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20 EUR, reduced 10 EUR, 16 EUR for Tanzcard holders |
English, German, with surtitles |
Duration: 110 min |
12 years and older |
Ground Floor, Hall 2 |
LAST RERUN DUE TO POPULAR DEMAND
A Chinese scroll painting like a scene from an action movie: a horseman shoots a warrior galloping in front of him with bow and arrow. The transcultural Paper Tiger Theater (Berlin – Beijing) has been inspired by the scroll painting Machang Lays Low the Enemy Ranks in the collection of the Museum für Asiatische Kunst. In their dance-video-installation-performance the artists span an arc from the Chinese imperial wars and their celebration in the imperial palace to the colonial loot of Beijing in the so-called Boxer War in 1900 to the China of today. Five dancers and actors meet a contemporary witness of communist party General Secretary Honecker’s China trip, a skateboarder meets a percussionist, video art meets costumes for everyone.
Trailer
Performance: Raul Aranha, Simon Chatelain, Oksana Chupryniuk, Gong Zhonghui / Lee Yi-Chi, Thomas Halle / Ariel Nil Levy, Shengnan Hu (percussion), Hans-Jürgen Schreiber, Mieko Suzuki (DJ), Wang Yanan
Direction Tian Gebing, Choreography Wang Yanan, stage Eva Veronica Born, Dramaturgy Christoph Lepschy, Curator Chen Shuyu, Music Mieko Suzuki, Hu Shengnan, Costume Design Chen Shuyu, Tian Gebing, Video Design Andreas König, Julia Kuhnert, Daniela Prochaska, Collaborating Artist Andreas Gedin
Assistant Director Li Jingwen, Assistant Stage Designer Lioba Bangert, Assistant Costume Designer Lam Ophelia, Aline Suter, Maria Yasinover, Collaboration Costume Making Noemie Cassagnau, Yan Thung Ho, Elena Popva, Edgar Schlüter, Choreography Assistant Xie Yuchen, Translation Li Binyao, Surtitles Nora Rose, Xie Yuchen, Artistic Coordination Liu Chao, Video Recording Tong Xin, Jiang Dingding
We see the fatal moment of an act of war: hit by an arrow and painfully bent, a Dzungarian horseman flees at full gallop. Behind him, also on horseback, a Manchurian officer of the imperial army, Machang, bow in hand, is about to send another arrow after the fleeing man. The picture scroll “Machang Lays Low the Enemy Ranks”, which will be on display again from April 19th until May 8th 2023 in the Galery China and Europe, China’s Court Art in the Museum für Asiatische Kunst (3rd floor), was created in Beijing in 1759 and is part of a large-scale propaganda program commissioned by the Qianlong Emperor (1736-1795) from his court painter Lang Shining alias Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766) after the conclusion of the victorious campaign against the Dzungars (today Xinjiang). It was intended to glorify the imperial expansionist policies of the Chinese Empire in the northwest and south of the empire. The Italian Jesuit Giuseppe Castiglione had lived in Beijing since 1714. Although he was not able to pursue his missionary activities there as originally planned, he became a court painter who was highly esteemed by the emperor. Through routes that have not yet been clarified, the painting arrived in Berlin either as a result of looting during the “Boxer War” of 1900-1901 from Beijing or as a result of the turmoil during the revolution of 1911 from Shenyang via Hamburg in 1914, where it is now part of the collection of the Museum of Asian Art in the Humboldt Forum. Its provenance, along with other works from the Imperial Palace in German museums, is currently being further researched.
The “Paper Tiger Theater Studio” (Beijing/Berlin) is an independent theater collective founded by Tian Gebing in Beijing in 1998 and has been based in Berlin for the past three years. Artists with different professional backgrounds from the fields of dance, theater and visual arts gather to develop theater projects in the transdisciplinary area of theater, performance and dance. The central starting point of the theater work is the immediate reality, not only of contemporary Chinese society. Everyday reality in its brutal absurdity is used as material and structure for the performances, transposed into other contexts, translated, misunderstood, expanded with literary fictions, and transformed in such a way that an exchange process between social and performative spaces is set in motion.
Cast
Raul Aranha was born in India and is now based in Europe. He started with breakdance since the age of 14 and moved on to study contemporary dance at the only two year education available in India before arriving to SEAD, Salzburg in 2018, where he studied for 4 years. After graduating in 2022, Raul worked with Milla Koistinen, Tereza Krejcova and other international choreographers. His interests lie in the mechanics of multiple things – from the human body to music to cooking.
