25.09
&
26.09
&
26.09
Anna Konjetzky & Co
tomorrow…we…were...
Tanz / Theater
Anna Konjetzky & Co
Anna Konjetzky: tomorrow…we…were…
A dance piece by Anna Konjetzky
Nostalgia is a fantasy of the past (Sara Ahmed: The Feminist Killjoy Handbook)
Why do we find it so difficult to make certain social and personal changes? Why do we prefer to hold on to an unsatisfactory status quo rather than create a utopia of the future? It's as if the future is becoming the past. Nostalgia, that sugar-sweet longing for the 'good old days', seems to have a firm grip on us as a society once again. And so individuals and nations are turning an imagined past, a glorified world, into the vanishing point of tomorrow, a refuge from a changing, chaotic and uncertain present.
In "tomorrow...we...were...", Anna Konjetzky and six dancers explore the feeling of nostalgia as an individual emotion and social condition. The production is thus a continuation of her previous works "Über die Wut" (2021) and "hope/less" (2023), which addressed anger and hope/lessness with a view to their ability to initiate change. The three emotions also focus on the temporal component; while anger is directed towards the present and hope towards the future, nostalgia projects onto the past. For Konjetzky, however, all three levels of time come together in nostalgia: "I think that nostalgia, this longing for the past, comes from both a fear of the future and an overwhelming demand in the present. It is also a longing for a past that didn't exist, which is recreated in a new and more beautiful way through the lens of the present."
It is precisely these multiple entanglements of past, present and future that determine the stage design and choreography of "tomorrow...we...were...". Arranged like a half-pipe pulled apart and with spectators sitting on either side, the setting symbolizes both a cyclical idea in the sense of "today is yesterday's tomorrow" and that of not getting anywhere, of being thrown back, the seeming insurmountability of a truly new future. And so the dancers move between the two curved ramps, running up them, sitting on top, letting themselves fall, being held, kicking themselves free, gliding gently down, being unable to hold on. The bodies are twisted in their movements, simultaneously forward and backward in their dynamics; the jump forwards goes in reverse, only to stop in the middle of the move - as if stuck. Rigidity is also evident in the faces, which sometimes become backwards-facing backs of heads or seem to freeze due to masks.
The iconic nostalgia classic "Yesterday" by the Beatles runs like a thread through the piece on an acoustic level. The composer Sergej Maingardt, who has been one of Anna Konjetzky's collaborators for many years, entangles the audience in the melodiousness of the song and thus in their own memories of campfires and first kisses, only to then chop it up, cover it with electronics and have the dancers sing it. Yesterday / All my troubles seemed so far away / Now it looks as though they′re here to stay / Oh, I believe in yesterday is the earworm that runs through "tomorrow...we...were...", flanked by snippets from "Forever Young" or "Don't stop me now". Songs like life anchors while the present crumbles around you.
But Anna Konjetzky would not be Anna Konjetzky if "tomorrow...we...were..." did not also contain a utopian moment: "If we see nostalgia as a fantasy of the past, it also opens up the possibility of imagining this past differently, of turning it in such a way that we work on a vision of the future or arrive at our future again, a different future, a queer future, a fantastic, playful future."
The fantasies of the past determined by the needs of the present have a direct impact on the realities of the future. (Svetlana Boym: The Future Of Nostalgia)
Choreography, Stage design: Anna Konjetzky // Music: Sergej Maingardt // Video, Light design: Joscha Eckert //
Costume: Dimos Klimenof // Dance: Matteo Carvone, Sahra Huby, Amie Jammeh, Venetsiana Kalampaliki,
Sotiria Koutsopetrou, Quindell Orton // Dramaturgical adviser: Maxwell McCarthy //
Stage construction: Klaus Hammer // PR: Simone Lutz // Production: Elsa Büsing
A dance piece by Anna Konjetzky
Nostalgia is a fantasy of the past (Sara Ahmed: The Feminist Killjoy Handbook)
Why do we find it so difficult to make certain social and personal changes? Why do we prefer to hold on to an unsatisfactory status quo rather than create a utopia of the future? It's as if the future is becoming the past. Nostalgia, that sugar-sweet longing for the 'good old days', seems to have a firm grip on us as a society once again. And so individuals and nations are turning an imagined past, a glorified world, into the vanishing point of tomorrow, a refuge from a changing, chaotic and uncertain present.
