First edition of the Festival FRAGILE

Press release

PINA BAUSCH ZENTRUM

under construction #4

The first ever “FRAGILE – Festival for young changemakers” international Youth DanceMusicTheatre Festival on the theme of sustainability will take place in Wuppertal from 20 September to 1 October 2023.

The festival:

FRAGILE presents eight exciting productions from six countries – for young people and for an intergenerational audience. How can the stage become a field of experimentation for sustainable practices? What special powers do different formats – from dance to performance, workshops to debates, seeing dance and dancing yourself – have in fostering global empathy? In view of our current challenges, empathy is needed now more than ever!

The pieces were selected by a jury that included members of Fridays for Future Wuppertal, the curators Melanie Zimmermann and Tobias Staab, and the director of the preparatory phase of the Pina Bausch Centre, Bettina Milz. The wide-ranging programme address the challenges of collaborating internationally in a sustainable way, and thus offer new perspectives on how to build alliances, express unity and explore new narratives, spaces, materials and production methods. The concept of climate neutrality and the fight for biodiversity not only underpins the productions themselves, but the entire festival organisation. Bettina Milz says: “The festival offers an experiential space for young people to explore the theme of sustainability in all its complexity. Dance and performance make contradictions visible and tangible, opening up new perspectives. We want to be encouraging! It’s all about taking action together, rather than burying our heads in the sand in despair. Social, ecological and economic aspects of sustainability are closely interrelated – as is made clear, for example, by the UN’s 17 goals for sustainable development, which range from ‘no poverty’ as a first goal to ‘quality education, ‘climate action’ and ‘responsible consumption’.” The program is published on 02 August, the World Overshoot Day 2023, that is calculated yearly by the Global Footprint Network. It marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year.

The presale starts on 4th of August 2023, Kulturkarte Wuppertal and Wuppertal Live:
https://www.kulturkarte-wuppertal.de, phone: 0202 563 7666, and
https://www.wuppertal-live.de

Programme:

The festival will open with l’œil, l’oreille et le lieu, a new dance film project by Michèle Noiret (Belgium). The choreography is inspired by the fantastical and complex universe of insects, the strangeness of their postures and the rhythms of their movement. Noiret wants to share her fascination with and sense of wonder for the world of insects, as well as the sorrow and anger she feels at its gradual disappearance. In her production ORGANISMO with the Ensemble Maraña (Chile/Berlin), Paula Riquelme Orbenes creates enchanting worlds, where dance and circus take place in a coral reef made out of crochet. Sacred Forest by choreographer Nikoko Hermann YAO and the Dumanlé Company (Ivory Coast) and tree polyphony :hearing the unknown by studio s:o:m (Cologne) both take the audience on a journey into the ecosystem of the forest, but in very different ways: the young, up-and-coming group Cirque Ivoire Décalé presents a fast-paced dance and circus show that combines elements of Coupé Décalé, urban dance and acrobatics; while studio s:o:m offers an audio walk that lets us listen to the communications between trees and fungi and invites us to enter into a dialogue with the forest.

Younes van den Broeck’s afro-futuristic performance PL3MONS (from Belgium) explores the predatory role of plastic and the causes of human-made climate breakdown. Kolochi Baw is the result of a research process conducted by Aïda Colmenero Dïaz in 2021, when she was a Pina Bausch Fellow. For her production, she is collaborating with the Cameroonian-born bio-architect Angel Fuller. The piece is a vivid reflection on the concept of time, sacrifice and the building processes of great man-made structures. In Symbiosen, a participatory workshop lasting several days, Jan Liesegang, Raul Walch and Antonello Prezioso from raumlaborberlin explore the symbiotic relationship between the Schauspielhaus and its surrounding areas. It explores the theme of sustainability by reusing materials that have previously been discarded, thus imagining new symbiotic relationships between space, matter and user. On the BOB Campus, a former industrial area in Wuppertal Oberbarmen where textiles used to be produced and which has recently been re-designed by the Montag Stiftung Urbane Räume and the landscape architects from Atelier le Balto, the painter and choreographer Milton Camilo is developing an installation with children and young people, entitled Open Space.

Only art can change life:

“Only art can change life” is a quote attributed to Joseph Beuys. The Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, situated right next to the future Pina Bausch Centre, is an important collaborator in the project. “In a time of increasing global challenges it matters more than ever to understand sustainability as a cultural concept, that engages people, their competences and creativity for building a future worth living. Art and culture have the potential to elicit various possibilities for change and make them experienceable“, says Dr. Carolin Baedeker, the deputy head of the Department of Sustainable Production and Consumption at the Wuppertal Institute. “That’s why I’m excited about the cooperation with Pina Bausch Centre and FRAGILE as an offer for young people. We need a better understanding for global interdependencies, appreciation and a global empathy to move from knowing to acting and to shape a world, that is more fair in social-ecological terms.” The second important partner in the project is Fridays for Future Wuppertal: “As we are approaching the tipping points of climate change, we are the first generation to really feel the consequences of global warming, and at the same time the last generation to be able to stop it.”

FRAGILE – under construction #4 is part of the preparatory phase of the Pina Bausch Centre in Wuppertal, in which we are developing a new cultural institution for the 21st century. The productions will be presented in and around the former Schauspielhaus and future Pina Bausch Centre. FRAGILE is a collaboration with the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Ecology and Energy and Fridays for Future Wuppertal, under the artistic direction of Bettina Milz. It is supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation’s programme Zero – Climate-neutral artistic and cultural projects, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. Further support comes from the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Goethe-Institute and the Sparkasse Wuppertal.

The Pina Bausch Centre is a project by the City of Wuppertal, co-funded by the State of North-Rhine Westphalia and the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, in collaboration with the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch and the Pina Bausch Foundation.

To find out more, visit:

https://under-construction-wuppertal.de
Press office: Ursula Popp, ursula.popp@pina-bausch.de,
Anna Stratmann, anna.stratmann@pina-bausch.de