Eva Veronica Born studied architecture at the Universität der Künste, Berlin and at the Akademie der bildenden Künste, Wien. Since 2012 she has been working as a freelance stage designer and scenographer in the field of tension between urban space, stage design and the architecture. She develops spaces and installations for various theaters and festivals, such as the Ruhrtriennale, Theater Basel, Volksbühne Berlin and the Berlin Theatertreffen, of which she was a team member between 2015 and 2022. With the theater collective Paper Tiger, the collaboration began in 2017 for Theater der Welt at the Thalia Theater Hamburg and continued in 2021 at the Münchner Kammerspiele.
www.evaveronicaborn.de
Simon Chatelain is a 26-year-old French performer and choreographer, trained at the National Circus School of Rosny sous Bois, Conservatoire National de Bordeaux, and Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance (SEAD) where he graduated in 2022. He has performed in works by notable choreographers such as Milla Koistinen, Manuel Ronda, Nicolas Vladyslav, Oded Graf, and co-founded the dance collective Useless Machines, performing at festivals across Europe.
As a freelance curator based in Sweden since 2017, Chen Shuyu has been working on public projects and programs in art, architecture, performance and design internationally. In 2010, she co-founded the Institute for Provocation (IFP), a Beijing-based independent art space focusing on trans-culture activities. In 2017, she established the publishing branch of Institute for Provocation in Sweden to publish art books.
www.iprovoke.org
Oksana Chuprinyuk, born in Mariupol, is a professional dancer with ten years of modern dance training and four years of professional experience. In 2018, she started her training at the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts, at the Faculty of Modern Choreography (2018-2022). During that time she took up her work in the thriving modern dance troupe “Baza.art people” (Kyiv, 2018-2022) with whom she realized various productions. She participated in modern ballets such as “Mashrabi” by choreographer Anatoly Vodzyansky Ekaterina Vodzyanskaya, and “Paper Tigers” and “Hum” with choreographer Anatoly Vodzyansky and Ekaterina Vodzyanskaya. She also was part of the company “Totem dance theater” (Kyiv, 2020-2021) where she danced in works such as “ACTO” with choreographer Francesco Annarumma, “Red room” with choreographer Kristina Shishkareva or “Dynamic” with choreographer Yaroslav Kaynar.
He completed his studies in choreography at the Beijing Dance Academy, has served as the Executive Artistic Director of the Beijing Modern Dance Company. He is presently a faculty member in the Dance Department of the School of Music at Guizhou Normal University and the leader of the Gaga Dance Group. His collaborative dance film “Pyroclastic” with HE Huan was featured at Münchner Kammerspiele as part of project “digital bridge,” coinciding with its premiere at OCAT in Shenzhen, China.
Thomas Halle already played Hamlet at the Deutsches Theater Berlin during his studies at the “Ernst Busch” Academy of Dramatic Arts. From 2011 to 2015, he was a member of the ensemble at the Staatstheater Karlsruhe. He was awarded the Günther Rühle Prize for his solo Ich bereue nichts. He has been working freelance since 2015, including at the Staatstheater Stuttgart, in Luxembourg and Brussels. He is also increasingly working in film and television. The film Monolith with him in the leading role won the main prize at the Achtung Berlin festival in 2023.
Shengnan Hu grew up in Xuzhou, China. From 1996 she studied percussion at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China’s leading music institution, as well as at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz and the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music Berlin. From 2011 to 2013, she was a master student with Peter Sadlo at the Mozarteum Salzburg. She has received several awards and in 2008 performed as a percussion soloist at the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.
Shengnan Hu teaches at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music Berlin and Academy of Music Berlin. Since 2018, she has been a visiting professor at Xinghai Conservatory of Music China.
As a soloist, she has performed with the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, China National Orchestra, China Philhamonic and many more. Numerous radio and television productions (ORF/Ö1/RBB/CCTV) as well as CD recordings document her work.
Yi-Chi was born in Changhua, Taiwan. He was awarded a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance from the Taipei National University of the Arts. In 2018, he moved to Europe and joined the Dance Company of Theater Osnabrück where he danced until joining Staatsballett Berlin (under the direction of Johannes Öhman / Sasha Waltz) as a semi-soloist and contemporary dancer in August 2019. He has collaborated with many renowned choreographers, including Sasha Waltz, Emanuel Gat, Edward Clug, Wang Ramirez, Jefta van Dinther, Shang-Chi Sun, among others. Since 2021, he’s been a guest dancer / performer with Alan Lucien Øyen’s dance theater hybrid, Winter Guests, performed in the creation ’The American Moth’ and ‘Story, story, die’ Europe / Canada tour in 2022.
Christoph Lepschy, Dramaturg and Professor for dramaturgy, studied at University of Munich (Germany) and Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) and graduated in literature and theatre studies. Since 1996 he worked as dramaturg at several municipal and state theatres and developed numerous international performance projects. Since 2005 he is intensively involved in Chinese theatre and collaborated with several Chinese theatre artists. Since 2012 he is continuously working with Paper Tiger Theater Studio. 2009 he has been appointed professor for dramaturgy at University Mozarteum Salzburg (Thomas-Bernhard-Institut). A focus of his work is the development of international and transcultural higher education in the performing arts. He gave lectures and workshops on dramaturgy and transcultural performance practice at theatre academies, universities and cultural institutions in many Chinese cities as well as in Hongkong and Taiwan. Additionally he published several articles in periodicals and books. 2019 he has been elected as chair of the senate of Mozarteum University Salzburg.
