A man with a golden lower lip is dancing in a stage set of colourful threads. He seems intent on amazing his audience like a fairground magician. Large sewing needles are dangling from the threads, and...

Grotesque dancer Valeska Gert was quite the thing in Berlin during the Roaring Twenties. The artist, who referred to herself as the “first vocal dancer in the world”, presented her sound-dance pieces on ...

A young woman dances the cosmic evolution. She plunges into the history of everything and stages a gigantic project with minimal means. In the face of the enormous periods of time she has to cover, Viennese...

Foreign Tongues Babylon (Slang) The Babylonians were properly vainglorious when they built their sky-scraping tower in an attempt to get closer to God. They envisioned a structural as well as a logistical...

The virtuoso dance tornado of the Canadian company La La La Human Steps, with her characteristic white-blonde mane of hair, was one of the best-known dancers in the world. Most notably after performing...

Acknowledging the fact that one has grown old often makes one pensive, and sometimes melancholic. The loss of his mother still fresh in his mind, US American-French singer, dancer and choreographer Mark...

All the ingredients for great entertainment are there: a little drama, a dash of irony, plenty of songs, some art. But there is something else to this performance, and the solo figure, PRICE, a fictional...

Originally from the US, Meg Stuart (Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, Biennale Danza Venice 2018) is based in Brussels and Berlin. She is an artist who has beamed dance to a new level since the 1990s....

This man is truly happy. He has all that the heart desires: a little house, a palm tree, a wonderful swan and nothing but spare time. Portuguese dancer Francisco Camacho portrays the man BLESSED by Fortuna...

This performance provides unique insights into the lab of Meg Stuart and Mark Tompkins, where they collect material for their book on Real Time Composition – as a tool, technique, research, philosophical a...

All Together tells stories of people we encountered in our life, people we lost contact with and people who cannot be here. It might be a brother, childhood friend, teacher, first-love or even star-artists....

Two b*boys celebrate hip-hop and its rituals. Erak Mith is from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Aaron Lim was born and raised in Darwin, Australia. Their choreographer, Nick Power, is a b*boy himself and knows...

(Theatre version) B.B. as in b and not a, as in b-side, as in babe, baby, bb, as in Brigitte Bardot, as in two characters and as something that those who know know. A fan fiction to our fans – one i...

Museum version B.B. as in b and not a, as in b-side, as in babe, baby, bb, as in Brigitte Bardot, as in two characters and as something that those who know know. A fan fiction to our fans – one in t...

Liberty, equality, fraternity! A group of lively hip-hoppers, covered in colourful face paint, dance exuberantly on the French tricolour. They turn the national flag into a playing field, dissolving...

An hour full of explosive energy and virtuoso choreography to minimal techno running at 120 beats per minute throws a “radical light” on dance today. The fi ve dancers, including the choreographer, do ...

The American tap dancer Savion Glover made his Broadway debut aged only twelve with The Tap Dance Kid, and won an Academy Award for his choreography of the animated film Happy Feet. His company’s collaboration w...

Two figures emerge from the darkness like sculptures come to life: futuristic ideal types with shaved heads and naked to the waist. Subtle lighting, contrasted by pounding music, shapes muscles and contours....

Brazil, State of Minas Gerais, 5 November 2015. Two dams of a settling pond at a mine collapsed, villages were laid to waste. The Rio Doce turned into a toxic cesspit stretching over 600 kilometres,...

What is it about machines that enchants humans and why do robots spark our imagination? To throw light on this allure Austrian choreographer Simon Mayer sets up a futuristic band of metal and cables,...

This is much more than a re-staged hoochie coochie show. Nevertheless, New York choreographer Trajal Harrell takes the erotic-exotic entertainment format, which caused many a scandal in the Victorian...

His Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church series put Trajal Harrell on the international map. Now he has been gripped by a fascination with Japanese butoh. He indulges in his passion...

In the theatre the body is being prepared for what is to be done outside in the public space. That is the premise under which a group of people from different generations walks to Heldenplatz to examine...

A man in a red polo shirt and washed-out jeans entered the empty stage and began conducting. Without an orchestra, as the music came from speakers under the audience stands. In a captivating solo choreography...

LEMONISM Vol. 2 LEMONISM X MINIMALISM / SYMBOLISM / CUBISM / DADAISM & LEMONISM X ACTIONISM / JAPONISM A biological impossibility but no problem artistically – not for Akemi Takeya, anyway: fruit a...

