with:
Harald Kimmig – Violin
Britta Lieberknecht – dance
Lilo Stahl – dance
Eva Zöllner – accordion

Duration: approx. 60 min.

Soundscapes emanate from the accordion and the pulsating violin makes them dance. Two dancers transform the atmosphere with their movements. The exchange of energy between accordionist Eva Zöllner and violinist Harald Kimmig and dancers Lilo Stahl and Britta Lieberknecht creates a poetic work in which the relationship between dance and music constantly takes on new facets. The absence of a preconceived plan is highly exciting for both the audience and the performers: their delicate improvisations unfold with flair, intuition and empathy.

The individual expressiveness and outstanding quality are what make this experienced team so appealing.

Cologne is a good address for performative encounters between dance and live music. With her work, Britta Lieberknecht has been a driving force in Cologne since 1992. As a dancer and choreographer, she specialises in the interaction of dance with new, old and improvised music.

Lilo Stahl is a dancer with a performative focus on dance as instant composition and as interaction with improvising musicians.

Eva Zöllner works as an accordionist with outstanding new music ensembles and across disciplines. She produces commissioned compositions worldwide, with an interest in music by contemporary female composers outside Europe.

Harald Kimmig is an improvising musician, composer and performer. He plays in many international formations as well as solo concerts and incorporates movement into his violin playing. He specialises in interaction with dance.

A brightly lit white room. Four performers with and without instruments explore it with great concentration. From the very beginning, you can feel the experience of everyone involved. The movements are clear, unpretentious and intuitive. The musicians literally merge with their instruments. Accordion and violin become extended arms and legs, playing a supporting role. Together with accordionist Eva Zöllner, violinist Harald Kimmig and dancer Lilo Stahl, Britta Lieberknecht’s new project takes you on a journey into a world of sound full of stories. Dance and music meet in changing constellations, in confusion, searching for suitable positions. Determination is in the air. Sounds slowly become audible, quietly at first, then louder and louder. The dancers adapt to the rapidly changing qualities of the sounds. Sound and body, music and movement become one.

Interdisciplinary constellations

As a dancer and choreographer, Britta Lieberknecht has long specialised in the interaction of dance with new, old and improvised music. Her career is a journey through the world, thoroughly interdisciplinary: in the 1970s, Lieberknecht first studied at the Academy of Arts in Düsseldorf, before moving on to the Amsterdam Theatre School with a focus on modern dance. In Italy, she learnt clowning and immersed herself in Commedia dell’Arte, the art of physical theatre using masks. She then trained at the Merce Cunningham School in New York and presented her own solo dance pieces and street performances. Since then, Lieberknecht has repeatedly worked in changing interdisciplinary constellations.

In “Leise schäumt das jetzt”, the relationship between dance and music takes on ever new forms. Bodies and instruments collaborate in many different ways, negotiating possible references and relationships: One associates despair and struggle, brief relaxation and the search for closeness, the desire for distance and the return before parting. The communication between Zöllner’s deep accordion sounds and Lieberknecht’s consistently decisive presence of movement is as clear, powerful and intuitive as Kimmig’s violin tones meet Stahl’s seemingly weightless filigree movements.

Lonely as a couple

It’s about intuition and improvisation, about the creation of moments. The “renunciation of a preconceived plan” described in the announcement is not always comprehensible. The movements sometimes seem planned and then again completely out of the moment. And yet the performers succeed in telling stories. The lighting design (Garlef Keßler) casts a shadow play on a wall. Changing colour nuances open up additional narrative levels.

The evening concludes with a meeting of the four performers. They socialise and inspire each other. The dancers react to the slightest change emanating from the instruments. Dynamics change: While Stahl moves in staccato-like rhythms, Lieberknecht performs slow movements from horizontal to vertical, as if she were melting away. The tempo increases, becomes faster. Lonely in the alternation of emotions.

The music builds up. One last bright note goes through your bones. One last movement, one last breath. Then there is silence. “Leise schäumt das jetzt” is an evening that lingers on and yet leaves you with the feeling that that wasn’t all, that there could be more to come. But the piece remains enough for itself.

The plan is not to have a plan. Eliminating the creative hand is one of the most difficult challenges in the art of dance. Britta Lieberknecht has taken on this challenge together with her colleague Lilo Stahl, accordionist Eva Zöllner and violinist Harald Kimmig. In the Alte Feuerwache dance hall, the four rely entirely on the unpredictable coincidences of improvisation.

And in the very first of four sequences, the quartet demonstrates the fresh, new situations that arise when the conventional repertoire of movements is eliminated. Like elementary particles, the four run criss-cross through the room. However, this does not seem disparate, but instead they react to each other in a wondrous way. The audience is presented with a kind of constructivist painting in motion.

It is easy to observe how bodies open or close a space through movement. The fascination of dance can unfold without the need for a narrative approach. Choreography arises from the experimental set-up, which creates surprising moments. The result is a play without emotion that fascinates through its energy and diversity alone. The bodies become signs.

The movement is soon joined by the reaction of the light (Garief Keßler), which produces attractive shadows, and above all the acoustics. Harald Kimmig’s violin and Eva Zöllner’s accordion increasingly set the tone with their improvised sounds.

It is difficult to maintain this demanding level, and at times one falls back into movement sequences that are part of the general dance language.

The intensity immediately diminishes with the familiar. That is part of the risk of this experiment, which produces new constellations with every performance. The title “Leise schäumt das Jetzt” may seem over-pointed, but the significance of the immediate present is definitely at the centre of the production. The quartet then resumes its spontaneous diversity with the finale. Ultimately, the courage to experiment triumphs, allowing a very special dance experience to be realised.

Project concept:
Constantin Leonhard
Susanne Helmes

Handel(n) – SCHAU! Fe(N)ster is an attempt by PAE Aktionslabor e.V. to win over retailers as actors and accomplices in order to draw attention to the difficult situation of retailers in Cologne using performance culture. The project’s key questions put up for discussion issues of the urban future and quality of life in the city: do we want to shop in an anonymous, ‘sterile’ environment, do we want automated machines instead of a competent specialist, or do we prefer this all-important social and human contact? How present should individually designed shop windows be in our cities? But questions about supply chains and products, sustainability and the value of the local also drive the initiated dialogue between artists, retailers and the public.

Supported by Kulturamt der Stadt Köln and the NRW Kultursekretariat.

Since completing her training as a Feldenkrais teacher, Britta Lieberknecht has been researching and developing her new form of teaching for amateurs, advanced students and professionals as well as for mixed classes:
>From sensed anatomy to function to dance.

First, we explore the anatomy of our musculoskeletal system and its function. 3D projection makes it easier to visualise and find a living anatomical structure in your own body.

In a further step, we feel and touch the structure and get to know it with small functional movements. We discover and develop the connections and interrelationships in movement and use them playfully as a source of dance. The individual body part is integrated into the balance and strength system.

The relationship and support of the body parts to each other and their relationship to the floor and space is the focus of the class, which is deepened through anatomical study. There are several lessons for each part of the body, both in build-up and stand-alone units.

The aim is to differentiate and develop movement and to complete the body image and self-image. The result is freer and at the same time better guided movement.

In the process, we not only experience the joy of enriched dance movement but also resolve blind spots in our body image: Areas that we don’t perceive at all or as a block take shape and unfold their potential in our dance. Anatomy and function – simply parts of ourselves – also have an emotional and energetic side that we use creatively.