ANOTHER YOU

ABOUT THE PIECE

// Premiere: 9th September, 2010, Theater im Ballsaal, Bonn
// in co-production with Theater im Ballsaal, Bonn
// Supported by: Kunststiftung NRW / Fonds Darstellende Künste / Ministerium für Familie, Kinder, Jugend, Kultur und Sport des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen within the programme support for the best independent dance companies

A man and a woman. A couple. All games have obviously been played, all possibilities considered, and now conflicts just provoke the usual contradictions. Thus, they once again try out a new, outlandish game, and declare themselves to be an experiment.

In 2005, LOVERS AND OTHER STRANGERS was the beginning of the collaboration with dancers Viviana Escale and Volkhard Samuel Guist. Since then, they have quite often performed together it again; in numerous performances of LOVERS AND OTHER STRANGERS on three continents and in a number of further new productions. This closeness and intensity form now, five years later, the basis for a new duet.

ANOTHER YOU is a reflexion on the form of the duet itself, in questioning the naturalness of the dialogue, of communication even. Which methods and forms, emotional closeness and intensity can, for example, be found in the absence of the other?

BY AND WITH

Viviana Escale, Volkhard Samuel Guist /// Choreography / Direction: Rafaële Giovanola /// Music: Jörg Ritzenhoff /// Setting: Annika Ley /// Light design: Marc Brodeur /// Dramaturgy / Concept: Rainald Endraß

PRESS REVIEWS

"In LOVERS AND OTHER STRANGERS, the same dancers went into a highly emotional fight. Now, five years later, closeness, intensity, love, seem to have been used up. (...) Among the most impressive moments are two virtual duets. The first one is being performed above the monitor and develops out of the relation between proximity and distance to the camera, from signs of intensity gone-by and gazes full of signals. During the second duet, the wall prevents touching. Rafaële Giovanola makes the dancers stroke the wall, one makes a movement, the other responds. Viviane Escale and Samuel Guist thus develop a tentative delicateness in their expression which stands in sharp contrast to the directness in “LOVERS”. Between these two scenes, however, the focus is on the other you, the “ANOTHER YOU.”"
Hans-Christoph Zimmermann, General-Anzeiger, Bonn

"For five years, since LOVERS AND OTHER STRANGERS, the collaboration between Viviana Escale and Volkhard Samuel Guist has endured, and accordingly their jubilee performance of “ANOTHER YOU” is very impressive. (...) Man and woman as beginning and end of all. The couple as the fundamental element of classical dance. However, as much as both pieces are connected, as much separates them. For “him” as for “her”, the piece moves more towards an end. (...) These are images of an estrangement through media. They meet in the electronic “contact court” of the internet. Not just flirtation, but also the undertaking to make a relationship work, happen there. (...) At one point, she wanders through a darkening world with a flashlight, searching for the other: Thus, this is also a parable of two who cannot come together. And a huge reminiscence of art for which Rafaële Giovanola contrived a whole spectrum of beautiful gestural references."
Heinz-Dieter Terschüren, Bonner Rundschau