Alessandro Schiattarella, Zer-Brech-Lich. Photo © Rosenstock Motion

review, article

Swiss Dance Days 2024

Read Icon Read
Time Icon Pink 12 min
Alessandro Schiattarella, Zer-Brech-Lich. Photo © Rosenstock Motion
S pink identity

Walking between the Fra-Gi-Le, the absurd, the (un)dressy and the obscene – a weekend at the 12th edition of Swiss Dance Days

Since it was founded in 1996, Swiss Dance Days have become a key moment for local artists to present their works and forge partnerships with international dance professionals. So it’s no surprise that this biennial platform, now co-organised with Reso – Dance Network Switzerland, essentially brings together a large panel of presenters and programmers. But the event is also intended for those who, like me, are looking for fast-track insights into today’s Swiss dance scene. After Basel, Geneva, Lausanne, Bern, Lucerne and Lugano, the twelfth edition of Swiss Dance Days was the second one held in Zurich. On this occasion, the city welcomed around 230 presenters, some from as far away as Haiti, South Korea, Tunisia and Colombia. The 2024 harvest was particularly plentiful: no less than 218 works were submitted by Swiss-based artists and companies to the five-member jury consisting of Joanna Lesnierowska, Laurence Perez, Simone Truong, Laurence Wagner and Emanuel Rosenberg – none related to the Swiss programming team, and so more independent in handpicking the fifteen works of the final selection than in previous editions. I may have caught only two of the five days of the platform, but the six pieces I attended provided a sample that gave me plenty of food for thought.

For me it’s a four-hour train from Paris to Zurich, and I’m eager to jump on the platform’s bandwagon. After stopping by Gessnerallee, an interdisciplinary venue which will serve as the platform’s cosy, dim-lit headquarters, I go straight to the Xenix cinema. There, most of the presenters and programmers are watching a screening of Cindy Van Acker/Cie Greffe’s piece Without References, which could not be presented live since Romeo Castellucci’s scenography did not fit in any of Zurich’s venues. As the audience leave the room to grab lunch at the adjacent Xenix Bar, opinions abound. In various languages, I hear ‘great work!’’ and ‘captivating choreography!’, but also ‘too long a film’, ‘not to the standard of the live version’ and ‘too far from our local dance scene’s centre of interest’. A diversity of people as well as works of course results in a diversity of responses.

From here, some of Swiss Dance Days participants follow two volunteers on a thirty-minute walk across Zurich’s charming historic district (pastel façades and paved streets straight out of a fairy tale) to the next venue. On the way, I share a stimulating conversation about dance criticism and post-modern dance with Swiss-Italian artists and company directors Ariella Vidach and Claudio Prati. As with many such platforms, part of the value lies in such unplanned and in-between encounters that the experience affords – and Swiss Dance Days made room for many of these, thanks to a smooth and well-balanced schedule.


Alessandro Schiattarella, Zer-Brech-Lich

Before we know it, we reach Theater Neumarkt for Alessandro Schiattarella’s Zer-Brech-Lich. In English, the title would read something like ‘Fra-Gi-Le’. The three performers introduce themselves through their disabilities: Alice is partly deaf (or as she puts it, she has one ear just for jewelry), Laila (aka Lai) needs crutches to walk, and Victoria (aka Vi) has hand disorders and skin scars. Further on, they detail their likes and wants, the clothes they’re wearing (a glittery holographic costume, a shiny golden suit and sports shorts with a furry violet vest) and the scenography surrounding them (three panels, two walls of soft white bricks and three platforms on wheels). There’s a fair share of singing (with lyrics like ‘Watch me how I break’ and ‘Who knows what I will break again?’) and playing with stage props (twirling a fluorescent wire, or crashing the soft walls to turn the bricks into piano keys). All three performers find creative ways to move their bodies around, eventually setting up a greenscreen to picture themselves in outer space, underwater, or high in the sky with the camera filters of a cell phone. But if Schiattarella’s poetics of fragility bring up clever ideas to shed light on still too invisible artists, he might have been too literal. While the performing trio draws its strength from physical differences, Zer-Brech-Lich prioritises issues and ideas in contemporary performing arts above its own choreographic framework.


S pink identity
SACRE! a collaboration with Theater HORA, Teresa Vittucci and Annina Machaz. Photo © Philip Frowein
SACRE! a collaboration with Theater HORA, Teresa Vittucci and Annina Machaz. Photo © Philip Frowein

It’s late afternoon when we leave Theater Neumarkt and head to Tanzhaus Zürich. This institution for contemporary choreographic creation is nestled further down the road and faces the Limmat River. But the venue’s cosy atmosphere doesn’t prepare you for what is coming: waiting inside, Theater HORA’s artists have no intention of keeping still. This long-standing independent Zurich-based theatre, dance and performance ensemble is composed solely of performers with learning disabilities. Over more than thirty years, the company has worked with various internationally renowned artists, such as Jérôme Bel, Rimini Protokoll and Milo Rau. For Swiss Dance Days 2024, Theater Hora present SACRE!, a 2022 collaboration with performers and choreographers Teresa Vittucci and Annina Machaz. The project here is to reinterpret the Rite of Spring’s music and choreography in a stage designed like oral cavity. But taking on the Ballets Russes’ famous 1913 scandal is a serious challenge.

