Festival director Christian Watty introduces the program 2024!

Dear festival audience,

euro-scene Leipzig presents a concentrated program with strong artistic signatures and experiences. Our festival is a celebration of dance and theater in all its diversity and beauty, to which we cordially invite you, dear audience, the many artists, professionals and colleagues coming to Leipzig.

Under the title WAS AUF DEM SPIEL STEHT (WHAT IS AT STAKE), we are kicking off this year's festival program with a marathon reading on the occasion of the presidential elections in the USA, which are relevant for the whole world, at 12.00 noon on the opening day in the Nikolaikirche. The focus is on historical texts that document how our ancestors have fought for values and human rights over the past centuries that are linked to a universal claim: that they must apply everywhere and to all people. The global community is still a long way from achieving this lofty goal. But the strength of these values and their reinforcement are ultimately measured by the extent to which we stand up for them in everyday life and also in elections.

„Was auf dem Spiel steht“ ("What is at stake") can also be seen as a thematic guide through the 34th euro-scene Leipzig. The program offers ample opportunity for a fact check that human rights cannot be taken for granted.

In our festival opening with the UBUNTU CONNECTION competition, the stylistic boundaries of dance, breakdance, new circus and live music are broken down and the pursuit of victory takes a back seat. Instead, a cultural and artistic dialog is created, moderated and cheered on by the Berlin star of the hip-hop dance theater scene Raphael Moussa Hillebrand, as a total work of art to celebrate and dance along to. A huge success at euro-scene Leipzig 2022!

This year, four works by artists from Iran, Lebanon and Palestine focus our attention on a region that has been referred to as the Middle East since the late 19th century against the backdrop of European colonial and geopolitics. The plays SHIRAZ (Armin Hokmi) and BASIS FOR BEING نرگس (Sina Saberi) tell of life in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where there is no artistic freedom and many artists are persecuted as enemies of the state. Despite this, the two artists, who now live in Germany, present brilliant, trance-like dance pieces which, for all their ambivalence, also bear witness to their love for their homeland.

In DANCE IS NOT FOR US and AND HERE I AM, theater becomes an expression of protest against the abuse of power, violence, war and chaos that have shaped the biographies of both artists. Omar Rajeh is today the defining figure of Lebanese contemporary dance and Ahmed Tobasi runs the prestigious and legendary Freedom Theatre in the Jenin refugee camp.

This year, we are presenting three of the most sought-after female theater makers on the main stage at Schauspiel Leipzig. In MOTHERS, Marta Górnicka develops an energetic piece of choral theater from the testimonies of Ukrainian, Belarusian and Polish mothers and children who have fled war and persecution. This summer, it was acclaimed several times by 2,500 people in the audience at the renowned festival in Avignon, among others. R. OSA by Milanese choreographer Silvia Gribaudi is an athletic and witty masterpiece based on the iconic aerobics videos of the actress Jane Fonda from the 1980s. A brilliant one-woman show full of humor and self-irony.

The festival closes with the overwhelming dance piece CROWD by Gisèle Vienne, the world-famous Austrian-French expert on mental abysses and ecstatic states.

Five other centerpieces of the festival week are the theater solo ΜΕΡΑ ΣΑΒΒΑΤΟ (ON A SATURDAY) by Irène Bonnaud, which saves a little-known chapter of the murder of Jewish people in Europe from oblivion; the documentary musical theater FREMDE SEELEN, in which director and dramaturge Eva-Maria Bertschy investigates the suicide of a Catholic priest with a Tatort actress; Compagnie Ersatz, which deals with the fragility of our environment in AU JARDIN DES POTINIERS for an audience aged 7 and up; and HAUSTRUM HAUSTORIUM by Post-Organic Bauplan, which takes the hybrid of human body and robotic organism to a new level. And last but not least, HARMONIA by Hungarian choreographer Adrienn Hód with an inclusive ensemble from Theater Bremen demonstrates how virtuosic, exuberant and joyful dancers with and without disabilities celebrate human diversity on stage.

You can discover this and much more here.

See you at euro-scene Leipzig!

Yours

Christian Watty +
the team of euro-scene Leipzig