Meta | Mor | Phos

A Triadic Ballet Fiction

META | MOR | PHOS. A Triadic Fiction" is a contemporary continuation of Oskar Schlemmer's "Triadic Ballet" (1922), created in a co-production by Hedwig Dances (Chicago) and the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. Based on faithfully reconstructed Schlemmer costumes, the iconic Bauhaus project is transferred into the 21st century - rethought, continued and fictionally expanded.

The piece is divided into three acts - "Larvae", "Dolls", "Imagines" - framed by a prologue and epilogue. Inspired by the developmental cycle of insects, the production revolves around questions of transformation, transition and alternative forms of existence. The historical costumes initially serve as a starting point - they are animated by the dancers, lived through and gradually replaced by imaginative new forms, developed in collaboration with the Chicago Puppet Studio. These are reminiscent of insect bodies or hybrid beings - between human, animal and machine.

Instead of Schlemmer's technology-focused body aesthetics, the focus here is on the connection to the natural world. The dancers' movements follow a dreamlike logic - they writhe, tremble and spiral through spaces between history and the future. Patricia Taxxon's specially composed music, complemented by Richard Woodbury's sound design, reinforces the atmospheric depth. "META | MOR | PHOS" is a choreographic mind game about transformation, coexistence and the intelligence of the non-human.


Artistic direction & choreography: Jan Bartoszek
Performance: Kaelen Gouveia, Kelly Kosiek, Kalli Loudan, Milo Sachse-Hofheimer, Rigoberto Saura, Paula Sousa, Sophia Vangelatos
Dramaturgy: Torsten Blume
Music: Patricia Taxxon, Richard Woodbury
Costumes: Oskar Schlemmer (reproductions by Andreas Wohmann, Karina Luitea), Jacky Kelsey, Torsten Blume
Lighting design: Margaret Nelson
Concept & Tour Production: Linda Pense


Hedwig Dances is a contemporary dance theater ensemble from Chicago, founded in 1985 by choreographer Jan Bartoszek. For 40 years now, the company has been developing works in which movement, visual design and sound merge into multi-layered, theatrical spaces.

The choreographic work emerges from an open, improvisation-based process that is based on intensive collaboration - between dancers, disciplines and approaches. Hedwig Dances frequently collaborates with sculptors, video artists, composers and designers to create stage spaces in which bodies and objects animate each other.

Guest performances have taken the company across the USA and internationally, including to New York (Joyce SoHo), Havana (Teatro Nacional de Cuba) and Dessau (Bauhaus). Pieces such as META | MOR | PHOS reflect her many years of artistic engagement with the ideas of the Bauhaus, with movement systems and processes of transformation - physical, social, ecological. Hedwig Dances has been a resident company at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts in Chicago since 2016.


A production by Hedwig Dances in co-production with the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
Supported by USArtists International, a program of Mid Atlantic Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, the Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, the Hyman & Shirley Hill Charitable Foundation, the Meyer J. & Norma L. Ragir Foundation, the Dolores Kohl Education Fund.



Engl.
META | MOR | PHOS plus two short prologues from Futura open a dialogue with Oskar Schlemmer's Triadic Ballet. Hedwig Dances (Chicago) and the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation trace metamorphosis from architecture to insect body: first in Construction and Trichotomy, which probe space and design, then in the 45-minute main work, whose vivid costumes transform Schlemmer's geometry into an ecological fiction of larva, pupa and imago.


Hedwig Dances is a Chicago-based contemporary dance theater company founded by Jan Bartoszek in 1985. For 40 years, the company has created work that blends movement, visual design, and sound into layered, theatrical environments.

Driven by a process of improvisation and editing, Hedwig's choreography emerges from deep collaboration-between dancers, between disciplines, and between ideas. The company often works with sculptors, video artists, composers, and designers to build spaces where bodies and objects animate each other.

Hedwig Dances has performed across the U.S. and internationally, including at Joyce SoHo (New York), Bauhaus Dessau (Germany), and Teatro Nacional de Cuba (Havana). Works like Futura and META | MOR | PHOS reflect its long-running dialogue with Bauhaus legacies, movement systems, and transformation-physical, social, and ecological.

Now in residence at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, the company continues to make work that is bold, reflective, and open-ended-choreography that invites audiences into poetic, sometimes surreal spaces of connection and change.