Academic Intimacy

Süddeutsche Zeitung, 27.01.2018 // Author: Rita Argauer

(…) She already avoids the trap of a badly acted togetherness in the piece’s structural approach. By calling it a “session”, she shifted the focus away from a finished performance; instead, she places the creation process in the foreground. (…) Anna Konjetzky included some of these Brechtian distancing tricks in her piece; it makes the audience fluctuate between declared reality and exhibited artificiality. It works very well when the dancers are already rather advanced in the way they reveal their sex movements – but their bodies are equipped with contact microphones and thus turn into pure sampling pads. Rubbing the butt and a beat resounds. A hit on the chest, the beat stops. By rubbing a leg, electronic crackles are emitted and the dancers’ bodies basically turn into masturbating cyborgs. (…)

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Thinking about and with the body

Tanznetz: 27.01.2018 // Author: Karl-Peter Fürst

„Being distant and being involved are not a contradiction.“ I experienced that in a very similar way (…) The four of them can definitely move, and when they dance their sexy twists in unison, or all four of them solo at the same time… that’s powerful. This is amplified by Sergej Maingardt’s corresponding sound collage; in it, contact microphones on the dancing bodies integrate their movements. Thanks to her, projections and texts, action and a lecture meld into a multimedia event. A sometimes fascinating session is created with many rhythms that are interrupted at an increasing rate.

With her small but excellent group, Anna Konjetzky dared to address a subject that is usually swept under the rug; she did it by using a “session” as a protective framework that the audience was drawn into.

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