Day 21: Epilogue

Alas, the companions are parting now. Going away and travelling to Vienna, Berlin, Paris and Braunschweig. What joy the last moments of this enormous encounters brought can be seen here:

The writer of these humble lines wants to thank the readers. Come back and re-read. You might also discover new gems that we upload from our video vault. 220 gb of video are waiting to be discovered… I bid you farewell with this very last little video snippet…

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Day 20: The end of the end

Fin de partie. Game over.  Last showing done, the first people start to leave. Final gathering: declaration of wishes, declaration of needs, declaration of what can be offered. Then Barbecue. The blogger runs out of words. Many things have been said, maybe too much or maybe too little. Nevertheless, this is almost the end… Here is one of the very last outcomes of Treffen Total, the incredulous seamonster documentary!

Day 19: The middle of the end

I want to start this blog entry with a brief relaxation exercise for the reader. I want you to close your eyes. Feel your spine. Feel the breath entering and exiting your body. And then click here and feel the bliss. Done? Namaste!

Such was the early morning activity of our heroes, meeting and greeting possibly the last time in the studios. There is already a sense of goodbye in the air, talk of seeing each other again or not and never, the usual questions of “And what are you doing next?” is asked and last showings are taking place. Talking about showings: the dog #2  took place! Again, everything started with an installation, where multiple actions took place: Anja Müller experimented with chinese water torture, Begum Erciyas copied sexy dances, Sebastian Matthias and Synes Elischka went crazy with the ol’ Sacre, Min Kyung Lee declared her computer a fridge, Lucia Glass and Georg Hobmeier abducted small groups of audience members for a short audio play, the jungle trio went posthuman and Jassem Hindi went blind, which was neither a piece of art nor entertaining, but some form of living sculpture of misery on a couch. We will update you on his health status and hope he’ll get better soon!

Day 19: The beginning of the end

Alas, we slowly approach the last days of Treffen Total, where things are wrapped up, thrown away or put briefly onto stage. While the day was packed with preparations, the evening was dedicated to a relaxed series of small works that were shown to the public.

Min Kyung Lee started the evening with a short installation about a secret meeting, where dancers met to discuss the future of Sweet&Tender, closely modelled after the meetings of the Bilderberg group.

The evening moved on to see a fantastic backwards motion shot by Dani Brown, soon available to you here.

Marko Milic, dressed in a truely magical costume, performed material from his new solo.

Gui Garrido showed his “Shake it”, his “Watch it” and “Pumm Tschk” from his already mentioned series of micro performances based on musical scores.

Rani Nair presented material from Dixit Dominus, a solo from Kurt Jooss, that she inherited from the indian dancer Lilavati.

Jassem Hindi, Luci Eidenbenz, Liz Rech and Iuliana  Stoianescu flooded the K4 with image, sound and minimal positioning for performers and objects.

The evening found its end in a wonderful concert by Anja Müller, Dennis Dete and Gui Garrido.

Thursday the 15th of July will be the 2nd final showing, this time again in the so called dog mode: a structure of parallel actions culminating in more concentrated performance work.

Day 18: Studio

Oh the buzz, the buzz! The studios are literally on fire. With death metal yoga, audio recordings, reversed video shootings that strike backwards in time, even more video shootings for a follow up project in Frankfurt, we insist meetings, dog style studio sharing, posthuman research that includes meditation with cables, noise music, nice music, people watching, people shaking, people projecting words on walls, mysterious solos, glamorous duets, screaming declarations of love, whispered declaration of hatred, discussions of things to come and things that already passed, random movement material, faces in mirrors and many other things, some of which might be shared: tonight! Come, see, drool, wander and wonder.

Last night…

… I missed out on a brilliant moment. Thanks god there is the man with the camera to engrave such precious moments forever and ever into the video vaults of vimeo to bless our retinas and touch our hearts:

p.s.: Esteemed readers! 3000 hits! I love you too!

Day 17: Sweat, but no surrender…

It’s the beginning of the end and the studios are once more buzzing. Despite the enormous heat our heroes remain defiant and hold on to the dance floor with the last breath. They scream, kick, watch it, roll, film, dive, breath, concentrate and project. The time of discussions is over, the age of action has begun and will last for at least 4 more days! Clouds are slowly towering over Hamburg and the electrical charges are tangible in the air. Let’s see where this energy will go. Will it explode in the last days? Remain a short studio interlude? Or leave this incubator unit and lift off to new horizon? Only one way to find out: stay tuned…

A late little add on to today’s mega filming events: the footage of the zombie attacks have been captured and here is another little gem from the last showing……

Day 1—–……?