First, Machaz lies naked on a tongue-shaped area on stage, while sounds of exhalation echo from a throat-like backcloth with a dangling uvula in the middle. To this point, the piece is vaguely reminiscent of the ballet’s original plot, revolving around the pagan sacrifice of a young maiden. Suddenly, seven Theater HORA performers, each wearing a black shirt with a white tooth printed on the back, burst in, handcuff Machaz and kick her out of the room. Then the whole thing is turned upside-down. After a lip-sync interlude to the Backstreet Boys’ ‘I Want It That Way’, Stravinsky’s original score resumes, now punctuated with burps and hiccups. The human sacrifice becomes the digital slaughter of a half-cut cardboard finger on wheels. Eccentric long-haired masked sibyls in garish get-up (all designed by Theater HORA) randomly cross the stage. Throughout this absurd piece, the performers are full of energy and resources: beyond a praiseworthy social significance, the piece’s biggest pleasure remains the artists’ acting and dance skills. On Stravinsky’s disruptive and contrasted score, the performers’ overflowing enthusiasm and generosity moved the audience, especially Lucas Maurer’s solo, whose gestures seemed to flow with the music and conveyed a captivating energy.


ZOO/Thomas Hauert, Efeu

Leaving Tanzhaus, the audience roughly divides into the happy few who got a ticket to Pierre Piton’s Open/Closed at Schauspielhaus Zürich, and the others (including me) who catch the last show of the day, ZOO/Thomas Hauert’s Efeu (‘ivy’) at Theater der Kunst. It features three female performers, all graduates of P.A.R.T.S. school in Brussels, and the choreographer himself, who entangle and run all over a white tarpaulin spreading like a trail of branches on the ground. Dressed with loose greyish tops and flashy colourful shorts, they try to bond with the earth – some spectators could find postcards with herbarium-style drawings of leaves, trees and plants on their seats – and explore a specific use of touch leading to challenge the performers’ bodies in acrobatic figures. To the sounds of an Italian song, bird chirps, or in silence, Samantha van Wissen and Federica Porello form a duet with bendy bony gestures. Then, Hauert and Sarah Ludi form an inextricable pair of bodies, rolling over, twisting their legs and arms, multiplying brief physical contacts. When one pair performs, the other steps off the stage to watch them. The first moments give rise to intriguing moving scenes, but after a while the audience has a hard time staying connected with the performers: their constant rolling and running around go in circle without perceptibly deepening the movement. Highly reminiscent of contact improvisation, the piece unexpectedly echoes the sad news of contact improvisation pioneer Steve Paxton’s recent death. But it also raises the question of how an intimate and self-absorbed choreographic practice may not fit onstage in a one-hour piece. But as for what concretely and physically happens onstage, Efeu designs a whole world revolving on its own.


S pink identity
DOS, with Valentin Pythoud and Marco Delgado. Photo © Delgado Fuchs/Jérôme Bourquin
DOS, with Valentin Pythoud and Marco Delgado. Photo © Delgado Fuchs/Jérôme Bourquin

The next morning starts off with a highlight of the weekend, the Salon d’artistes, where Swiss-based artists – here Catol Teixeira, Juliette Uzor, Muhammed Kaltuk and Ernestyna Orlowska – individually get to present insights and sneak-peeks of their work exclusively to presenters, an intimate networking format that aims to develop international artistic cooperation. Screenings, discussions and performances last until lunchbreak, after which the schedule resumes with public shows at Zirkusquartier – an artistic oasis in a remote area of Zurich surrounded by buildings and a highway. The Delgado Fuchs collective comprises dancer-choreographers Nadine Fuchs and Marco Delgado, but only the latter takes part in DOS, a duet with Valentin Pythoud. The work is well structured and takes a firm artistic stance. In loose shirts and electric blue tracksuits, at first quietly and awkwardly standing still, the artists slowly start moving, making their own soundscape with squeaky, moaning and meowing sounds. As they go from aerobics to tango steps, by way of stylish poses and Dirty Dancing’s iconic lift, the pair cast a half-serious, half-cheeky stare at the audience. The duet makes some witty and funny movement discoveries, thanks to ingenious abilities to connect bodies with entangled legs or matching sounds, mixing dance and humour. But banking it all on the out-of-sync and off-the-wall vibe is tricky. The choreography runs out of ideas before it runs out of time.