LEMONISM Vol. 2 LEMONISM X DADAISM Actionsm, Japonism, Symbolism – historical isms that Takeya has countered with her “Lemonism” during the last years. Besides an assemblage of all the -isms at Leopo...

“Hoko” is the name of the war dance of the indigenous in¬habitants of Rapa Nui, also known as the Easter Island, whose mysterious and tragic civilisation left gigantic sculptures behind. WAR is the ...

Workshopshowing had to be cancelled due to organisational changes, please accept our apologies for any inconvenience. Tickets can be returned/exchanged at every ImPulsTanz day box office until 13.8. „A d...

The audience is made up of sighted, blind and visually impaired people who are taking their seats. The piece can begin. Or rather, the dance through one’s own body in a choreography of imagination. A...

This piece of dance history is still as breathtaking as 34 years ago, when its choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker was still at the beginning of her world career. Rosas danst Rosas – original subtitle F...

The dance floor burns red-hot when Jamaican dancehall clashes with European ballet in this new piece by the dazzling dream team, Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud. Musically speaking, the Kingston ...

This duet draws all the senses into its spell. First, there is silence. Then the music starts and steadily increases in volume and intensity. As if driven by an invisible maelstrom, a woman and a man...

Sexual orientation is a highly charged political issue even in “liberal” countries. In her performance installation, Christine Gaigg asks: “Why does repression still possess such explosive power?” She tak...

A performance statement, developed on site for the mumok exhibition Woman, Feminist Avantgarde of the 70ies, to bring forward and make visible what easily gets lost in the density of the 300 exhibited...

Having caused scandal as a soloist and subsequently become an exceptional choreographer, Marie Chouinard is now regarded as one of the most important representatives of Canadian contemporary dance. For...

Dark angel or seductive siren? In her revue-like piece Claire Vivianne Sobottke creates “ambiguous body images in keeping with the times: nymph, Amazon, womanizer, punk and girlie, complemented by o...

Kazuo Ohno, the captivating master of Japanese butoh, will never be forgotten. Not least thanks to Catherine Diverrès. In 1997, when the choreographer – celebrated as a “queen” and a “diva” by French ...

The voice is produced and perceived through vibrations of the bodily organs and the air. And, so the perfromers inform us, it is precisely in that physical space that body, voice and language meet. In...

The South African dancer and choreographer is without doubt one of the major artistic discoveries of recent years. In Swan Lake Dada and her 11 dancers manage to merge ballet romanticism with contemporary...

In her passionate interpretation of the Romantic ballet Giselle, acclaimed South African artist Dada Masilo shows what happens when mythological figures move from their original cultural context to another....

Over a whole year long, Choreographer, performer and urban researcher Aschwanden danced his daily dance in the city of Vienna to the music of Bach. Now he does it one more time, in a place, where nothing...

Universal Dancer, Boom Bodies and Ravemachine – that is Doris Uhlich’s techno trilogy. The Danceweb mentor at ImPulsTanz 2017 and one of Austria’s most renowned choreographers combines the first and t...

After having let her two successful pieces Universal Dancer and Ravemachine vibrate into each other in her Seismic Night in Odeon, choreographer and this year’s danceWEB mentor Doris Uhlich develops –...

The body, the love and the power of women are the poles around which Elina Maligina’s works revolve in ironic, grotesque and tender twists. Her female characters live, suffer and dance in a nowhere l...

Midway through the ImPulsTanz - Vienna International Dance Festival 2017, Florentina Holzinger, Vienna’s most dazzling performance artist, will make quite an entrance: she’ll drive up into the courtyard of ...

Fantastic formations of birds and feathers are towering over a face painted in sultry colours and glittery gloss. Elaborate costumes, naked skin and a high-rising wooden frame transform François Chaignaud’s bo...

Bodies live and bodies on video, bodies in a live video – where are the boundaries between being inside and out? The performance envelops its audience like a media body whose pace is set by metronomic d...

She opens her father’s book and reads the stories of her grandmother, a priestess from Dahomey, today’s Republic of Benin. A curtain of strings hangs between this world and the next on stage. On it,...

Perfect dance, ingenious choreography and a cool rhythm – urban dance made in Austria conquers the theatre. The piece – inspired, among other things, by Zbigniew Rybczyński’s short film Tango – is a...

A dream of a flying lion who befriends a five-year-old boy and goes on adventurous travels with him is one of many memories of a fictional character, the protagonist in Ian Kaler’s new piece. The choreographer t...

