Some words about the most important productions and productions as a guest choreographer (in chronological order):
Your Dancer.
A somatic portrait of Liz King by Georg Blaschke
Georg Blaschke / Direction, Choreography & Photo
Liz King / Choreography & Performance
Peter Thalhamer / Light Design
Ulrich Troyer / Soundtrack
Elisabeth Drucker / PR & Office
Video / Claire Granier
A Production of D.ID / dance identity & M.A.P. Vienna
Liz King, 62 years old dancer, choreographer and pioneer of the Austrian dance scene with an eventful history, asks Georg Blaschke to create a solo for her. – She wants to be his dancer.
Numerous conversations, interviews and the collecting of documentary material allow the biographical positioning of a personality who has experienced the whole gamut of exposure to the public as a female artist and who has constantly worked on it: never give up, formulate and create afresh.
The public persona Liz King is juxtaposed by an intimate and sensitive private space.
Rehearsal room: the body as a memories’ storage of dance technique, lived motherhood and somatic transformation processes. – Georg Blaschke remains close to this body rendering a new interpretation of articulation and of spatial tendencies, considering the body as an actual and essential happening.
The choreographic structure follows the logics of self-awareness as a tool of differentiation of movement and its representation in space.
The rhetoric plane of the performance reveals facets of a personality, the somatic plane exposes a body.
"ACCOMPLISHMENT: TO MAKE WORKS IN THE FACE OF THE VOID
TO GAIN FORM, IDENTITY, [...] Jim Morrison
in case of loss
This trio performance creates a settting of interactions between performers on the borderline of dance and installation. Clearly placed constellations of articulated bodies dissolve into the space, are losing stability.
Contact, touch and embraces intensify and alienate the body image of the performers and open the vision to free interpretations by the public.
Improvisation and the choreographical structure are based on a somatic approach towards movement research, articuaton and representation of bodies in a given space, mainly influenced by the Feldenkrais Method.
Georg Blaschke /Concept, artistic Direction and Performance
Heide Kinzelhofer & Petr Ochvat / Performance and Research
Peter Thalhamer / Lightdesign
Ulrich Troyer / Soundtrack
Sascha Krausneker / Feldenkrais Training
Elisabeth Drucker / PR and Office
a production of M.A.P. Vienna / 2010
kindly supported by Stadt Wien/MA7-Kultur, bm:ukk, Jäckel Optik, WUK, OdeonTanz II
Thx! to Daniel Zimmermann and Daniel Aschwanden
literary squabbels - Film
Two men are recalling the central perspective
Short cinematic episodes – performed and filmed by Georg Blaschke und Daniel Zimmermann in Bytom and the Silesian Voivodeship.
Songs by „sad mechanic exercise“ (Daniel Zimmermann & Hari Köchli).
literary squabbels interweaves poems, songs, performance and image to a touching audiovisual poem with a gentle sense of humour.
Length: 30 minutes
Produced by M.A.P. Vienna / Georg Blaschke & Elisabeth Drucker
and by Daniel Zimmermann
Kindly supported by nadaproductions
Thx! to Agnieszka Osman (Bytom Dance Theatre School) and Wolfgang Haas (CastYourArt)
"Smile and we smile, the lords of many lands;
Frown and we smile, the lords of our own hands;
For man is man and master of his fate." Alfred Lord Tennyson: Ulysses
Embraceable You
Duo works, based on a training laboratory that introduced the Feldenkrais Method to a contemporary dance practice.
Guest choreography for the Konservatorium Wien Privatuniversität.