Alexandra Bachzetsis, 2020: Obscene. Photo © Melanie Hofmann
Alexandra Bachzetsis, 2020: Obscene. Photo © Melanie Hofmann

Also dealing with ambivalence of forms and body identities, the next show, back at Gessnerallee, sets a completely different tone. Interdisciplinary artist Alexandra Bachzetsis’s latest work, 2020: Obscene is based on the ambiguity in the term ‘obscene’, which etymologically refers to what should not be shown onstage, and therefore to the ill-omened or abominable signs. Here, the piece aims at exploring the ambiguities and manipulative potentialities of bodies in performing arts, through the lens of the coveting gaze and extreme textual seduction. These serve as a pretext to go wild with lustful and provocative images: Bachzetsis pole-dancing on a ballet barre in a crimson skin-tight jumpsuit, or Sotilis Vasiliou fitting a dildo in the towel wrapped around his waist and trying out various positions to give himself a fake blowjob.

The piece exudes revolt, and its spirit of dissent constantly challenges scenic codes and abounds with the aesthetics of excess. But these radical ruptures of format, movement and frame of reference tend to drive the work from a high-wire balancing act to a jumble of unclear performative statements. As the artists play with cameras live-broadcasting their faces on the yellow and red walls behind them, the performance creates a deeply unsettling atmosphere. Bodies are teased, trashed on a stack of mats, covered with fake cowskins or languorously French-kissed on the navel. The bringing up of sexual and gender identity stereotypes is profoundly disturbing. Repeating a fake conversation about half-spoken sexual and gender-based violence, or pretending to slap an inert body lying face down from behind can be overwhelming for the audience. To what end? I couldn’t tell. When the light slowly decreases on Tamar Kisch’s silver sequin dress, I am relieved the show is over.


Monkey off My Back or the Cat’s Meow, Trajal Harrell/Schauspielhaus Zürich Dance Ensemble

I am glad to breathe some fresh air with a group of programmers, slowly heading towards the Schauspielhaus. Anyone stepping in the wide entrance hall that Saturday night could tell something big was about to happen. And for many, this was the most anticipated piece of the platform. In many ways, this venue is the ideal place to set Monkey off My Back or the Cat’s Meow by Trajal Harrell, starting with the fact it is the Schauspielhaus Zürich Dance Ensemble’s home. But it also has a performing space large enough to fit the six rows of seats equally distributed alongside a catwalk. The latter, shaped like a Mondrian painting, has two large comfy white sofas in the centre and is covered with a transparent tarpaulin; is the stage set for a dance, or a fashion show? This is a feature of Harrell’s work. The performance starts with a tongue-in-cheek opening speech by the choreographer himself pretending to be Condé Nast artistic director Anna Wintour. Then the performers make their entrances one by one, presenting an extravagant set of costumes, notably deep blue bathrobes, chestnut tulle dresses, plastic bags, 17th-century attire, a bib, panda sleep suits and wedges fringed with clinking beads. Seventeen dancer-models parade in endless captivating lines, going back and forth and diagonally, crossing paths and mirroring each other, to an eclectic soundtrack composed by Harrell himself (he distributes the playlist himself at the end of the show for the enjoyment of all). His choreography brilliantly navigates between repetitive motifs and seemingly random encounters. In doing so, he achieves a singular mix of dance styles and influences, going from voguing to butoh, also reminiscent of Greek syrtos and everyday gestures and poses. Monkey off My Back or the Cat’s Meow isn’t just the longest (two hours, divided into five flowing parts) and largest production, it’s also the most accomplished work of the weekend.

Looking back at my packed but partial two-day programme, it seems clear to me that there’s a lot going on in Swiss dance these days. My half-platform experience gave me a multifaceted overview of the works developed by dance artists based in Switzerland. It also really highlighted the strong Swiss institutional network that supports them to dig in locally and to broaden their perspectives internationally, wherever they are in their careers. Take Trajal Harrell for example, whose reputation precedes him. His last piece, The Romeo, premiered in festival d’Avignon’s most iconic venue, the Cour d’honneur of the Palais des Papes, and was subsequently staged at La Villette, Paris, during the Festival d’Automne, as part of an extensive retrospective of eight of his works. Yet in 2024, Harrell will leave Schauspielhaus Zürich (if the Swiss city refused to renew the contract with artistic directors Benjamin von Blomberg and Nicolas Stemann, who initiated the Harrell collaboration in the first place, the decision seems to be also founded on artistic disagreements). Other names on the program, like Teresa Vittuci or Delgado Fuchs, have already achieved significant recognition both on national and international choreographic scenes. However, their paths abroad are often precarious, so national support is essential to make ends meet. Also showcased in the final selection of Swiss Dance Days, emerging figures like Melissa Guex (read the Springback Academy reviews of her work Rapunzel here), Élie Autin and Pierre Piton had much to gain from the networking as well as showcasing opportunities offered by the platform. Shame these artists are precisely the ones I missed this weekend. Guess I’ll have to come back in two spring seasons to see how their budding works may have blossomed. ●


Location Icon
28.02–03.03.2024, Zürich, Switzerland
Publication Icon

swissdancedays.ch
You may also like...