The puzzles of life can be complicated or exciting or real challenges. Sometimes what it takes is encouragement and inspiration to meet the consistently unpredictable course of events with acceptance...

There is something that goes beyond environmental protection: a rational and emotional understanding of the extent to which all that is living on this planet is connected to its survival space. Ismael...

For six days, Ivo Dimchev is going to explore seven of his favorite creative activities: teaching, writing, painting, writing songs, playing piano, giving concerts, filming music videos, giving interviews....

I am a Mistake A new solo performance For Jan Fabre, each solo performance is a self-portrait; a quest for the very soul of his schizophrenic self. With I am a mistake, he exposes the shortcomings of...

“Belgium is a country of surrealists,” says Jan Fabre and starts to sing a tongue-in-cheek anthem: “Oh beloved Belgium, oh (un)holy land of our fathers! Ceci n’est pas un pays.” This is not a country...

During the masterclass, Jan Fabre and the Teaching Group-teachers (Ivana Jozic and Cedric Charron) will work with the participants towards a public presentation based on the text I am blood (a medieval...

High-calibre dancers João Martins and Cyriaque Villemaux spent the summer in various dance studios all across Europe. It’s as if a whiff of Lisbon, Vienna or Barcelona was wafting through this piece, in...

They are both undeniable greats in their respective fields: one in dance, the other in music. When they come together before an audience to surprise each other artistically, then it’s bound to be an u...

Perhaps a member of the audience will be gently wrapped in a blanket, thus becoming a “fixed piece” for a little while, maybe a piece of fabric will get a move on and one of the performers might jus...

One of the major questions in this piece concerns a fundamental issue under discussion: how does dance, having taken on so many facets over the years, position itself these days? Liz King, one of the...

A protagonist – Stephen Hawking, probably the most famous physicist in the world today, a popular movie about this solitary personality, and a fictitious casting studio for the role of the hero – thi...

The performance format walk+talk, which is as simple as it is ingenious, was devised by Viennese choreographer Philipp Gehmacher. Together with Gehamcher, choreographers have practised it very successfully...

There may be a chair, a mirror and a loudspeaker. And, possibly, a stool and a carpet. And then: fame, reputation, prominence – most importantly, however, 15 intimate minutes alone, face to face, with h...

An imaginary country on a dreamed-up continent. There, fabrics, bodies and colours dance to the sounds of the oud, the Arab lute, and the singing of Palestinian musician Kamyla Jubran. US-French choreographer...

It used to be so exciting, so symbiotic and normal. But now it’s just a fitness ritual for worn out feelings. A man and a woman step out of the previous boundaries of their relationship and into a c...

Two dildos, a tower of coffee cups, a few bottles, a bunch of ice cream cones, a pyramid of oranges. A middle-aged man takes off his clothes. A film by James Benning projects clouds onto the wall, soft...

First of all, they pretend in a harlequinesque way that an abundance of tears is being shed: “Cry, brothers, cry!” Spanish-Swiss performer La Ribot announces: “As soon as the weeping stops, all that ...

A monster raises its head in the court of the muses of Weimar Classicism, in which Faust once danced with Gretchen and Mephistopheles in the first part of Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s tragedy. The name o...

Is the current pope a pop star? The first one named “Francis”, he is the 265th successor to Peter on the Holy See, and he definitely knows how to play the media like a fiddle. His tweets in nine lan...

She went all out at all times: Loïe Fuller, the early avantgardist and inventor of the “serpentine dance”. Last year, Stéphanie Di Giusto made an impressive film about her life called La Danseuse. Chore...

A trio generates eerie rustling sounds, hidden revelations and inflated sculptures, fully aware that each moment banishes the previous one to the Orcus of its interpretation. Together with visual artist...

A tea ceremony serves as a metaphor in this clever, exciting and profound examination of today’s theatre as a place of promise, enticement, surprise and danger. Three women and one man playfully use o...

Terence Lewis is one of India’s most well-known choreographers and dancers. For ten years now, he has been teaching Bollywood workshops at ImPulsTanz and in doing so, has brought Indian joie de vivre t...

He once dreamed he was the son of Steve Paxton and Robert Rauschenberg, Peter Pleyer recounts. Having a pronounced penchant for stories, crocheting and dance improvisation, he devotes himself and his...

“The title is a challenge, a presumption and overtaxation,” Philipp Gehmacher acknowledges. Because “the things of the world cannot be grasped.” Moreover, they are not just objects but situations and con...