Artistic direction, Choreography / Georg Blaschke
Feldenkrais Training / Sascha Krausneker
Choreography and Performance / Laura Amtmann, Leonie Bockelmann, Kyra Chlebowski, Cäcilia Färber, Maja Franke, Ana Germ, Celia Hickey, Magdalena Jankowska, Nikoletta Korkos, Kim Rojc, Elisa Stockinger, Yating Yue
Soundtrack / Ulrich Troyer
Length/ 15 minutes
A production of the Konservatorium Wien Privatuniversität and
M.A.P. Vienna / Georg Blaschke & Elisabeth Drucker
ANDA’s Dream
a film by Georg Blaschke, Amanda Piña and Daniel Zimmermann
Choreography and Performance / Students of the BRG Hamerlingstraße, Linz
Camera & Editing: Daniel Zimmermann
Assistance of Production/ Elena Hajek
kindly supported by I like to Move it Move it - the big school project of LINZ09
The film was produced during I Like to Move it Move it - the school project from Linz09, Cultural Capital of 2009. Two locations in Linz were involved: the Lentos Kunstmuseum and the Haus der Geschichten.
The performance artists Amanda Piña and Georg Blaschke were offered the opportunity to work with pupils between fifteen and sixteen years old during a period of eight weeks.
The task was explicitly not to teach or prepare a choreography, that would be later imposed on the young students, but to empower them to discover their own approach to authentic movement and expression as well as developing an awareness in space and within the group. Their own understanding of character building in theatre and dance was questioned and that process finally led to physical statements and proposals of improvisation that were offered only by themselves. The results were framed in space as possibilities of physical presence.
What motivated the creation of this film was mainly the impressive creative potential of this young performers.
Pupils developped their own physical statements and adapted them to the specific sites by means of improvisation.The eye of the camera follows the inspiring constellations of space, movement and physical presence that emerged.
Jetzt bist Du dran.
A project of choreographical Reconstruction, dedicated to Andrei Jerschik.
Based on the choreography Mensch im Wahn / Man in delusion (Premiere 1929) by Andrei Jerschik (1902 – 1997).
Andrei Jerschik was a well-knwon expressive Austrian Ausdruckstänzer, Choreographer, Opera Director and a committed Teacher of acrobatics and ballet.
The main subject of that performance is the act of passing on and the act of reconstructing choreography.
In 1995 Andrei Jerschik, already at the age of 94 years, has passed on directly his choreography Mensch im Wahn to Harmen Tromp.
The memories of Tromp of that process as well as the vigorous and touching indications that Jerschik gave through handwritten notes have formed the initial points of that project.
The piece is conceptually divided into three parts:
1. Original
2. Reconstruction
3. Film
Jetzt bist Du dran. was premiered at the Festival BERÜHRUNGEN. Tanz vor 1938 - Tanz von heute, curated by Andrea Amort in October 2008 at the Odeon in Vienna.
Further Performances at the Posthof Linz / Austria 2009, the ImPulsTanz Festival Vienna / Austria 2009, the International Dance Conference Bytom / Poland 2010, at Mezzanine / Oporto / Portugal 2010.
Artistical Direction: Georg Blaschke
Reconstruction and Rehearsal of the Original Choreography: Harmen Tromp
Performance: Petr Ochvat
Light Design: Peter Thalhamer
Original Music: Sergei Rachmaninoff - Prelude in G-Minor, Opus 23, Nr.5
Music: Mika Vainio
Film Editing: Daniel Zimmermann
Assitance of Production: Elisabeth Drucker
Length: 30 minutes
A production of the Festival Berührungen: Tanz vor 1938 – Tanz von heute / Curator: Andrea Amort and M.A.P. Vienna / Georg Blaschke & Elisabeth Drucker
THANKS! to Amanda Piña, Anna Prokopova
körper. bauen. stellen. / version trio
The basis for this work is an empty room, its limitations and the quality of its structure. I have continued to develop the successful solo piece körper. bauen. stellen. / body. building. places., and with my team I have expanded the work with its special body language to be suitable for a trio.
In this (release-based) experiment of body and space, heavy body crashes come about, depending on material and surface conditions. Sometimes sculptural formations find a role as personal statements about the space, gravity and silence and gradually are resolved in the scope of the performance.
