Urban Dionysus

In the organizer's words:

With Urban Dionysus, Munich-based Butoh dancer Alexander Wenzlik brings an extraordinary dance and performance project to the stage and into public space. Between theater and urban environment, the project explores how Dionysian energy - ecstasy, wildness, radical individuality and transformation - can become visible and tangible in today's urban reality.

The starting point of Urban Dionysus is the thesis that we are all Dionysus. In a society characterized by self-discipline, functionality and digital superimposition, the project asks what spaces are still open today for the uncontrollable, the non-productive and the physical. Dionysus does not appear as a mythological figure, but as a physical state and energetic force that irritates existing orders.

The work with an impressive bull mask, which was developed in collaboration with the puppet and mask maker Peter Lutz, is central. The mask is not a decorative element, but a choreographic tool: it fundamentally changes the perception, movement and presence of the body and opens up a space between human and animal, individual and archetype. The movement shapes the mask and the mask shapes the movement.

Urban Dionysus unfolds both in the theater space of the BlackBox in the FatCat and in selected public places in Munich's urban space. A particular tension arises in urban spaces: the masked body suddenly enters everyday life and confronts passers-by with a presence that defies the logic of efficiency and consumption. Those who watch are not left out.

The project is aimed equally at a broad urban audience and the dance and performance scene and is intended as an invitation to exchange ideas about bodies, masking and the question of what forms of ecstasy and transformation are possible in urban society.