SANFTE ARBEIT - chor. Elsa Artmann: A CHANGE IS AS GOOD AS A REST

In movement, music and text, the dance and audio piece A Change is as Good as a Rest deals with the rhythmization of our lives through work and our attempts to outsmart linear time. We become unsure whether we need more love or a break or a quiet minute or a sabbatical or a radical break or fresh air or a crash or a sharp braking to get out of the uninterrupted sequence of mutually rhythmizing activities that make up our everyday lives. Between paid/unpaid, alienated/identity-defining, relational/unifying work - how do we sense at work that something is stopping, that a time is slowly changing? How can we coexist when we no longer agree on what time it is, when NOW no longer takes place at the same time for everyone, when we have taken different forks in time?

TEAM

Artistic direction, dance Elsa Artmann

Dance, co-creation Amelia Uzategui Bonilla, Anne-Lene Nöldner, Diana Treder

Composition, live scoring Annie Bloch

Access dramaturgy for blind and visually impaired audiences, expertise in artistic audio description Lilian Korner

Outside Eye Lili M. Rampre

Dramaturgy Valerie Wehrens

Graphics Ondine Pannet

Sound Edis Ludwig

Lighting Jasper Diekamp

Co-costume design Noemi Baumblatt

Photo Arne Schmitt + tba

Video Cecilia Gläsker

Elsa Artmann / SANFTE ARBEIT

Based on dance, the ensemble works on interdisciplinary formats that include not only choreography but also radio plays and book publications and have recently developed in the direction of contemporary musicals. Using movement, text and voice, they examine topics that we initially feel powerless in the face of - such as the nuclear family, housing, nationalism, work - and create "exercises for other conditions". Since 2022, Elsa Artmann / SANFTE ARBEIT have been dealing with (emotional, care and relationship) work in cultural capitalism in various formats (in addition to stage plays in radio plays, short films and a digital platform for collaborative writing). We understand our practice as documentary in a synopsis of everyday experience and (medially) witnessed contemporary events. In the transitions between language, sound and movement, the ensemble explores the accessibility of its own work from different senses and levels of perception.

http://www.sanfte-arbeit.de/

Supported by the Cultural Office of the City of Cologne, Kunststiftung NRW, the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of NRW, NRW State Office for the Independent Performing Arts, Diversity Fund NRW. Supported by the Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. A co-production by tanzhaus nrw. In further partnership with TanzFaktur Köln.

PHOTOS: ROBIN JUNICKE

Cover picture: Two people stand close together, their arms hanging close to their bodies. They are visible from their thighs to their heads. Both are wearing T-shirts and sporty pants. Their bodies are leaning slightly diagonally upwards to the right. Shades of blue, gray, white and black dominate.