Narratives
from liminal spaces
through dance and performance
During the month of November 2021 we projected 6 site specific dance performances. Each location informed us about ::.LIMINAL spaces in Berlin, spaces that reflected transitional realms both in historical terms as well as contemporary experiences in the context of lock-downs and indistinguishable visions of the present times and what our future holds.
Our lives stranded in a “limbo”, be it an instant or months of uncertainty without becoming, without crossing any threshold drives us through a diversity of emotional and psychological states expressed through each of the dance performances linked to the specific building, space, location, history.
These videomapped and projected bodies would suddenly “appear” in public space and “found” by random passersbys who witnessed the transformations of the confined bodies and the hidden narratives enclosed in the architecture in the streets of Berlin..
Invaliden Park -“Sinkende Mauer” Sculpture
Dancer/Performer: Rodrigo García Alves (BR/DE)
Rodrigo Garcia Alves (BR/DE) explores the interspace of memory and history inside the vessel of a sinking Berlin Wall as it dilutes into the waters of time.
The expanded-cinema projection took place at the “Sinkenden Mauer” sculpture by Christophe Girot (1997) located at Invaliden Park. The sculpture portrays a sinking granite wall reminiscent of the Berlin Wall.
Anhalter Bahnhof -Exile Museum
Dancer/Performer: Lola Rubio (ES)
Anhalter Bahnhof is a portal between past and present, a place, as a graffiti writing on its wall says, for “Time Travel”. When it was first opened, the façade was adorned with two zinc sculptures titled Day and Night by Ludwig Brunow (1843-1913), a reference that today makes us wonder the implications between light and darkness and what is in between that fine line.
Anhalter Bahnhof is the ghostly reminder of a train station that was gateway to the south and also a place of deportations, a place of disappearance, “invisibilization” of the body, as 119 trains departed from here under Nazi rule. Today the Stiftung Exilmuseum in Berlin is being built in front of the portal to rescue and honor the historic memory of the city and the lives that transited through this portal.
Geschichtspark Ehemaliges Zellengefängnis (Former Prison)
Dancer/Performer: Dominique Tegho (LB)
How do we deal with freedom? How do we deal with confinement? Where is the border between the two? Does such border really exist or are they just illusions we make ourselves believe? Do we put ourselves voluntarily or do we take ourselves voluntarily out from those spaces? Are we -as Sartre stated- condemned to be free?
?
In Domique Tegho’s performance we are able to appreciate various stages of this confrontation with the binary concept of freedom and confinement. From a discovery phase of being “thrown” into a new reality, to confusion, vulnerability, rebellion, breakage and out of body “experiences” looking for freedom and flowing in it until exhaustion.