Ghosts Are My Reality
2023 | interdiscipliary dance performance | 40 min
in collaboration with
Maria Focaraccio and Katharina Scheidtmann
The interdisciplinary project combines movement, video and sound to explore the phenomenon of dreaming. The work deals with Derrida’s concept of Hauntology, a word in which the priority of being and presence is replaced by the figure of the ghost. Drawing a parallel between dreams and ghosts, which as ghosts find themselves in a state of “not yet and not anymore”, Maria Focaraccio, Katharina Scheidtmann and Theresa Maria Forthaus aim to create an imaginary landscape, using the body as a vehicle to grasp the nature of dreams. Conceptual thinking and causal-logical remembering get pushed in the background, emotional experiences come into focus and different levels and realities overlap, with tones at times ironic, at times absurde, at times intimate.
08.08.2023 at ACUD Theater
(Fotos: Theresa Maria Forthaus)
About the performance at ada studio by Adèle Aïssi-Guyon
"(...) Throughout the performance, the two dancers create different sequences in dialogue with each other and with images projected, sounds and music, and voices telling stories in German, English and Italian. These different sequences develop while reentering similar qualities, movement vocabulary, commen elements, space constellations, like ephemeral and yet never-ending scenes, that are interconnected and where it seems difficult to grasp a unequivocal meaning or topic. This ambiguity seems to be what enables the performance to take us to this universe of dreams and ghosts – as the title suggests, which refers to the song «Dreams are my reality».
The beginning of the performance creates a mise en abyme that directly makes us dive into the realm of dreams: a voice describes the setting in the past tense, as one would do telling a dream («It was an evening in March», «they were all sitting side by side»). The space of the performance directly turns into a place that opens new possibilities, where reality and imagination can be shifted. This inversion of space and time becomes even stronger with the successive narrations that appear throughout the piece and that describe scenes in the present tense: thus, they suggest what is here and now may not be as tangible as we think, and that in the contrary, memories, dreams or fantasies can be invoked and reveal themselves as real and present. (...)
The images from the beamer create another layer. Sometimes, they take the whole space, and evoke other spaces: tree leaves, hands in the sand, a notebook, a road... Sometimes they are responding to or interacting with the two bodies on stage, especially when the images of the two dancers are projected and a double presence is created. (...)"
Full text in english or german can be read here.
17.03.2023 at ada studio
(Fotos: Jana-Nita Raker)
concept, choreography, performance and texts: Maria Focaraccio & Katharina Scheidtmann
concept, video, texts and sound montage: Theresa Maria Forthaus
costume: Veronica Bracaccini
performance 07.+ 08.08.2023 at ACUD Theater Berlin
project management: Jelena Bolsuna | lighting design: Patricio Tonato
performance on 17. + 18.03.2023 at ada studio & Bühne für zeitgenössischen Tanz Berlin (Uferstudios Berlin)
as part of neworks residency
artistic direction and management: Gabi Beier | technical direction and lighting design: Robert Prideaux | pr/social media: Aïsha Mia Lethen | studio writer: Adèle Aïssi-Guyon
Funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe.
We thank Sebastian Chica for three musical compositions. We thank Jonathan Howe, Alexander van der Kruijf and Leonhard van Voorst for using their sounds. And we thank Jana-Nita Raker for photographing our performance at ada studio.