29.4. – 9.5.2004
Leipzig – Plagwitz, LOFFT, Schaubühne Lindenfels
In 2004, the festival “Westend” took place for the second time, a collaboration between the venues LOFFT and Schaubühne Lindenfels, both located in the western districts of Leipzig. “Westend 04” was curated as a dense platform for numerous forms of performing arts in order to open up the concept of dance with a view to art history and to understand the work on a dance festival also as a socio-political debate. In addition to the theatres, the festival also included the structurally, socially and aesthetically difficult neighbourhood of Leipzig’s Westend: Plagwitz – Lindenau. Here, theatre took place as a process that thematised the surroundings and reanimated the decayed urbanity through artistic approaches.
With the eleven invited productions, “Westend 04” was an encounter of the Leipzig dance scene around Heike Hennig and Steffen Fuchs with a dance discourse, as can be experienced and discussed in the work of Marten Spangberg, Oleg Solimenko or the frankfurter küche (leipzig). In addition, an extensive programme of site-specific work, video installations and discussions, as well as a dance film series and workshops, have been organised. A special focus was the film retrospective of the choreographer and experimental filmmaker Yvonne Rainer. Within this presentation, the German premiere of the documentation of Yvonne Rainer’s work “TRIO A” from 1978 was made possible in cooperation with the Tanzarchiv Leipzig. With the new networking of the Institute for Theatre Studies at the University of Leipzig, the Tanzarchiv Leipzig e. V. and the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts, the festival was able to correspond to a discursive anchoring and place the “Westend 04” initiative in the larger context of contemporary performance practices and structures of cultural work.
With the quote Maybe the sky is green and we are just colourblind, the festival referred to the film Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y by Johan Grimonprez, one of the most important films that exposes the spectacular in our disaster culture.
“Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y” mixes photographic, electronic and digital images and interlocks reportage with pieces from science fiction films, existing footage and reconstructed scenes shot by the artist himself. The fiction makes it possible for heterogeneous elements to flow into this montage, so that critical perspectives mix with private stories. This work, which denounces the media spectacle, attempts to expose the influence of images on our feelings, our knowledge and our memory. (Paul Sztulman, short guide to documenta X)
Artists
Jim Avignon (Berlin) Concert
Philipp Bußmann (Frankfurt/M.) NEGATION (AnAntigone8x8)
CocoonDance (Bonn) Silent running
Cooké / L.E. Alive / Corina Ries u.a. (Leipzig) MOVE IT YOUR WAY!
Tom Fletcher (Berlin) I doubble in tap
frankfurter küche (Leipzig) directory
Steffen Fuchs (Leipzig) Serail
Heike Hennig (Leipzig) Esther Quartett
Daniel Hofmann (Leipzig) Animal Motion
Kosit Juntaratip (Bangkok) When Kosit went to the death
Sveinn Fannar Johannsson (Rekjavik) L.U.N. – The movie
Silke Koch (Leipzig) Coming soon
Sven Mundt (Berlin) Faces LE
Henriette Pedersen (Oslo) Is the queen getting bigger?
Friederike Plafki (Berlin) Cooling cow genesis
Benny Nemrofsky Ramsay (Toronto) I`m a boy band | Life to tell
Markus Schinwald / Oleg Soulimenko (Vienna) A Stage Matrix
Mårten Spångberg (Stockholm) Powered by Emotions
Storm (Berlin) HIP HOP Workshop
Paula E. Paul / Ralf Krause / Petra Bogdahn (Potsdam/Berlin) Planta del pie
Martine Pisani (Paris) sans
Lynn Pook (Strasbourg) A fleur de peau
Margaret Tedesco (San Francisco) I want you to have my support
Henry Wilt / Antonia Beahr (Berlin) Un aprés-midi #6 for 4 performers – Leipzig version
Film and discussion forum
Yvonne Rainer – Film Works Show. Introduction Barbara Büscher (Leipzig/Cologne) First Person Political
Johan Grimonprez Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y. Introduction Dieter Daniels (HGB Leipzig)
Philipp Bußmann (Frankfurt/M.) NEGATION (AnAntigone8x8) Introduction Günter Heeg, Veronika Darian (Theatre Studies Leipzig)
Franz Anton Cramer (Dance Archive Leipzig) Structures in Dance Discussion with Ulrike Melzwig (Dramaturg Berlin), Petra Roggel (Kaaitheater Brussels), Robert Schubert Leipziger Tanztheater), Christoph Winkler (Choreographer Berlin)
Team
Artistic director / production budget Heike Albrecht
Management Susanne Beyer, Martin Heering
Production Management Barbara Greiner
Assistance Frauke Niemann
Collaboration Film Programme Michael Ludwig
Press Christine Richter
Technical Direction Andrej Schwabe
Graphics Gabriele Altevers
Westend 04 © Gabi Altevers
Westend 04 Programme © Gabi Altevers