Dance On Ensemble & Lucinda Childs & Miki Orihara (Germany/USA)
Divadlo Aréna
Price: 10 – 25 €
STEIN When maturity is a privilege and dance knows no age limits
American postmodern dance icon Lucinda Childs returns to the stage alongside Miki Orihara, the remarkable performer best known for her work as a principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company. In their new choreography, STEIN, movement meets text, precision meets fluidity, and personal memory meets creative presence. The stage is encircled by images of oceans—symbols of endless motion and constant transformation, much like dance itself.
This work offers a fresh perspective on the body in motion, revealing it as a vessel of extraordinary sensitivity, intelligence, and maturity. The evening also features three of Lucinda Childs’ early choreographies from the 1970s, which embody the essence of her legendary minimalist style. These pieces are performed by the Dance On Ensemble, an international company of professional dancers aged 40 and above, who challenge conventional notions of age, the body, and artistic expression.
Practical information
Tickets: 18 – 25 € full price / 10 € students and senior
Venue: Bratislava – Divadlo Aréna
Length: 70 minutes with intermission
Performance:
ABOUT THE PIECE
Lucinda Childs & Miki Orihara STEIN is the second production within the Dance On Ensembles’ Encounters series. In this series, the choreographers are present on stage as performers themselves. Physically engaging in an encounter with a dancer of the Ensemble, who takes on the role of co-author.
Lucinda Childs’ works deal with the mutability of space and the manipulation of time using pattern recognition, rhythmic accuracy, and surprising changes in the physical material. All elements that she embraced after leaving the Judson Dance Theater, rejecting the Judson’s
principles of using spoken word, found objects, pedestrian actions and common place timing.
With this new piece Childs reconsiders her earlier approaches to making work, looking back on her Judson solo creations through the filter of decades of dance making. Using texts, music, gesture, as well as dance to search for new artistic landscapes. As a performer Lucinda Childs enraptures audiences with her cool yet mesmerizing demeanour accompanied by her ability to deliver text with a subdued passion and surgical precision, inviting the audience into a world of complex sensation.
In this new creation Childs shares the stage with dancer Miki Orihara, whose performance works with Robert Wilson, award winning Broadway runs, long relationship with the Martha Graham company, and continuing work with multiple choreographers, has formed her into a
powerful and sensitive performer. The stage set, in which Lucinda Childs and Miki Orihara
perform, is characterized by the motif of immensity and the (in)visible. Video projectors show seas and oceanic surfaces from Hans Peter Kuhn’s archive, who has been collecting moving images of oceans for many years, invoking the fluid, the changeable, yet constant state of water.
The Encounters’ series is based on the idea that the choreographic process is not limited to one person’s imagination, but is rooted in their physical being. The dancer as co-author redefines the role that dancers traditionally play, addressing fundamental questions of shared creative processes and the relationship between choreography and interpretation.
Choreography & Performance: Lucinda Childs
Performance: Miki Orihara
Artistic Collaboration (set/music/video): Hans Peter Kuhn
Lights: Martin Beeretz, Hans Peter Kuhn
Costumes: werkstattkollektiv
Technical Direction: Martin Beeretz
Sound Technique: Mattef Kuhlmey
Creation: July 2025 in Berlin
Production: DANCE ON / Bureau Ritter. In cooperation with Radialsystem, Berlin
Coproduction: CCNR Rillieux-la-pape – Yuval Pick, Le Phare – Centre chorégraphique national du Havre Normandie / direction Fouad Boussouf, as part of the Accueil-Studio Programme
Coproduction to be confirmed: Torino Danza, La Villette Paris, Julidans Amsterdam
Supported by: Hauptstadtkulturfonds
With the kind support of: Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon
With the support of: Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels
LUCINDA CHILDS
Lucinda Childs began her career as choreographer and performer in 1963 as an original member of the Judson Dance Theater in New York. After forming her own dance company in 1973, Childs collaborated with Robert Wilson and Philip Glass on the opera Einstein on the Beach in 1976, participating as principal performer and solo choreographer for which she received an Obie award. Childs has appeared in five of Wilson’s major productions. Beginning in 1979, Childs collaborated with a number of composers and designers on a series of large-scale productions. The first of these was Dance, choreographed in 1979 with music by Philip Glass, and a film/decor by Sol LeWitt. It continues to tour extensively in the United States and Europe and was cited by the Wall Street Journal (2011) as “one of the greatest achievements of the 20th century.” Since 1981, Childs has received a number of commissions from major ballet companies and has choreographed and directed several opera productions including: Gluck’s Orfeo et Euridice for the Los Angeles Opera, Mozart’s Zaide for La Monnaie in Brussels and a new production of John Adams’s Dr Atomic for the Opera du Rhin in 2014.
Childs received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1979. She is also the recipient of the NEA/NEFA American Masterpiece Award, and in 2004 was elevated from Officer to Commander of France’s Order of Arts and Letters. In 2017 she received the Samuel H. Scripps award for lifetime achievement at the American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina, as well as the Venice Biennale de la Danse Golden Lion Award.
MIKI ORIHARA
Miki Orihara, born in 1960, is best known for her work as a principal dancer in the Martha Graham Dance Company, for which she earned a Bessie Award in 2010. She has performed on Broadway in The King and I and with Elisa Monte, PierGroupDance, Lotuslotus, Rioult Dance, Twyla Tharp, Martha Clarke, Anne Bogart (SITI Company), and Robert Wilson. She has presented her own choreography in New York, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and in Japan.
