Feat. the Sasha Waltz & Guests Youth Dance Company of and the
architecture of Akademie der Künste @ Hanseatenweg (by Werner Düttmann)
Concept, direction, co-choreography, sound and video: Simon Steen-Andersen
Choreography and co-direction: Wibke Storkan and László Sandig
Dancers: Sasha Waltz & Guests Youth Dance Company
In cooperation with: Akademie der Künste and Sasha Waltz & Guests
Production and initiative: Voices Berlin Festival
Together with the Sasha Waltz & Guests Youth Dance Company, Simon Steen-Andersen, Wibke Storkan, and László Sandig temporarily inhabit the iconic Akademie der Künste building on Hanseatenweg to explore direct modes of interaction between movement, body, sound, video, and stage, as well as shifted perspectives on the physical features of the architecture.
The experiences during the process are documented and interwoven with a more fantastical exploration – following a heterogeneous group of young people as they navigate an abandoned, alien structure where the laws of nature operate differently and gateways to dreamlike parallel realities begin to open.
The culmination is a live performance, with the young dancers taking to a stage that extends into these transformed spaces, entering a play between the different levels of reality – all set to a soundscape of amplified movements, sub-frequencies that make bodies and buildings tremble, snippets of archived electronic music composed on-site in the 1960s, cinematic genre-textures, and the dancers’ own favorite sounds.
Founded in 2005 by Sasha Waltz, the Children’s and Youth Dance Company focuses not only on teaching dance, but also on exploring individual physicality, creativity, mutual interaction, and empathy. Run Time Anomaly offers not only new perspectives on Düttmann's building from 1960, but also a portrait of a small community of young people, each with a different path and relation to dance.
Run Time Anomaly takes its starting point from concepts developed in Run Time Error (2009–...), an ongoing series of sound-parkours by Simon Steen-Andersen filmed in distinctive locations using only elements found on-site or closely associated with the specific place – turning architecture into protagonist, musical instrument, scenography, and compositional form.