Ariel Nil Levy was born in Tel Aviv in 1977 and has lived in Germany for 22 years. He studied theater and voice work in Tel Aviv and Germany and works as a producer, writer, actor and teacher. He is also known as Anali Goldberg, a post-drag character.
He has worked at the Deutsches Theater, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, Berliner Festspiele, Ballhaus Naunynstraße, as well as with Theater and Orchester Heidelberg, Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, Theaterdiscounter, Radialsystem, English Theater Berlin, HAU, Schauspielhaus Wien, Werkstatt der Kulturen and Literarisches Colloquium.
Hans-Jürgen Schreiber was born in 1952 in Görlitz. He completed his A-levels and vocational training as a waiter in Dresden in 1970. After completing his basic military service, Schreiber studied at the Commercial College in Leipzig from 1972. His professional development began in 1976 at the Palast der Republik as assistant to the catering director, in 1977 he became manager of the palace restaurants. From 1980 until the closure of the Palast der Republik in 1990, he was the gastronomic director for the Great Hall, the foyer gastronomy, the foyer bar and the Theater im Palast. His work was characterized by the catering of cultural events, balls and dances, receptions and political protocol events.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Hans-Jürgen Schreiber was able to continue on his chosen path, taking over the catering in a new conference and congress center in 1991, becoming one of the two managing partners in 1996. From 2002, he independently managed a canteen and catering company with 4 operating units in the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and the Berlin House of Representatives. In 2017 he retired from his professional activity.
Mieko Suzuki is a DJ, sound artist and composer born in Hiroshima, Japan, and based in Berlin. Grounded in hauling deep bass, her sound performances combine drones and field recordings with the crackling of electrical circuits and fragments of vinyl records. Her experimental approach always pays careful attention to the space and to the people, whether it be a basement club, a theater play or a dance performance. Choreographer Meg Stuart, theatre director Johan Simons and avantgarde techno label Raster are among her regular creative collaborators. Mieko Suzuki is a member of the improvisation trio Contagious together with Andrea Neumann and Sabine Erkelenz. Their first album Contagious was released by Morphine Records in 2019. Since 2009, she has been running her own bi-monthly, multidisciplinary event Kookoo, together with Arno Raffeiner, at OHM gallery in Berlin. Selected gigs include the CTM Festival Berlin, the Ruhrtriennale as well as the Elbphilharmonie.
Tian Gebing, born in Xi’an in 1963, theater director, has been one of the outstanding personalities in China’s independent theater scene since the 1990s. Already during his studies at the Central Theater Academy, he began to search for alternative, experimental forms of performance and came into contact with the independent theater scene in Beijing. He is involved in numerous independent experimental projects in the nineties before founding the “Paper Tiger Theater Studio” in 1997, a platform in which performance artists, dancers, literary figures, musicians, visual artists, as well as people from all kinds of other social backgrounds work together. The central starting point of the theater work is the immediate reality of Chinese society and the search for new forms of expression for a contemporary theater in China. Since 2010, he has increasingly turned to transcultural theater practice. In this context, for example, the production “Totally Happy” (2014) is created in co-production with the Münchner Kammerspiele. This is followed, among others, by “Dekalog” (2016, Stary Teatr Krakow), “500 Meters: Kafka, Great Wall, Images from the Unreal World and Daily Heroism” (2017, Thalia Theater Hamburg / Festival Theater der Welt) and “Heart Chamber Fragments” (2021, Münchner Kammerspiele). Since 2019 he also lives and works in Berlin. Here he recently directed “Her Face”, a performance project in eight private apartments
Wang Yanan is a dancer and choreographer. She graduated from Beijing Dance Academy in classical dance and worked in the ensemble of National Oriental Sing and Dance Company in Beijing. Since 1999, she worked for 10 years at Living Dance Studio – China’s first independent critical dance theater – and participated in productions such as “Report on Giving Birth”, “Report on Body” and “Report on 37,8°”, with which she participated in festivals all over the world and won the ZKB Award at the Festival Zürcher Theater Spektakel. She founded Le Se Dance Studio in 2004, and received support from the Doen Foundation and the China-A-Moves project for young choreographers from China and Europe. In 2010 and 2011, she and Tian Gebing traveled to Antwerp and Brussels for study residencies on invitation of the Europalia Festival, developing productions such as “Missreading”. Since 2001 she has been part of Paper Tiger Theater Studio as a performer, choreographer and manager.