extensive space, while cameras capture apparently arbitrary details of their activity on floor screens. The Test Pieces was initially created for the 110-metre-long Galerie Kunstbau/Lenbachhaus in the Munich underground station Köngisplatz. With this site-specific work, alongside a perspective of ‘looking at something that has its root elsewhere’, in a process of choreographic notation that shifts forward and backwards in time, Butcher also reflects on her close connection to the Judson Dance Movement which she witnessed when living in New York City during the early 1970s.

 
Retrospektive Rosemary Butcher Memory in the Present Tense

Duration: 80min with intermission

Secrets of the Open Sea

Supported by Arts Council England, Middlesex University, Dance4, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.

The Test Pieces

Original cast Nottdance 2015: Rosemary Butcher; with dancers Sabine Glenz, Judith Hummel, Ana Mira, Katrin Schafitel; Sound Simon Keep, Live Video Sam Williams, Technical Designer Karsten Tinapp. Supported by Arts Council England, Middlesex University, Dance 4, Tanztendenz Munich, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in cooperation with Joint Adventures Munich, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, and Tanz im August.