Make thought dance
/Germany/

This guest-performance is supported by the Goethe-Institut Bulgarien, National Culture Fund and NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ International Guest Performance Fund for Dance, which is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

The choreography of “Strange Foreign Bodies” is inspired by “58 Indices on the Body” (“58 indices sur le corps”) – the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy treaty, resembling a philosophical list of concepts and short, sometimes contradictory, notes on the human body. By the time of its publication in 2006, Nancy had already broken down dance as an art form. But after developing the “indices” and putting the body in focus of his own philosophical premises, contemporary dance will never cease to be grateful to Nancy, nor stop searching and offering answers to the important questions raised by the philosopher.

In his text Nancy writes: “Why indices rather than characters, signs, distinctive markings? Because the body escapes, is never sure, lets its presence be suspected but not identified. […] We only have references, traces, imprints, footprints.“ „A body is a difference. Since it is a different from every other body […] it’s never done with differing. It also differs from itself.“

In “Strange Foreign Bodies” the audience will see choreographer Zufit Simon, together with other two performers, Lois Alexander, Clarissa Rêgo, each one with distinctive physiques, begin their on-stage research over body movements, proving that the body should always be thought, not alone, but always in relation with other bodies.

Zufit Simon is a performer and choreographer, born in Israel, who studies contemporary dance at the “Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst” (HfMDK) in Frankfurt am Main. In 2012, she was selected for the German Dance Platform pitching in Dresden with the solo “Wild Thing”, and in 2014 again at the German Dance Platform 2014 at “Kampnagel”, Hamburg, presented the choreographic concert “I LIKE TO MOVE IT”. In 2015 – 2018 together with the director Moritz Schönecker, she opened the “Theaterhaus Jena” season with the productions “Die Zofen“ (Genet) and „Judith“ (Hebbel) and curates dance series there. She has been a part of the artistic direction of the artblau Tanzwerkstatt since 2018. 

In 2019 she completes the trilogy “un-emotional” focused on the relationships between physical

language, mimicry and gestures. In 2020 together with Lois Alexander and Clarissa Rêgo she created “STRANGE FOREIGN BODIES”, inspired by „58 Indices on the Body“ by Jean-Luc Nancy premiered on the stage of “schwere reiter”, Munich.