mehr als genug

press

“[…] An empty stage, two chairs, two women. One of them is reciting a poem about beauty by Baudelaire; the other is dancing while she does so. They don’t seem to be connected, but they are united in their search for answers to the evening’s questions: What is beauty and is there a perfect body for dance? […] [There are] live on-stage telephone conversations: with a bald-headed man, two female dancers and a blind man. […] It becomes compellingly obvious that the concept of beauty is relative. Then Doris Uhlich strips down bare naked and dusts her whole body with baby powder. […] Uhlich makes her thigh flesh and belly fat quiver, her breasts vibrate – highly aesthetically and disturbingly at the same time […]. […] It is a deeply political work of dance […] and it makes it emphatically clear that dance is more, and can do more, than presenting beautiful movements by perfect dancer-bodies.”
NDR Kultur, 6 September 2017

preview TEXT

While the forms of expression in stage dance steadily change, expectations of dancers’ bodies generally stay the same: They are supposed to look slim, beautiful and steeled by hard, physical training. Together with dancer Virginie Roy, Austrian dancer-choreographer Doris Uhlich, who has herself been described by critics as “corpulent”, examines the significance of the performer’s physical appearance for a piece. Her dense works, spiced with a generous pinch of humour and self-irony, take the human body – including her own – and its dynamic energy as their subject. How can an unusual body become a trademark? Who and what is beautiful, and what isn’t? After “mehr als genug” (more than enough), it’s hard to say.

(approx. 60 mins.)

cast & credits

Choreography: Doris Uhlich
With: Doris Uhlich, Virginie Roy and guests
Dramaturgy: Andrea Salzmann and Judith Staudinger
Light & Sound: Gerald Pappenberger

Production: Theresa Rauter & Christine Sbaschnigg
Co-production: Doris Uhlich / brut , Vienna / Les Subsistances, Lyon

With the support of the Cultural Department of the City of Vienna and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Vienna.