The choreography itself, thus defined and reduced, undergoes the process of introspection and directness, a subtle irony! Each performance of this work is freshly adapted and restructured to suit the given surroundings and therefore presents a unique analysis of the location’s conditions.
This piece has been partly created during a residency at Liz King’s Dance Identity / D.ID.
Cast:
Concept and artistic Direction: Georg Blaschke
Choreography and Performance: Andrea Stotter, Heide Kinzelhofer, Georg Blaschke
Light Design: Peter Thalhamer
Music: Stan Getz
Feldenkrais-Training: Sascha Krausneker
Agent, PR: Elisabeth Drucker
Length: 40 minutes
Fingerdisco with Pauline
This performance comes at just the right time for a Christmas surprise with a play on contrary forms of presentation, in this case by using the art of disco dancing.
What fingers can set in motion!
As a result, the show alternates between naked excessiveness and reduced self- projection in retro- style.
The choreography is clearly defined. It could even happen that there is exact repetition without it being requested.
Wow, those hips! Let me dance you into the light tonight…
The performance is, of course, suitable for families and homes, especially in the light of twirling disco Christmas baubles.
Idea, Concept and Performance: Georg Blaschke
Lehmanns Adressen
Take part in a walk down memory lane. We connect Vienna as it was in the past with the city of today by drawing connecting lines through the city based on Lehmanns Wiener Adressbuch from the year 1935: ….pathways and lines connecting people, methods and symbols.
People and buildings that have disappeared, are remembered, their remains or their newness.
The address book is in structure similar to a telephone book today, but divided into the various districts and the streets in these, as opposed to the people, listed in alphabetical order. It is a detailed and extravagant work, including the appropriate trade symbols used at that time for each address. In those days very few houses had a telephone.
The 22nd and 23rd districts are still missing!
I shall invite the audience to the traditional Café Eiles in the Josefstadt, on a date which is as yet unconfirmed, to an open discussion and book study in order to:
1. compare signs, symbols, and address filing structures from that period with today’s layouts
2. share personal memories and relationships, a search for names and branches, and a search for buildings or transport routes
The participants should have a strong interest in and relationship to Vienna as it was before 1938.
Afterwards, a route will be chosen with special emphasis on the choice of transport used to reach a particularly memorable place or path, and a line of common consent will be drawn linking present Vienna with the past. A city plan of our findings can be drawn up one afternoon and then we will decide how we want to document the information (photo, statement, interview, report, remaining symbols).
Memories, discovery, learning, leaving.
Idea and Concept: Georg Blaschke
körper. bauen. stellen. / body. building. places. – solo
With the help of the individual building sites of my body, I analyse, ritualise and map out patterns of urbane memories registered there. Using these as a base, I develop a dialect unique to the body that is acting both as raw material and constructor. In this way the body is exposed to constant changes of construction work on itself and on space itself. It passes through, crosses over the intersection between itself, its skin and the surrounding space, changes from one building site to another and thus experiences permanent renewal. Mixed ratios, foundations, and guarantees of durability are all put to the test, publicised and discarded.
In the end, the question is which raw material, which body-rubble would be suitable to provide a new construction for the given space.
“each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it.” (John Cage)
This solo work is technically, not as a concept, motivated by many experiences as a performer, dancer and trainer. It presents the beginnings of a resumee of various physical qualities that are subjected to continuous internal and external reassessment. These qualities come up against concrete 3-dimensional and material limits and the restricting presence of gravity, and that is precisely why they experience a desire for renewal.
For this reason I dedicate this work to all the dancers with whom I have had the pleasure to work.
“no- continuity simply means accepting that continuity that happens.” (John Cage)
Cast:
Concept, Performance: Georg Blaschke
Light-Design: Peter Thalhamer
Music: Johann Sebastian Bach
Length: 25 minutes
Georg und Robert – Can men dance?
