From August 21 to September 23, Theater Basel will be presenting a dance festival with works by dancers and members of the ensemble and guests. For these four weeks, Ballett Basel transforms the foyer into a customized stage. Entitled “Beziehungsweise” (a wordplay on the German word for “respectively” that also can be interpreted as “related to relationships”) invites visitors to the theater to celebrate the diversity of love and to experience the diversity of dance at the beginning of the season. Starting with a world premiere created and presented by the ensemble, the festival continues with a duet evening dedicated to the theme of love by Nazareth Panadero & Co and toaspern|moeller. Three solos by Oleg Stepanov, Jonathan Fredrickson, and Tilman O'Donnell will also be presented at the festival, as well as a virtual ball in the form of the interactive virtual reality performance “Le Bal de Paris” by Spanish choreographer Blanca Li.
This evening will consist of three solo performances, starting with Oleg Stepanov’s “I can't be present due to traveling.” As soon as the subject sees itself in the mirror, it splits and becomes both observer and observed; if it sees itself in the mirror as an object, it is doomed never to fully comprehend its own mystery. On the stage, insulation material normally used for thermal insulation when rescuing people is transformed into a giant inflatable object that moves infinitely naturally, is difficult to manipulate, and follows the laws of motion of nature. The material, which is supposed to save people fleeing across seas and oceans, itself becomes a stormy ocean that has the power to threaten the moment of rescue.
The second piece, “In Some Sense,” is part of an ongoing collaboration between American-German dancer and choreographer Tilman O'Donnell and Grammy-nominated musician and composer Mikkel Ploug. It follows the outline of a lecture by French philosopher Alain Badiou entitled “From Logic to Antropology” and translates its key concepts into a musical and choreographic score. Badiou's speech patterns are uniquely musical and lend themselves to compositional exploration. The rhythm and content of his ideas shape the choreographic structure, the music, and the movement of the piece. Part lecture, part concert, part dance performance, “In Some Sense” moves through the overlapping territory of given forms—music, dance, language and thought—to open up a series of questions about the processes of change.
The last piece on this evening will be Jonathan Earl Fredrickson’s “Afternoon Forest Birds.” In today's climate of incessant bombardment with information and misinformation, it is easy to feel destabilized and invisible. Nothing is real. There seems to be nothing left to hold on to, nothing true that you can have an opinion about. “Afternoon Forest Birds”is a somewhat haphazard portrait of a man who has lost his way.
Tickets are CHF 40 for adults and CHF 10 for youths up to age 16 or students up to age 30.

Website
theater-basel.ch/en/beziehungsweise

Where
Theater Basel
Theaterstrasse 7
4051 Basel

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