tanzmainz & Moritz Ostruschnjak (Germany)
Divadlo Aréna
Price: 10 – 25 €
TRAILER PARK An explosive collision between the internet and the human body, in a choreography that transforms digital impulses into physical reality.
Ten dancers on an empty stage navigate the space between the analogue and digital worlds. TRAILER PARK, created by renowned Munich-based choreographer Moritz Ostruschnjak for the company tanzmainz, draws inspiration from internet videos and meme culture. Movements from social media are reimagined in an intense physical choreography that explores the impact of digitalization on our bodies and society. The result is an energetic, explosive, and timely dance statement that captivates from start to finish.
Practical information
The performance on October 13 is open to the public. The performance on October 14 is intended for schools. For reservations contact us at info@bratislavavpohybe.sk.
Tickets: 18 a 25 € full price / 10 € students and seniors
Venue: Bratislava, Arena Theatre
Length: 55 minutes
Performances:
ABOUT THE PIECE
Ten dancers on an empty stage, somewhere between the digital and analogue world. Virtuosic, young, powerful. Munich choreographer Moritz Ostruschnjak works very close to the pulse of the time on topics that move between digitality and bodies. His extremely physical works receive great international attention, can be seen at renowned dance festivals and have already been invited several times to the German Dance Platform and most recently to the 2024 edition in Freiburg. He developed the production Trailer Park with a 10-person ensemble from tanzmainz.
How choreography is created is a complex process. Moritz Ostruschnjak develops a special method in this regard: his works use social media as a resource and thus illuminate social processes in a unique way. He does not want to add anything to the sheer infinity of movement material that can be found on social media, but rather use this large archive for his choreographies. In his process for Trailer Park, he gave the dancers the task of selecting videos from the internet, studying them closely, copying movements and transferring them to their own bodies. This corresponds to the “meme culture” common on social media, in which content is taken out of its original context and retitled for a different use. In Trailer Park, the tanzmainz dancers bring movements to the stage that have their origins in a completely different place and only create something new through their combination.
What particularly interested Ostruschnjak in the development process of the piece was the question of how the increasing digitization of life affects our physical and social ability to experience things. In order to benefit from the diversity of skills in the Trailer Park cast, Ostruschnjak left a lot of freedom in the rehearsal process. He says: “If you give space to chance, you really find gold. The best idea wins in the process and it doesn’t always have to come from me. Even though I am of course ultimately responsible for the whole thing as a choreographer, we are all authors of Trailer Park.”
The dancers’ exertion is a central design element for Ostruschnjak. The excessive demands that so often go hand in hand with the fascination with the Internet are translated back to the individual bodies in Trailer Park.
Choreography: Moritz Ostruschnjak
Choreographic collaboration and costumes: Daniele Bendini
Music (Mixing and Editing): Jonas Friedlich
Light: Tanja Rühl
Rehearsal Director: Simone Deriu
Dancers: anit Cobas, Agathe Leira Madsen, Réka Rácz, Meritxell Van Roggen, Paul Elie, Finn Lakeberg, Christian Leveque, Jaume Luque Parellada, Jaime Neves, Matti Tauru
Director tanzmainz: Honne Dohrmann
Production Manager: Finn Lakeberg
Collaborator Dance Directorate and Touring Manager: Hannah Meyer-Scharenberg
Assistant of Dance Directorate: Antonia Zeich
Set up Stage&Sound on Tour: Luka Curk
Set up Light on Tour: Dominik Hager
Stage Manager on Tour: Matthew Tusa
World premiere 18th November 2023
A production of Staatstheater Mainz
TANZMAINZ
tanzmainz is the contemporary dance ensemble of the Staatstheater Mainz and is directed by Honne Dohrmann since 2014. 25 dancers work side by side with a diverse production team to create three to five world premieres per season. We cultivate a way of working that is characterized by openness, mutual respect and high motivation.
tanzmainz is a team with a high degree of personal responsibility, which recognizes and reflects the complex social challenges in its works. The members of the ensemble are extensively trained artistic personalities who are very interested in working closely with the invited choreographers. We see ourselves as a place of creation; i.e. all the works shown were created in Mainz in collaboration between our guests and our division.
tanzmainz sees itself as a bridge between the state theater and the independent scene and is constantly striving to expand its repertoire through innovative dance languages and forms of production. By being as open as possible to other disciplines, genres and performance venues inside and outside the theater, we want to strengthen the contemporary profile of our division.
tanzmainz organizes the tanzmainz festival and the tanzmainz festival UPDATE alternately in order to place its own work in an international context. In return, we strive to be an important ambassador for the city of Mainz and the state of Rhineland-Palatinate through our own guest performances in Germany and abroad.
MORITZ OSTRUSCHNJAK
Moritz Ostruschnjak was part of the sprayer scene for a long time, which is how he came into contact with breakdance and discovered his interest in contemporary dance. He first studied at the Iwanson International School of Contemporary Dance in Munich, later he deepened his dance training with Maurice Béjart in Lausanne. After that, he worked as a dancer for several years in Germany and abroad. Since 2013 he has worked as a freelance choreographer in Munich and has created, among other things, the ensemble pieces Boids, Unstern, Autoplay, Yester:now, Terminal Beach and most recently Rabbit Hole in 2023.
His pieces have already been shown at numerous European festivals, and three of his productions have been invited to the Tanzplattform Deutschland: Unstern in 2020, the solo Tanzanweisungen in 2022 and Terminal Beach in 2024. The pieces Tanzanweisungen and Autoplay were shown in Mainz at the tanzmainz festival #4. Moritz Ostruschnjak is one of the Aerowaves Twenty21 Artists and was awarded the City of Munich Dance Promotion Prize in 2020. He is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts and Tanztendenz München e.V. Trailer Park is his first production with the tanzmainz ensemble.