Georg comes from football.
Robert comes from Russian.
Georg has studied maths.
Robert has studied drama.
Robert is new to Vienna and comes from Holland where women invented contemporary dance.
Georg loves women.
And both of them love dance.
A dialogue about femininity, fear, peace and integration and other themes we discover during the course of our work.
Idea und Performance: Georg Blaschke and Robert Steijn
Choreos – A Dance Odyssey
Guest Choreography for the item-Tanztheater Winterthur
Memories of mythological and archaeological rooms are created, based on passages from Greek tragedies and pictures of archaeological finds and ancient theatre performances, memories that lead the dancers on an “odyssey” of gestures and physical reconstructions. The potential for converting elemental patterns of choreography and drama into modern movement and space can be explored by using the medium of contemporary dance. The entire production is embedded in scenery that can reflect, disappear and reform. The choreography creates a field of tension between mythological remains and post- digital emptiness, enhanced by the stage set and the penetrating visual conception.
Cast:
Choreographical Direction Georg Blaschke
Choreography & Dance: Tanja Büchel, Ingrid Fäh, Christina Thoma
Composition & Sound Design: Flo Steinberger, Richard Valentin Strauß
Costumes: Nina Haas, Esther Kunz
Stage: Markus Nef, Walter Bosshart
Light Design: Manual Bosshard
Graphics and Photos: Anita Bättig
12manandawomanwaltzes
This work, based on 12 songs, shows various themes in permanent transformation - distance, proximity, approach, circling, spinning around, self-abandonment, resolution - danced by a male/female duo (Sabil Rasiti and Georg Blaschke). Passages from Jean-Luc Godard’s early films provide a narrative thread, such as the wonderful film “Pierrot le Fou” (1965), equally appropriate nowadays, in which Godard tells the story “of the last romantic couple”. We have absorbed these scenes, ingrained them, to choose them as a possible Geometry of Love, a starting point to which we will return in never-ending role play, no, rather in role transcendence in our very own dance and body language.
In 12 architectures of space, imagery and body, we live and dance through various approaches to formalizing the same excerpts of a perpetual theme (man/woman, love while fleeing, hopeless love, or the liberation of love) and discover our music in the form of an internal or external 3/ 4 rhythm. In a world of mobile mania, where relationships are often reduced to digital communication, we offer our bodies and emotions as projection surfaces (that at least). What can be lived, what freedom is there as a pair, how far away the first touch? And: in what form, in what skin do we exist?
We approach the film soundtrack gradually and subtly via a Chopin theme. The soundtrack reflects Godard’s treatment of music in his films and raises the question of possible romanticism in modern dance.
The vivid scenic structure of the work is closely linked to film aesthetics such as cutting, speed, overlapping pictures and movement and demands the potential for realism in both “performance” and stage setting.
Cast:
Idea, Concept: Georg Blaschke
Choreography & Dance: Sabile Rasiti, Georg Blaschke
Light Design: Peter Thalhamer
Music: Frédéric Chopin, Françoise Hardy, Nat King Cole, Charles Aznavour
Musical Direction: Richard Valentin Strauß
Dramaturgical Assistance: Claudia Heu
Assistenc and Sound : Verena Lehner
Length: 40 minutes
Mycenae: A Dance Poem.
The starting point for this work was a methodical approach to Greek mythology, especially the sagas of King Mycenae’s kingdom and his involvement in the Trojan War in 1300 BC.
During this process, the following questions arose:
Which archetype patterns can be transferred to the ritual of a dance event?
In which way could dance heighten the drama?
Georg Blaschke had well-grounded knowledge of the archaeological excavation site and could recreate systematically the site as well as the dramatic relationships between the characters- in this case, between Cassandra and Clytemnestra. This provided a basis for improvisation, structured choreography and the arrangement of stage properties.
