Ditta Rudle, tanzschrift.at, 14 July 2019

 

 

TANK is a laboratory test tube, a glass oval tube in which animal preparations are preserved in a special solution for scientific observation and various experiments. Similarly, TANK is the central and only object of observation and experimental site of hybrid bodily transformations in the dance performance of the same name, in which Doris Uhlich invites us „back to the future“.

Inspired by a motif familiar from sci-fi films – from Avatar to The Shape of Water to Alien: Resurrection – Doris Uhlich, in collaboration with DJ and musician Boris Kopeinig, uses this test tube to create a scenic arrangement of bodily modifications thematizing the relationship between the human body and new technologies. Unlike the explicitly quoted films, however, here the human body itself becomes an isolated, potentially dangerous life form as a hybrid form of organic and mechanical substance. But why does man actually want to create a new „optimized“ self as an improved version of homo sapiens?

In TANK, Doris Uhlich intelligently, humorously and frighteningly at the same time casts the body as the playing field of social discourses and existential questions of human existence in an increasingly digitalized and technologized world. TANK is a highly topical work with a final – typical for Doris Uhlich – meta-reflexive punchline.

conception, choreography and performance Doris Uhlich

conception, text and DJ Boris Kopeinig

dramaturgical collaboration Adam Czirak, Yoshie Maruoka

Tank Proper Space (Angela Ribera, Konstanze Grotkopp, Juliette Collas)

light Sergio Pessanha

Guest performance is supported by DANCE ON TOUR AUSTRIA – a project by Tanzquartier Wien in cooperation with the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs.

Doris Uhlich (1977), one of the currently most renowned Austrian choreographers, often challenges the conventional portrayal of the body in her work. She questions and thematizes the western beauty ideal as well as the naturalness of the body and the norms that help shape the notion about our own bodies. She also works with people with a different physiognomy and physical inscription – she opens the dance world to people with a physical disability. Uhlich also boldly demonstrates the potentials of nakedness beyond eroticism and provocation. In her Habitat series, she performed with a group of naked performers in the Dominican Church in Krems or at popular tourist spots in Vienna – in front of the façade of the Vienna Secession and at the former Winter Riding School of the Habsburg Monarchy (in Museumsquartier), which was – with its 120 performers – her biggest show so far.

In her works, Uhlich investigates the relationship between the human being and the machine at different levels or explores the future of the human body in the age of its surgical and genetic perfection. Electronic music – from new wave to techno – plays an irreplaceable role in her creative process.

Doris Uhlich studied pedagogy of contemporary dance at the Konservatorium der Stadt Wien and since 2006 has been developing her own projects. She made her mark already with one of her early choreographies, the first part of the later trilogy called SPITZE, where she confronted the ideology of classical dance in a rather nonconformist way, and which brought her the title Dancer of 2008 by the German specialist magazine tanz. She was awarded the title Dance and Choreographer of the Year four other times by this journal.

Together with the dancer Michael Turinsky, Doris Uhlich won the Nestroy Special Prize for the Ravemachine performance (2016) for “inclusion on an equal footing”. The production Every Body Electric (2018) was shortlisted for the prestigious dance festivals: Venice Biennale Danza as well as Bienal Sesc de Dança in São Paulo.

She is currently signed under 26 dance projects as a choreographer. She is based in TanzQuartier Wien, but as an artist and lecturer, tours the entire world.

 

photo Katja Ilner / Axel Lambrette