She She Pop

Work for Live Art Danmark
2005 “Warum tanzt ihr nicht?” at Berliner Luft 2

Warum tanzt ihr nicht?
The ballroom is a promise, a place of great anticipations and secret desires and – as desires so often do not suffice – a place of hidden plans, old and new strategies and their spectacular staging. She She Pop turned the theatre space of Kanonhallen into a dance floor and showed the ballroom with all its myths as a pitfall of pathetically exaggerated expectations. Fantasy and reality diverged dramatically. Every dancer – prom queen, wallflower, gentleman or gate crasher – was caught in their role.

Videostill: Svend Thomsen

The audience moved back and forth between the ballroom and a video lounge where the performers’ private confessions to a live camera were projected. They were invited to observe the other dancers or invite each other to dance, they may identify with the fantasies of the performers or even try to fulfil them! Whatever they decided to do, in close encounter on the dance floor or choosing the distanced point of view in the video lounge, they became participating witnesses of hopeless situations and glorious triumphs.

Videostill: Svend Thomsen

About the Artists
She She Pop is a performance collective that was founded in the 90s at the Giessen Institute for Applied Theatre Studies. Its members are Sebastian Bark, Johanna Freiburg, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Ilia Papatheodorou, Berit Stumpf and Elke Weber.

The members of the group are predominantly women and they work as a collective. The performers see themselves as authors, dramaturgs and practitioners of their stage art. The inclusion of their own autobiographies is above all the method and not the purpose of their work.

The result is a form of theatre firmly committed to experimentation. The stage is always a place of intense publicness. Here, decisions are made, ways of speaking and social systems are tested, speech gestures and social rituals are tried, rehearsed or discarded. She She Pop sees its task as a search to find the social limits of communication – and to go beyond the protective space of the theatre, in both specific and artistic terms.

Read more about their current work on their website.