Every day we get together at different public spaces and automatically become part of a temporary assembly with its inherent complex social structures. For example in a church, there exist different rules of communication and moving in the space than in a bar or on a sports field. For three years, choreographer Sebastian Matthias and his team have investigated urban organisation dynamics within the performance series “groove space”. Now they bring this research back into the city: Existing codes and the organisation of movements are made visible as choreographic structures and ornamented by the dancers. The dramaturgy concentrates on the everyday choreographies that can be found at the specific sites and that can be divided into five categories. Equipped with a map, the spectators are finding their own way through the city and explore together with the dancers the specific social situations and their choreographic potential.
Five artists have collaborated on supporting the various places. Tamer Fahri Özgönenc’s sound installation re-interprets the urban textures surrounding the church and creates a multi focus space that modulates in shape and size. Appropriating the circulating event lights often used at sports matches, Andreas Harder uses the laser, characterised as profoundly focused light. It incorporates the energy and concentration of American Football and confronts it with a different, contemplative atmosphere. The music that Simonne Jones wrote for the bar is based on social rituals and invisible codes that we use to navigate through our relationships and interactions with strangers. For the lobby of Grimm Center, Eva Berendes produced three aluminium screens on wheels, which she conceives as mediators between the everyday dynamic of the lobby and the performing dancers. By moving the sculptures, both dancers and visitors can design the situation. Nino Baumgartner developed an ‘Über’Vernissage set. The sculptures, similar to Franz West’s “Passstücke”, are made of material that was found in the streets and support the positions of the audience, helping them to look at both art and dance.