OUT is all about the bloody effort it takes to fit in. In this case: to be black enough, straight enough, Jamaican enough... In their intelligent performance Rachael Young and dancer Dwayne Antony not...

A waltz says more than a thousand words, and the fine collection of waltz music that German choreographer Raimund Hoghe has compiled for this piece is like a performance novel about all the emotions...

Who remembers Yaguine Koïta and Fodé Tounkara, two teenagers who died of cold on a flight from Guinea to Europe as stowaways in 1999? Raimund Hoghe does, in his deeply moving solo from the same year. H...

In the psycho-dramatic chamber play Consumption As A Cause Of Coming Into Being, tragedy and comedy are having an disastrous affair. Based on the occurrences of a cannibal act in the German town of Rotenburg...

A direct, multifaceted and unadulterated dance, in which the choreographer from Spain combines the experience of dancing with its formal aspects to intensely pulsating music. Salva Sanchis and his four...

John Coltrane’s superb musical creed A Love Supreme from 1965 is “a milestone in 20th-century music,” says Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. And the brilliant tenor saxophonist (1926–1967) modestly remarke...

Cock, Cock.. Who’s There? is an amazing documentary performance about violence and intimacy. Samira Elagoz takes us along on a personal research project across three continents – to online platforms and...

Corps suspendus A mesh of robes stretches between the cast-iron columns of the historical venue. This network builds the frame and base for a „world machine“, what the Viennese Saskia Hölbling likes to c...

Adapted for blind and partially sighted Four perky lads in fetching and queer traditional costume start yodelling and proceed to ironically deconstruct folk dance. At times, they dispense with their...

Simon Mayer’s artistic roots range from rural folk culture to the Wiener Staatsballett through to Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s educational institution P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels. SunBengSitting (“sun bench...

Dungeon-esque encounters and ordinary domestic lingering exercise a politic that comes with care taking, danger and amnesia. Aughterlony and Rosenblit alongside Gutierrez and Self on sound, maintain...

In a derailed future version of France, democracy is a thing of the past. But there are still some rebels left, fighting against the regime. The latter’s high society indulges in a fashion show in t...

He was the cherry blossom of Japanese butoh, a poet and lyricist, who made the “dance of darkness” appear in a dreamy light: Kazuo Ohno, who still danced when he was 100 years old. Takao Kawaguchi, for...

Adapted for blind and partially sighted Touches can be very enlightening. In her contribution to The Humane Body project, which acquaints blind and visually impaired people with the concepts of performance...

Adapted for blind and partially sighted How does it dance, our “obsessive fear of what we cannot see”? Why is the eye more than it seems, for example “a tool to explore what’s inside, hidden, prehuma...

Only seven are saved. They are from Asia, Russia, the Arab world, America, England, Italy and Liège in Wallonia, and have survived the destruction of the habitable world in a kind of shelter. Belgian ...

The body is wild – a time bomb that could go off at any moment. Everybody knows that, and yet the eruptions generated by this human body fascinate over and over again. Akemi Takeya, the Viennese dancer a...

The 46th lemon bears the designation “Metaphor Toaster”, the 58th is called “Happy Monkey”, the 67th is “Wind Cat” and the 71st “Black Bonsai”. Akemi Takeya enters her lemon circle: following the huge succes...

The 46th lemon bears the designation “Metaphor Toaster”, the 58th is called “Happy Monkey”, the 67th is “Wind Cat” and the 71st “Black Bonsai”. Akemi Takeya enters her lemon circle: following the huge succes...

Only a few weeks before the festival starts, ImPulsTanz is heading west towards St. Pölten! With the spectacular piece En avant, marche! and a festive frame programme ImPulsTanz and Festspielhaus St. ...

Alexander Gottfarb’s extraordinary performance project features neither spectacular installations nor political manifestos. After working on physical practices in public, political and religious contexts, G...

Where hospitality is concerned, a place transforms into more than one: yours and mine merge into one another and become something new. “‘This is your space and mine’ is not the same as ‘You are at my p...

In close collaboration with musician Antoine Monzonis-Calvet, Aline Landreau explores the potential of her voice all the way to the muscles, bones and organs – so as to become an “instrument” herself, far b...

 The scene is set in 17th-century Hungary. The fourth Austro-Turkish War is raging; the young standard-bearer Christoph Rilke spends the night in a castle with his company. He is sleeping with the...