by Contemporary Cruising |

On Schönheitsabend by Vincent Riebeek and Florentina Holzinger
By Ellen Söderhult

Schönheitsabend is a performance created and performed by Florentina Holzinger and Vincent Riebeek. It is a collage of references taken out of context and manipulated in ways that makes us experience them differently and messes with ideas of dramaturgy, puts beauty right next to silly, romantic next to cheap, formal next to trashy, sexy pole dance next to dramatic ballet. The experimental approaches popular, megalomaniac or avant-garde meets lame and skillfulness overlaps just-enough. Or other ways around, but it restructures sensuous relationships between things. In that sense, one could put it under the label “postinternet”, because dance history is no longer necessarily chronological, and what is considered dance history does not anymore have to be confirmed by the same gate-keepers. The internet does not only change what is archived and available, but probably also how we are conditioned to or abled to think dramaturgy. The way of using and mis-using dance history is made even more exciting because of Holzinger’s and Riebeek’s way of executing the material in an almost sport like manner, and by insisting on transforming the heteronormative heritage into something queer, in which gender roles are dispersed, re-written or opposed.

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by Contemporary Cruising |

IVO DIMCHEV ON ROTTERDAM SCHOWBURG
Last night I performed Operville – a new work of mine at Rotterdam schouwburg one of the very prestigious and rich theaters in Holland. In the audience there were exactly 13 people.
Dear presenters working for this theAter, obviously the main efforts of your PR goes for promoting the main stage where musicals, ballet companies and large dutch theAter productions are presented. Nobody really cares about the smaller stage /150 sits/ where more experimental and innovative productions take place. Im really grateful for inviting my work , it shows that you have a good taste and balls, and Im also thankful for trusting me , but someone somewhere in your administrative team needs to understand that if this work does not reach a broad young audience which is surely available in bigger cities, presenting the work does not really make sense. Im happy to have job, to earn money by being invited in good theaters, you obviously also have good salaries working for the same theaters…but there are also other important , even more important aspects of our “job” and one of them is spending money and energy on connecting this work with the right audience! You have the money, if you bring the energy as well would be wonderful „heart“-Emoticon

by Contemporary Cruising |

OPENING OF THE KATALYST FESTIVAL, NIGHTREVIEW
NO PICNIC by GERTJAN FRANCISCUS
by Nicole Strecker

The late 60s had the Theater artist to be ready at all times to: Feels the audience provoked, he might storm the stage. Claus Peymann had gladly served this together with Peter Handke and still pushed by hand at the legendary “Offending the Audience” the audience of his stage. In a subsequent “staging” of a piece entitled “The There’s only one”, he denied equal all the drama, leaving viewers simply a stage full of requisits- and they, betrayed in viewing a real performance, entered the stage and destroyed all props around. Also Marina Abramović documented once the violence of the audience and the vulnerability of the performer, as in 1974 with “Rhythm 0″ their viewers weapons ranges and delivers the flickering aggression. At the end she was half-naked, bloodied wounded, threatened with a gun.

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by Contemporary Cruising |

Body Parts , Claudia La Rocco
THE SUNLIGHT from the circular window high in the wall marks time in a shifting stretching oval on the floor. I am not quite sure what I am looking at, the various piles of construction and design-related materials, also maybe marking time on this long floor. I haven’t yet made the decision to look closely enough, always that decision when you walk into a gallery, like any conversation, whether or not to commit. I’m still getting my bearings at the echt Brooklyn arts-and-science compound that is Pioneer Works on a Sunday afternoon.

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by Contemporary Cruising |

Three scenes from Kein Applaus für Scheisse: by Lauren Bakst
American Realness at Abrons Arts Center

One. I remember Florentina Holzinger’s first costume. It was an oversize, orange-dyed dress, a muumuu really. She was sitting in a chair center stage. A minute or so earlier, a high fan kick had revealed her lack of underwear. Vincent Riebeek, in a similarly loose blue garment, kneeled to sneak his head between her legs—the image momentarily evoking a familiar sexual position. He inched away from Holzinger to display a red string exiting her vagina and entering his mouth. Turning his body to face the audience, he pulled and chewed and the string kept coming.

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by Contemporary Cruising |

Reading and Rumor: The Problem with Kenneth Goldsmith by Brian Droitcour

1.

Last weekend I attended “Interrupt 3,” a conference on poetry and digital media at Brown University in Providence. I was in the audience Friday night when Kenneth Goldsmith read the autopsy of Michael Brown, the teenager who was murdered by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014.

An image of Michael Brown—his graduation picture, which many used as Facebook profile pictures to honor his memory and counter the images spread by the media to portray him as a delinquent—was projected on the screen above the stage as Goldsmith read, rocking and pacing, delivering the autopsy as an incantation. The rhythms and inflections of his reading brought out the repetitions in the report, transforming their formality into ritual.

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by Contemporary Cruising |

Where Taboos and Healing Compete for Equal Billing
‘I-Cure’ Provokes at the Queer New York Arts Festival
By Gia Kourlas

When a choreographer like Ivo Dimchev proposes a performance work intended to promote healing, you can’t help feeling suspicion. It’s the good kind. This Bulgarian artist, based in Brussels, has a persuasive subversive streak.

In his playfully sinister “I-Cure,” performed Friday at Abrons Arts Center/Henry Street Settlement as part of the 2014 Queer New York International Arts Festival, he ponders the difference between therapy and theater, or cure and culture. If healing is a choice, as he asks in a festival brochure, why not make the choice while sitting in the theater? Why waste another hour of trying to be cultural when it could be used to become healthier?

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