Heterogeneity of feelings, emotions, and senses

Various locations in Vienna [ENA] The Wiener FestWochen which is one of the largest cultural festivals in Vienna started these days in Vienna. The festival takes place every year in the period between May and June and usually lasts for five to six weeks. The festival has a long transition and exists since 1951. Every year the festival attracts almost 200.000 visitors. It takes place in various locations, from famous to new and recently appearing ones

This is a real feast of senses which brings together music, dance, colors and even food in a combination of innovative and classical masterpieces. The combination of music, dancers, colors, and moods is reflected in the performances Tumulus and Friede auf Erden. The innovative stage performance could be enjoyed in the Madama Batterfly and Una imagen interior. Tumulus by François Chaignaud and Geoffroy Jourdain is the dance and music production which was facilitated by Institut français d'Autriche. The performance goes beyond the boundaries between singing and dancing while bringing these two arts together when a community of dancers sings and dances at the stage together.

The idea of the choreographer François Chaignaud and the musician and choirmaster Geoffroy Jourdain were exploring the utopian potential of polyphonic melodies from the early Renaissance of the 15-16 century of the master of counterpoint Josquin Desprez to Claude Vivier to create a fluid, collective body. The thirteen singers were singing with the music and dancing at the same time while entering dialogue with the tumulus burial mound. Tumulus is a discussion about eternity when dancers are entering into dialogue with the grave constructed on the stage while singing and moving as a collective body. Translated from the Latin language Tumulus means grave.

The dancers turning and singing around the tumulus represent symbols of being, happening and passing by. Another performance bringing music to the stage is the Friede auf Erden (Peace on Earth) by Ulla von Brandenburg, Arnold Schönberg, Erwin Ortner and Arnold Schoenberg Chore. The performance included seven choral pieces by Arnold Schoenberg. It was performed at the Jugendstiltheater am Steinhof. The authors of the performance created an atmosphere when all senses of the spectators are activated through architecture of the famous architectural complex created by Otto Wagner, colors and moods. The chore with heterogeneity of multiple voices sounds like a single body playfully committed to the evanescent.

The singers in the historical costumes are creating imaging of the utopian forms of community through multiplicity of sounds of the choral pieces. Madama Butterfly performance created by Satoko Ichihara relates to the famous Puccini opera which tells the story about love between a Japanese woman and a US naval officer and is known as one of the most famous tragic operas about great love and the power of circumstances without happy end. Satoko Ichihara brings the story of the opera to more modern conditions and discussions about the role of sexuality as well as cultural characteristics such as the interpretation of identity, politics, ideals of beauty and power.

Satoko Ichihara also relies on pop-cultural disruptions and innovative stage techniques bringing together the elements of 3D animated avatars, cartoons and classical stage techniques in a format of discussion about public and intimate. Una imagen interior (An Image from the inside) is a theater performance of El Conde de Torrefiel shows that there are many parallel realities and no one single reality.

The performance takes spectators into a body, its mind, and the deepest recesses of the imagination. At the performance the innovative stage techniques are used while bringing the combinations of light, stage settings, sounds and written words into creation of parallel realities and bringing spectators with all senses into these realities. The performance reveals several times to the influence of the philosophy of Descartes on modern society while discussing top down and bottom-up forms of governance as well as the impact of organizing versus natural chaos, top organizing and self-organizing, impacts of geometrical forms and fluid natural variety and diversity.