For the 23rd time, Tanz im August, International Dance Festival Berlin will be presenting 22 productions from 13 countries between August 12th and 28th.

As in past years, the program includes – in addition to newcomers and frequent guests – big names such as Lucinda Childs and Édouard Lock. This time, a focus is placed on contemporary dance from African countries (Andréya Ouamba and Gregory Maqoma) as well as formal crossovers between classical ballet, urban and contemporary dance.

“New Work”, the highly acclaimed new piece by Canadian choreographer Édouard Lock and his company La La La Human Steps, is one of these crossovers. Breathtaking pas-­de-­deux, turns so fast that you won’t believe your eyes… Lock celebrates, exaggerates and deconstructs the art of classical ballet. His expert dancers seem simultaneously robot-­‐like, disembodied and animalistic. The hot and cold choreography hardly leaves time for emotions and contrasts with the live compositions by Gavin Bryars based on the Baroque operas “Dido and Aeneas” by Purcell and Gluck’s “Orpheus and Eurydice”; they serve as Lock’s thematic references as well.
Hiroaki Umeda also connects contemporary elements with ballet or hip hop. Since the founding of his company S20 in 2000, the Japanese dancer and choreographer has primarily been developing abstract and technologically influenced solos with impressive soundscapes and video animation; here he created an extreme tension between real physicality and media-­‐based disembodiment. For Umeda, classical ballet represents the archetype of European dance; its style of movement differs greatly to his own vocabulary. At TANZ IM AUGUST he will show his new trio “3.isolation” with three ballet dancers as the third part of a long-­‐term project begun in 2009. This work will be complemented by “2.repulsion”, the second part of the series with three hip hop dancers.
The Brazilian choreographer Guilherme Botelho creates an entire universe of formal variations with his Alias company from Geneva. In “Sideways Rain”, the 14 dancers move ceaselessly from left to right over the stage – they walk, fall, crawl, stop, run, stop and start over, without pause, as though they were hunted or caught in an invisible tidal undertow. They weave a web over the stage, move among it with an increasingly hermetic feeling for their body and time; in the end, they are naked – literally and metaphorically. Botelho sees this hypnotic action as a fascinating – above all a fascinatingly simple and inspiring – allegory for the human condition as such: the flow of life.
In addition to the supporting program with talks, workshops, lectures, discussions and films, TANZ IM AUGUST’s new series in-­progress shows selected works by local and international choreographers that are now being created.
The “1. Berliner TanzFilmNacht” will also take place for the first time in the framework of the festival as a cooperation with zdf.kultur, the Yorck film theater group and k3berlin. And the sommer.bar, the non-­‐stop meeting point for the dance scene and visitors, will once again offer free performances by festival artists, films and concerts.

La 23esima edizione di Tanz im August, festival internazionale di teatro danza, presenterà 22 produzioni da 13 diversi paesi. A Berlino dal 12 al 28 agosto 2011.

Come negli anni passati, agli artisti esordienti e agli ospiti abituali si affiancano nomi di spicco quali Lucinda Childs ed Édouard Lock. In questa edizione l’accento è posto sulle varie espressioni di danza contemporanea proveniente dai paesi africani (Andréya Ouamba and Gregory Maqoma) così come sul crossover tra balletto classico, danza urbana e contemporanea.
In aggiunta al nutrito corredo di conferenze, workshop, incontri, dibattiti e film, la nuova sezione di Tanz im August “in—progress” proporrà una selezione di studi e work-in-progress di coreografi locali ed internazionali.

Nella cornice del festival verrà altresì presentata, in collaborazione con zdf.kultur, lo York Film Theater Group e k3berlin, la prima Berliner TanzFilmNacht. E naturalmente il sommer.bar – punto di incontro non stop per visitatori, artisti, danzatori ed appassionati – continuerà ad offrire, lungo l’intera durata del festival, performance gratuite degli artisti ospiti, concerti e proiezioni di film.