Her teaching credentials include numerous workshops in Japan, at Art International in Moscow, and at Peridance, the Ailey School, New York University, Florida State University, Henny Jurriëns Stichting (Holland), Les Etés de la Danse in Paris, and New National Theater Ballet School. She is on the faculty of the Graham School and The Hartt School (University
of Hartford). She has set Martha Graham’s work all over the world, including for Diana Vashineva’s Dialogue and on Wendy Whelan of the New York City Ballet.
As a choreographer, Miki Orihara premiered her solo work Searching Dimensions in New York in 1995 followed among others by VOICE, a piece for eight women, for M’Deux Ballet in Nagoya, Japan (2001), Stage (2008), Prologue (2014) and Shirabyoshi (2017). In 2018 she released the first Martha Graham technique DVD, collaborating with Dance Spotlight and the Martha Graham Center. A second DVD for intermediate level is in development. Her film Broken Memory was featured at Dance on Camera Festival in New York in 2017.
Miki Orihara was featured in the Inaugural performance of Peace is… at the United Nations as a part of the Permanent Mission of Japan in April 2017 and August 2018.
HANS PETER KUHN
Hans Peter Kuhn, composer and artist, lives and works in Berlin and Amino (Kyoto, JP). His light and sound installations are exhibited in many museums and galleries or on public sites worldwide, among others at Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Centre Pompidou Paris, Neue National galerie Berlin, Seattle Art Museum, Tokushima Modern Art Museum. Internationally acclaimed are Light installations in public places, like: The Pier, New York 1996, A Light and Sound Transit, Leeds (UK) 2009, Vertical Lightfield, Singapore 2009, Acupuncture, Mattress Factory Museum, Pittsburgh (US) 2016, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin (DE) 2017. The installation Memory Loss by Robert Wilson and Hans Peter Kuhn was awarded with the Golden Lion in Venice 1993. He worked for theatre with directors like Luc Bondy, Claus Peyman, Peter Zadek, Peter Stein and is best known for the music and sound environments he created in the long term collaboration with Robert Wilson. He composed the music for dances by Laurie Booth, Dana Reitz, Suzushi Hanayagim, Sasha Waltz and Junko Wada.
For this he received the Bessie Award New York and the Suzukinu Hanayagi Award Osaka. Hearing and listening are the themes of his performances, that are shown worldwide. Since 2012 he is Guest professor for Sound Studies at the Universität der Künste Berlin
UNTITLED TRIO
RADIAL COUR ES
INTEROR DRAMA
To complete the evening, the Dance On Ensemble will present three works of Lucinda Childs from the 1970’s. These dances showcase a formative and important period of her creative development. A period in which her choreographic signature became radically evident.
Representing a cross section of a time in which Childs was investigating form, rhythm, space and the development of her physical language. Choosing to dive deeply into pure dance, devoid of story or messaging, Lucinda Childs creates a trance like journey into theatrical abstraction that gives a fundamental context to the new work she has created.
Alternating cast of 5 dancers: Lia Witjes Poole, Gesine Moog, Emma Lewis, Ty Boomershine, Alba Barral Fernández, Javier Arozena.
The revival is funded by the Berlin Senate Departmentfor Culture and Social Cohesion.
THE DANCE ON ENSEMBLE
The Dance On Ensemble was founded in 2015 by the Berlin-based cultural non-profit organisation Bureau Ritter (formerly Diehl + Ritter) as part of the Dance On initiative that celebrates the artistic excellence of dancers aged 40+ and explores the relationship between dance and age both on stage and in society.
Working with internationally renowned choreographers and directors, including among others Rabih Mroué, Lucinda Childs, Meg Stuart, Christos Papadopoulos and Jan Martens, the Dance On Ensemble is developing a repertoire of ground breaking and challenging contemporary dance works. Its aim is to create a solid base for a rich and ambitious future repertoire for dancers 40+.
As a member of the Dance On Ensemble since the beginning of the project, Ty Boomershine is responsible for its artistic direction since 2019. Further members of the Dance On Ensemble are: Javier Arozena, Alba Barral Fernández, Ziv Frenkel, Anna Herrmann, Christine Kono, Emma Lewis, Gesine Moog, Omagbitse Omagbemi, Miki Orihara, Tim Persent, Jone San Martin, Marco Volta, Lia Witjes Poole – all of them are professional dancers between the ages 43 to 71 who have danced in leading companies, among them Lucinda Childs Dance, Ballet Frankfurt, Martha Graham Dance Company, Netherlands Dance Theater, Hamburg Ballet and Cullberg Ballet.
DANCE ON has created strong alliances with coproduction partners – on a national and international level, among them Kampnagel Hamburg, tanzhaus nrw, Berliner Ensemble, Münchner Kammerspiele, Sadlers Wells London, Holland Dance Festival, STUK House for Image, Dance and Sound, ONASSIS STEGI Athens, Belgrade Dance Festival, and ADC – Association pour la Danse Contemporaine Geneve. These alliances will ensure the DANCE ON concept is implemented sustainably and make an active contribution to establishing a dance repertoire 40+.
