Tanz made in Berlin

The Tanz made in Berlin festival, culminating in the Tanznacht, is a celebration of homegrown contemporary dance. But for this rapidly expanding, bi-annual event, homegrown involves a lot of cross-cultivation, as Berlin continues to attract artists from all over the world with the promise of cheap rents and a dynamic dance scene. Naomi Buck talked to the choreographers Caroline Meyer Picard from France, U.S. performance artists Sten Rudstrøm, Jeremy Wade, William Wheeler and Belgian choreographer Lawrence Malstaf, about life and work in their adopted base, somewhere between Paris and Moscow

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Naomi Buck:Sten, why did you come to Berlin?

Sten Rudstrøm:It felt like a city that was changing all the time. Most other cities have established the way they are, set their plan down. It felt like this city was in flux, that nothing was complete.

Naomi Buck:Has that proven true?

Sten Rudstrøm:Some things aren’t changing. I realise that there are some systemised ways and limitations. For instance, people are pretty uptight about the difference between dance and theatre.

My background is performance, I’ve always worked in the space between dance and theatre.

Caroline Meyer Picard:I never imagined in all my life that I would live in Germany. It was work that brought me here but then I met my husband. I loved the feeling of being in Europe. It’s much stronger here than in France. And it’s much easier to get things done, to engage people for instance. You don’t have to fill out a thousand forms. And you can do good work for little money. In France, that’s impossible.

Naomi Buck:In what sense is Berlin more European than Paris?

Caroline Meyer Picard:Parisians live in a cell. When I go to Paris, it feels closed. Germans are open. I had expected the opposite. It took me a year to get rid of my ...

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Tanz Januar 2007
Rubrik: Welcome to Berlin, Seite 8
von Naomi Buck

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