In "tomorrow...we...were...", Anna Konjetzky and six dancers explore the feeling of nostalgia as an individual emotion and social condition. The production is thus a continuation of her previous works "Über die Wut" (2021) and "hope/less" (2023), which addressed anger and hope/lessness with a view to their ability to initiate change. The three emotions also focus on the temporal component; while anger is directed towards the present and hope towards the future, nostalgia projects onto the past. For Konjetzky, however, all three levels of time come together in nostalgia: "I think that nostalgia, this longing for the past, comes from both a fear of the future and an overwhelming demand in the present. It is also a longing for a past that didn't exist, which is recreated in a new and more beautiful way through the lens of the present."
It is precisely these multiple entanglements of past, present and future that determine the stage design and choreography of "tomorrow...we...were...". Arranged like a half-pipe pulled apart and with spectators sitting on either side, the setting symbolizes both a cyclical idea in the sense of "today is yesterday's tomorrow" and that of not getting anywhere, of being thrown back, the seeming insurmountability of a truly new future. And so the dancers move between the two curved ramps, running up them, sitting on top, letting themselves fall, being held, kicking themselves free, gliding gently down, being unable to hold on. The bodies are twisted in their movements, simultaneously forward and backward in their dynamics; the jump forwards goes in reverse, only to stop in the middle of the move - as if stuck. Rigidity is also evident in the faces, which sometimes become backwards-facing backs of heads or seem to freeze due to masks.
The iconic nostalgia classic "Yesterday" by the Beatles runs like a thread through the piece on an acoustic level. The composer Sergej Maingardt, who has been one of Anna Konjetzky's collaborators for many years, entangles the audience in the melodiousness of the song and thus in their own memories of campfires and first kisses, only to then chop it up, cover it with electronics and have the dancers sing it. Yesterday / All my troubles seemed so far away / Now it looks as though they′re here to stay / Oh, I believe in yesterday is the earworm that runs through "tomorrow...we...were...", flanked by snippets from "Forever Young" or "Don't stop me now". Songs like life anchors while the present crumbles around you.
But Anna Konjetzky would not be Anna Konjetzky if "tomorrow...we...were..." did not also contain a utopian moment: "If we see nostalgia as a fantasy of the past, it also opens up the possibility of imagining this past differently, of turning it in such a way that we work on a vision of the future or arrive at our future again, a different future, a queer future, a fantastic, playful future."
The fantasies of the past determined by the needs of the present have a direct impact on the realities of the future. (Svetlana Boym: The Future Of Nostalgia)
Choreography, Stage design: Anna Konjetzky // Music: Sergej Maingardt // Video, Light design: Joscha Eckert //
Costume: Dimos Klimenof // Dance: Matteo Carvone, Sahra Huby, Amie Jammeh, Venetsiana Kalampaliki,
Sotiria Koutsopetrou, Quindell Orton // Dramaturgical adviser: Maxwell McCarthy //
Stage construction: Klaus Hammer // PR: Simone Lutz // Production: Elsa Büsing
25.09 & 26.09
Dance
Door Time: 20hour Show Time: 20hour
Location: MuffathalleMunich
VVK € 18 zzgl. Gebühren / erm. € 10
A production by Moritz Ostruschnjak in coproduction with Muffathalle Betriebs GmbH. Sponsored by the Cultural Department of the City of Munich, Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and BLZT – Bavarian State Association for Contemporary Dance with funds from the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts.