Provocative and merciless – that is the way bodytalk addresses the difficult relationship between dance and politics. For its fieldwork, the group draws inspiration from the beats and lyrics of “Politics of Dancing” by the band Re-Flex. With their experiments, founders Yoshiko Waki & Rolf Baumgarten and their team scrutinise their own metier, the “body politics in dance”, with its absurd casting rituals, sexism and precarious conditions. On the other hand, they take political campaigning to the theatre stage by getting up close and personal with SPD politician Wolfgang Ressmann. Fake or real? In this work, dance takes a swing at politics – at times sarcastic, at times polemical but always highly topical in its pursuit of pressing issues and its message: politics through movement!

Yoshiko Waki, who has worked with Hans Kresnik and Christoph Schlingensief among others, is the artistic director of the dance theatre company bodytalk. Since 2016, the company, which receives “Spitzenförderung Tanz” by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, has been Artist in Residence at the Theater im Pumpenhaus in Münster.

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