170521 UE Choreography at Present (2019W)

" Choreography, actually” is an experimental format that seeks to combine scientific observation and curatorial-artistic practice.The practical field is the [8: tension] Young Choreographers' Series as part of the ImPulsTanz - Vienna International Dance Festival. This renowned and always surprising program series was launched in 2001 and has since discovered and presented countless artists to a wide audience. So it is time to take a look into its history as well as into the future: Thus, the course will accompany the curatorial process for the festival program 2020 artistically as well as production-oriented, focusing on the following questions and practical fields: What is "young choreography"? How do curators and dramaturges - especially transregionally and internationally - seek and find artists and artistic positions and formats? Which questions, artistic approaches and interests crystallize in a younger generation? How can these - often tentative - experiments, and the search for sometimes unknown forms of presentation and new questions be analyzed, described, recognized? How is the process of selection going? What is "context" and what role does it play in selecting and communicating the works? Which criteria - from artistic and / or ethical over administrative, spatial, financial conditions and limitations - come into play here? How should these be shaped and changed? And last but not least: how is the communication between artists, their work and the public organized? Christine Standfest, dramaturge of the ImPulsTanz - Vienna International Dance Festival and part of the artistic direction of the [8: tension] Young Choreographers' Series, opens up the process of program curating for 2020 and examines and reflects together with the students artistic works, production structures and economies in different cities and countries also beyond Europe. We will discover artists, watch and discuss pieces by video, and review and develop aesthetic and artistic categories that bring the works into dialogue beyond their individual impact. It is not about a new "canon", but about the joy of discovery and of expression, as well as gaining skills in order to create a shared discourse and to theoretically reflect on unknown artists and novel questions that do not necessarily open up to traditional interpretations and readings - for example, a more recent aesthetics of the posthuman, New Materialism or Political Ecology. The field of recent choreography is particularly concerned with gender and anthropological and postcolonial issues, as well as with collective work and open formats. We learn how artists pick and choose these and reflect on cross-context transformation processes between artistic intention, production, communication and presentation at one of the largest international festivals for contemporary dance and performance. In the process, the dialogical interaction of the pieces within the framework of an overall program and possibilities of audience development and communication should also be taken into consideration, not least in order to counteract the increasing retreat and an insulating differentiation into "bubbles" and individual communities.