Parotia (2021)
Parotia is a performance for three spinning dancers inspired by sources as diverse as the Egyptian folk dance Tanoura, the choreographic heritage of Loïe Fuller or Oskar Schlemmer and the Bauhaus movement. By creating a piece at the intersection of Middle Eastern dance and our Western choreographic heritage, Léonard Engel explores the physical and visual qualities of the whirling act and invites the audience to a hypnotic and sculptural dance piece.
Starting from the simple movement of whirling, Engel develops a choreography that slowly changes the spectators’ perception of space and body. Wearing heavy skirts created by Josa Marx, the three dancers become kinetic sculptures in constant transformation, reconfiguring themselves in space, while the shimmering patterns of the fabrics underline the hypnotic effect of the spinning. The dancers’ bodies merge with their costumes and lose themselves in abstract forms until they disappear completely behind the whirlwind of colors and figures; before effort and fatigue bring them back to the surface, vibrating, tangible, struggling to keep the movement and the illusion alive.
Premiere 19.11.2021, schwere reiter (Munich, GER)
Choreography Léonard Engel
Performance Gizem Aksu, Angelo Petracca & Lisa Stertz
Costume Design Josa Marx
Music 9T Antiope
Light Design Matthias Singer / 507nanometer
Production Management Elsa Büsing / Miria Wurm
Technical direction & Lights Rainer Ludwig
Sound Josy Friebel
Tailoring Christin Wanke
Fabric Weberei / Noël Saavedra
Press & Public Relations Simone Lutz
Duration 55 min
A production by Léonard Engel, co-produced by PACT Zollverein, funded by the Departments of Arts and Culture of the City of Munich, supported by the Nationales Performance Netz Coproduction Fund for Dance, which is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media of Germany, made possible with the support of the Bayerischer Landesverband für zeitgenössischen Tanz (BLZT) financed by funds from the Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst.
With the friendly support of Tanztendenz München e.V.
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Critics
It is as if the dancers’ bodies had inhaled the complete vocabulary of turning movements – the trance dance of the dervishes as well as the Egyptian folk dance Tanoura, the kinetic sculptures of the Bauhaus ballets, the classical fouettés and the alpine Dirndldrahn – and now everyone is dreaming themselves polyglot. Sometimes the dreams are soft and beautiful, sometimes almost aggressive. […] A grandiose evening.
Sabine Leucht, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Hypnotisch
Léonard Engel has set something amazing in motion after three months of research concentrated purely on the action of spinning. By means of choreographic tools, he creates a suction effect that is able to draw the viewer in as hypnotically as the courtship dance of the bird of paradise quoted in the title. […] Overall dizzyingly brilliant.
Vesna Mlakar, Abendzeitung, tanznetz.de, Schwindelerregend