The 2014 ImPulsTanz Festival opens with Alain Platel’s impressive latest work "tauberbach", which was invited e.g. to the Berliner Theatertreffen among the best ten pieces in the German-speaking world. Inspired by Marcos Prado’s documentary Estamira about a schizophrenic Brazilian waste picker and Artur Zmijewski’s music project Tauber Bach featuring a deaf choir, Alain Platel, the master of empathy, creates a scenario that is both touching and disturbing. A world of waste and madness as a metaphor for our reality, actualised by a vocabulary of movement which Platel himself calls “bastard dance”: “movements that emerge when the performers crawl into that part of their head which civilisation has not yet reached”.
Those who are familiar with Alain Platel’s work know that this is not about putting the exoticism of the Other on display but about survival and human dignity against all odds.
Austrian premiere
17, 19 + 20 July, 21:00, Volkstheater