Cast:
Artistic Direction: Georg Blaschke
Choreography & Dance: Julia Mach, Sabile Rasiti
Composition & Sound Design, DVD: Flo Steinberger
Light-Design: Peter Thalhamer
Stage: Georg Blaschke
Training: Georg Blaschke, Richard Valentin Strauß
Supervision: Christl Lieben
Length: 30 minutes
SiriusSteps
This work was initially based on a solo out of the production E-N-D from Pilottanzt from the year 2000, danced by Georg Blaschke in countless performances at home and abroad. Originally conceived as part of a danced “triptychon”, it was inspired by archetype patterns and back-to-nature experiences and was developed to the forceful beats of electronic sound.
Deeper infiltration into the material brought new visions to the transformation. Mythological dreams and ritual processes were the central force of the new research which is strongly supported by the new musical interpretation. With limited constellations of space and precise lighting effects, the dance grows into a suggestive trip.
Cast:
Idea, Choreography: Georg Blaschke, Roderich Madl
Dance: Georg Blaschke
Composition/Electronics: Richard Valentin Strauß/ILIEL-sonic research
Light Design: Peter Thalhammer
Length: 30 minutes
Imaginary Landscape No. 5
John Cage –Project with students from S.E.A.D., 2nd. Year
The composition Imaginary Landscape No.5 by John Cage provided the basis for this choreography project. The three- minute composition was originally written for as many as 42 records or tapes with jazz music and 8 sound storage mediums. It is based on coincidental operations derived from the Book of Transformations (I Ging) together with a fractured rhythmic structure in five parts, subdivided into five, all with time lengths of equal value.
Students from Salzburg University have arranged several electro- acoustic versions of the score. The aim of the project was to portray some of these versions in dance and, in addition, to transform the score directly into a collage of dance, vocals, sound and silence. In this way, seven short pieces were created and later performed in the ASPEKTE Salzburg 2003 (Festival of New Music).
The Zone (guest choreography for x.IDA/Linz)
Seven explorers seeking the last relic of their science reach the ZONE, an area of unforeseeable internal and external circumstances.
On the way to the object of their explorations, the crew is exposed to influences demanding extreme physical and scientific experience. Quite apart from the psychological ordeal that such an undertaking on foreign, unknown territory presents.
The exploration in choreography touched on the borderline between physical theatre and contemporary dance and focussed particularly on the ritual processes between members of the group and outside.
The project was an initiative of Esther Linley, the cultural manager of x.IDA, and was worked on over a period of five weeks in December 2002 in Linz. The company consists of young dancers gaining their first professional experience by working with choreographers from various fields, both in creative projects and on stage.
space-dervish
The intention of this project was to present the fascinating discoveries and conclusions of theoretical physics and cosmology within the 4-dimensions of a stage’s space and time. The story is about two spacemen, R1 (Georg Blaschke) and R2 (Sascha Krausneker), who are in orbit around a star which is disintegrating into a black hole. They cross the horizon of events, the boundary of time and space from which there is no return, to meet their entropic deaths together with the rest of the stage universe.
They are accompanied by the board computer MUTTER (Irene Cotticchio), the informative omnipotence, whose scientific lecture on black holes and the universe’s wave function in the conclusive logic is increasingly confused by the smallest sub-atom disturbances of voices and digital misconnections, and eventually gets completely out of control.
Sound, body and voice melt into a space ritual on the boundary of space and time.
A definite dramatic line was employed in this piece, as the performers’ ritual dynamics took a turn in a similar direction.
