shifts in proximity
Performance with Verena Herterich and Olivia Hild

Sat 31.08.2024, 19h l Free entry

In shifts in proximity, the dancers/choreographers Olivia Hild and Verena Herterich approach the complexity of melting processes - a melting of orientations, structures, systems and the emotional qualities of these.

Ecological, temporal and queerfeminsitic perspectives come together like a mosaic to form a performative event. The performance flows along qualities of melting. Two performers tear, shift, last, flow, rotate, break, pull and consume, soften, fall, renew, connect, fade away. The constructed and static feel their way through a process of detachment into an uncertain, new possibility. Sounds from the ice of the Hintertux glacier interweave with electronic sound and the voice of Lens Kühleitner.

Dance, performance, scores: Verena Herterich, Olivia Hild
Sound: Lens Kühleitner

Olivia Hild is a Vienna-based artist working in contemporary choreography, installation and performance. Hild studied contemporary dance pedagogy with a focus on choreography at the MUK Vienna and fine arts at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. In her practice, Hild views choreography as an expanded art form that is not bound to movement or visibility. She approaches choreography from different angles: from the perspective of sound and space as well as from the perspective of the camera, from the perspective of historical research as well as from the perspective of cultural diversity, from the perspective of music as well as from the perspective of technology and science. Her ideas revolve around questions of perception and perspective, such as constructions of space, movements and time patterns, forms of cognitive content or embodied states of being, as well as ecological perspectives: embedded in a queer-feminist context. Her works have been shown at WUK performing Arts Vienna, Theater Odeon/Im Spitzer, MQ Vienna, This Human World Festival, Israel Museum Jerusalem, Diver Festival and BRUX Innsbruck, among others. Scholarships include the working scholarship of the province of Tyrol, ICI-CCN Montpellier MA E.X.E.R.C.E. from Lifelong Burning/danceWEB, foreign scholarship for female choreographers BKA, among others.

Verena Herterich lives and works in Vienna. Trained in classical and contemporary dance at the MUK Vienna and the AHK Amsterdam. Currently studying for a Master's degree in Social Design at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She* has worked with artists such as Guy Weizman & Roni Haver (Club Guy & Roni's Poetic Disasters Club), Ingri Fiksdal, Linda Samaraweerová, Eva-Maria Schaller, Claudia Bosse and Christine Gaigg. Her* artistic practice has been supported by a BMKOES start-up grant (2021) and a residency at ICI-CNN Montpellier by Lifelong Burning/danceWEB (2024), among others. In a radical devotion to physicality, she* explores the opening up of spaces and the detachment from categories and attributions. From the constant, unconsciously active movements of the porous, open body, she* approaches concrete and fictitious spaces, which she* understands as coherent, mobile (meaning) systems. Somatic, sensual-tactile-intuitive and associative approaches are interwoven in the language of movement. In addition to contemporary concepts of spatial theory, queer-feminist discourses and considerations from New Materialism flow into her* practice. In collaboration with the sound artist and author Oravin, she* was part of the Huggy Bears Programme 2022. In May, her* new work ‘Myrth’ was shown at the Rakete Festival in the Tanzquartier Studios Wien.