Sorry, but this heat is killing me. Can’t write. Can’t think. Treffen Total transforms into a mini vietnam, feverish temperatures, beats and the jungle is taking over… and who the hell is even reading this? It’s almost 100° celsius by now and all organic life has retreated under water. What the heck. No more information for you, here some videos instead…

Day 14: Hangovers and afterdogs

At noon the survivors of the 24 hour dog slowly crawled out of the rubble. The K3 rehersal space is filled with tents, sleeping bags, laptops, sugar paper, instruments, yoga mats, beer bottles, cables, pens and various items of clothing. The anti-cyclical division, that hadn’t participated in this over night extravaganza was already in the studios, rehearsing, screaming, recording, moving and editing. The entire day became a split experience of dog survivors and regular workers. Apparently there was some major nasal noise orchestra playing in the dog room, so sleep was a precious good not granted for everyone. And as usual the need for discussion was still present. Never underestimate the need of the human being to be verbal!

But let aside hangover and afterdogs, great things have been done and shown on that friday. Marko Milic had an open rehersal of sexy dancing, a reference to both teen idol choreography and teen bedroom youtube copies of seemingly sexy dancing. Gui Garrido had a brief showing of his “Shake it, Watch it, Kiss it, Lick it,…” cycle and we watched part 2, watch it. A promising micro series, ready to hit large scale opera houses around the globe.

Here’s another promising micro person, that has been a regular visitor to Treffen Total, the mighty Matilda, summersaulting, while the audience enters the room for the presentation:

Day 13: Dog mode diary

This is a new attempt in noncynical and modest reporting. Instead of taking a humorous look back in time, this will be in almost realtime! Let’s have a look at the event of the day: a 24 hour dog mode, starting at noon, is taking place. The beginning was rather slow, but after a few hours the room got into full swing.

At 14.20 we had the following situation:

1. 4 gracious beauties dancing ballett
2. 2 equally gracious persons doing ashtanga yoga
3. 1 guy on the ground, twisting his spins
4. Jungle Desideri crawling in the background
5. 3 people, watching videos together
6. Franz, camping in the corner
7. various people going in and out of the space
8. Tillmann, glaring onto the situation from the door…

At 15.20 something like a plan had been formulated. With an emphasis on „something like a“. Our swarm intelligence is busy cleaning up the space, decisions are emerging and degrading in an equal manner and general issues such as beginning and end are being formulated. Oh! A most important piece of information is missing: From 8 till 9pm, the room will be opened to an interested public. Let’s see what this public will encounter tonight….

At 16.20 we have a completly different situation. We are somewhere between parallel working structures and improvisation. Objects are being used or not, acts performed, poses struck, scores done, all under the great premisis: be supportive to each other, try to exist right next to each other, yadiyadiidaa. Interesting mode of exploration? Interesting for the public or „ecco“ (nice to wear, but unpleasent to look at? We’ll see later, when the situation becomes „real“ with a real audience……

18.20: concepts in turmoil. Structure vs. flow. Decision vs. concept. Our heroes question and discuss the initial idea, which went through some hard testing in the afternoon and only partially convinced. Now elaborate strategies are being made… 1h 40min until the arrival of the interested public… wait, what happened to the idea to work for 24 hours?

20.00: We see some auspicious gaffa tape writing, furniture scattered around the space, a table full of cables, iron brushes and tape recorders (=noise artist mc hindi), random sounds playing in space, various attempts in dancing in various forms, some faces filled with dedication, others a bit more questioning and some dude in the corner typing on a laptop. That might be me. Door opens. Audience enters.

20.20: A strange mix of audience with expectations, performers with agenda (Agendae? Agendas?), with some feeling of zoo, installation, happening and utopian setting gone ecco. A group of singers leaning over a laptop, another group improvising on their old injuries, glaring statues with sunglasses staring into space, a curious audience asking questions, a camera team documenting, several circles where people discuss and explain various things. We are told that this is now „installation mode“ and soon we’ll switch into „performance mode“.

20.40: performance *cough* mode. Well, we have people with microphones, some improvising, some fighting, some asking questions, the camera crew still roaming around, the audience scattered across the space in a vague semi circle, a dude in the corner with a laptop, a girl on stage with a laptop reading from it in a fast n furious manner, a girl on a chair sharing her fictional fear of middle eastern men on airplanes, time running out, heat rising and ….alakazam!!! It was over…