Cast:
Artistic Direction: Georg Blaschke
Acting, Voice, Voice-Samples: Irene Coticchio
Choreography and Dance: Georg Blaschke, Sascha Krausneker
Composition, Sounds: Richard Valentin Strauß
Light Design: Andrea Korosec
Costumes: Caterina Czepek
Stage: Georg Blaschke
Scientific Consultation: Verena Kain
Curator of the Exhibition: Monika Fischer
Length: 55 minutes
Ein Bild und sein Schatten - „Kronos und Freud, zwei Zeugen für die Lösung“
(Commissioned work for the Styrian Autumn Festival 2001)
Georg Blaschke was both choreographer and dancer in this “solo ballet”
The concept for this piece is credited to Jörg Schlick, an artist from Graz, who created and performed it to New York audiences twenty years ago. Serial photography, projections and electrically distorted music blend with a striking futuristic costume by Lisa D. to result in an extraordinary and crazy aesthetical performance. The choreography, divided into four movements or temperaments corresponding to the music, was partly determined by the white costume’s potential for movement and the four projections on the body in movement.
VIECHER.
The inspiration for this work came largely from the archetype doctrine of C. G. Jung and the therapeutic suggestions in the book One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. In addition, the language of movement created in KAFKA demanded further attention. This led to intensive studies of characters in everyday life, of those people who plumb the depths of psychotic and animal behaviour. Four characters were created, each with individual “little problems”. They were in a cage with a mood trainer to train them back to health - or not, as the case might be. Imaginary objects, a tube as an extension of body organs and visits to the zoo were all factors that inspired a repertoire of gestures and choreography. Bestial sounds and furious mixes of power station noises and motives from Pink Floyd provided a musical carpet on which to dance.
Cast:
Concept and artistic Direction: Georg Blaschke
Dramaturgy: Christophe Dumalin
Choreography and Performance: Irene Coticchio, Giordana Pascucci, Lucia Riccelli, Georg Blaschke, Sascha Krausneker
Composition, Sounds: Richard Valentin Strauß
Light Design: Andrea Korosec
Stage: Georg Blaschke
Length: 60 minutes
KAFKA – Die Verwandlung. Getanzt.
The assignment was a specific transformation of the narrative into a form of dance theatre without using explanatory text passages. This took shape as an expressive dance grotesque by incorporating techniques of Corporal Mime.
An ingenious system of interaction with objects, furniture and food was integrated into choreography combining dance and gestures, and was adapted every time to suit the performance revenue. The individual characters were developed with great precision and the result was a plausible approach to Kafka’s complex, surreal world, due not least to a total integration of the aesthetic features (make up, costumes, lighting, colour, requisites, music arrangement, carnality).
Cast:
Idea and artsitic Direction: Georg Blaschke
Choreography and Performance: Irene Coticchio, Giordana Pascucci, Lucia Riccelli, Georg Blaschke, Christophe Dumalin
Music-Samples: Richard Valentin Strauß
Light: Andrea Korosec
Stage: Georg Blaschke
Length: 60 minutes
Schlafen ohne Ort / Dormire senza Luogo
The intrusive lyrics of Fernando Pessoa inspired a scenic curve identical to the daily routine of four lovable, small-minded characters. Old bureaucratic objects, large and small, were used to suggest bedroom, office and street scenes, and as a secret base for small perversities. –A pure piece of dance theatre without words, verging on the grotesque.
Cast:
Idea and Concept: Georg Blaschke
Dramaturgy: Daria Deflorian
Choreography and Performance: Irene Coticchio, Heide Kinzelhofer, Lucia Riccelli, Georg Blaschke, Christophe Dumalin, Max Steiner
Light Design: Andrea Korosec
Stage: Georg Blaschke
Length: 50 minutes
PASOLINI-Projects
A total of three short pieces, Kleine Aktionsgedichte, were developed with various casts to celebrate the 25th. anniversary of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s death. Two of these were performed by the theatre company Dark Camera at Pasolini’s original film locations near Rome and the third in Vienna.
The scenic collages were based on text passages (Amado Mio, Petrolio) from his early and later periods and the scenario of typical Roman suburbs as seen in his early films (Mamma Roma, Accatone). The expressive style combined elements of acting, song and dance with a precise portrayal of the characters and the integration of realistic objects.
