More Information about «Requiem for a Piece of Meat» (premiere Thu, 23.03. 20h)
scene still ©ValerieReding
How is it possible that, in our perception, our bodies appear as something fundamentally different from the ham in our sandwiches? Meat is culture, on our plates as well as on our bones. It is inscribed with countless traditions and rituals which manage to simultaneously fascinate and repel us.
Requiem for a piece of meat examines the material of meat beyond commonly agreed hierarchies and body economies. Under the direction of Daniel Hellmann and the musical direction of Abélia Nordmann, a group of dancers, vocalists, companion animals, working animals and parasites starts to unravel the traditional order of bodily functions and assignments. Dancing, tripping, groaning and grunting, they transform the stage into a space of interspecies encounters. Who here is animal, human, thing? Who is livestock for whom?
The supposedly clear distinction of human and animal existence starts to flicker. A meticulous, sensuous and critical study of body pictures forms up into a Requiem in seven movements. In an artificial naturalist idyll, mountains of meat and moving limbs interweave themselves with musical languages from several epochs. A commissioned work by the young composer Lukas Huber confronts the historical material with the sound of intestines, the voices of animals and the musicality of their processing. Poetry and objectivity. A farewell to allegedly established categories. A funeral mass in the midst of life.
Website of Daniel Hellmann
http://www.daniel-hellmann.com
excerpt from the laudatio for the June Johnson Dance Prize 2015 for the concept of «A Requiem for a Piece of Meat», Daniel Hellmann
“Requiem for a piece of meat” explores the extremes of human nature, from the sublime to the repellent. Rituals of religious sacrifice and early music combine with experimental dance in a modern slaughterhouse atmosphere to create a singular, dynamic, audiovisual experience that blends spiritual quest, hypnotic trance and deep meditation. As the performance begins, it is unclear who is performer and who is spectator. Finally, five dancers and a chorus of some ten singers merge into a single unit – flesh on flesh, breath on breath.
3art3 Company was founded in 2012 by the singer, performer, dance and theatre practitioner Daniel Hellmann as a collective to produce multi-disciplinary projects. Hellmann was born in 1985 and lives in Zurich and Berlin. He studied philosophy at the University of Zurich, classical singing at the University of Music Lausanne and theatre/performance at the Bern University of the Arts. The company’s first project, entitled “K.”, came about in 2012 as a collaboration with the Vietnamese choreographer Quan Bui Ngoc in association with the programmers’ fund of Reso, Dance Network Switzerland. Ngoc and Hellmann continued their collaboration in 2014 with their second project “Untold”. In 2013, 3art3 Company received the City of Zurich culture award for “K”.
Beate Engel, Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation:
“Daniel Hellmann has already achieved remarkable success with his group 3art3 Company, which he founded in 2012. Its multidisciplinary line-up produces works on current topics featuring an original and thrilling interplay of dance, performance and music. Physical exertion and a high level of technical precision interweave to create images with a lasting impact. The award-winning ‘Requiem for a piece of meat’ combines historical sacred music with contemporary dance to investigate the human body between life and death, in its everyday functions and mystical flights – singing, dancing, eating, naked.”
scene still ©ValerieReding
Daniel Hellmann at Gessnerallee
TRAUMBOY, 2015
FULL SERVICE, 2014