In Heinrich Kleist’s essay, “On the Marionettentheater”, a discussion takes place between a layman and the principal dancer of the city opera. The layman, impressed by the presentation, wants to know what kind of technical mechanism has made it possible for the puppets to dance so convincingly that it seems as though dance itself has been shown in its most perfect form. The dance professional considers this for a moment, then gives an answer: When we see a “perfect” dance presentation and ask how it was done, then we’re already missing the point. It does not depend on the mechanics, nor on the perfected techniques with which the individual limbs of the puppets are handled with the most precision.

If one wants to understand why a dance appears “perfect”, it is much more effective not to focus so much on the technical perfection, but rather on the mechanisms of the representation of the dance. If these mechanisms are perfect, then the viewer who sees a movement corresponding to the represented one has to call this movement “dance”. And vice versa, when he sees movements which do not correspond to this representation of dance, even if they are also superbly performed, he does not even consider them to be dance. In short: What we perceive as dance is what corresponds to its representation.

In their workshop, “Sweat -The Movie“, Tor Lindstrand and Marten Spangberg of International Festival together with the participants take on this topic of the representation of the dance. Contemporary dance is very different and much more than what is shown to us on stage. Contemporary dance is not limited to the isolated movements which are demonstrated to us in video clips and Hollywood movies. But contemporary dance is influenced and rarely separated from such representations of dance. What is dance when the medium of its representation shifts? What is dance?

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Lindstrand and Spangberg conceived of a workshop setting in which the participants – all professional dancers – not only reflect on typical representations of dance, either by approaching them or distancing themselves from them, but also investigate cinematic possibilities of the representation of dance and thereby contribute to the definition of dance. “Sweat - The Movie”, according to Lindstrand, is “a workshop about the production of a dance film and a dance film about this workshop, which took place as part of the Impulstanz Festival in Vienna”. Each participant took part in discussing, training, choreography, building and designing film sets, directing, shooting, and editing. The production took place over 30 days, ending with its premiere on the 31st day, August 8th 2008 at Kasino am Schwarzenbergplatz, Vienna.

The job description for Marten Spangberg encompasses many terms. He got his start as a dance critic, writes on theory, is active as a performer, dance dramaturge, a curator, and a choreographer, and is considered a stage producer in quite a positive sense. Spangberg has been collaborating with the Swedish architect, Lindstrand Tor, since 2004 under the name International Festival. Their collaborative work explores perceptions of concepts related to body and space, and has gained international attention. At the present and in the last year, they have been invited to the European Arts Center in Cologne, the PERFORMA 07 in New York, and the Steirischen Herbst 07. For the festival in Graz, they developed “The Theater”, a multi-faceted enterprise which simultaneously describes a venue for stories, characters, and illusions, the performances that take place there, and the actual spatially-adaptable theater that was constructed from freight containers.

Aside from his collaboration with Lindstrand Tor, Marten Spangberg also works as a solo artist. He experiments in performances with himself and with others. The tools of his work are the body in relation to the world and the way the body behaves in space. He is concerned with the different behavior patterns we embody: our self, our reality, our sociability, our wants…

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We interviewed Spangberg in the context of the event series, “NICHTS ist aufregend. NICHTS ist sexy. NICHTS ist nicht peinlich.” (“NOTHING is exciting. NOTHING is sexy. NOTHING is not awkward.”), being held at MOMUK and Tanzquartier Wien. His performance in the series, “Slow Fall”, is a sketch, an artistic draft of a work which will premiere in November 2008. In the context of this performance, Spangberg explores the different behavior patterns which we embody and moderate, and the possibility thereby of creating a new understanding for ourselves.

Spangberg takes on the statement “NOTHING is not awkward” and tries to find a term for awkwardness which corresponds to the artistic emphasis of his work on the relationships of the body to area and the body to the world. By positing awkwardness as a displacement, as a deliberate ill-at-ease, as a levitation, our embodiments of our interactions become free-floating, thereby allowing us to grab hold of how they interact with us. For the choreographic realization of this program, Spangberg borrowed from elements of eastern spiritual out-of-body experience techniques, but denies his audience the exhibition of a performance for which they would already have words. By rupturing the typical ways in which we embody physical propriety, Spangberg brings about a displacement through which, during the performance, his nakedness, which has not yet been articulated, is experienced by the audience under the new guise, and in the best sense, as an “ill-at-ease” experience. The audience cannot find the words, for words have in fact become disproportionate, to describe the experience. However, afterwards, somehow a little space is created, to separately determine one’s own proportions, and to use this experience of awkwardness to find one’s own words and to take up one’s own position. (wh/jn)