Laurie Young:
How is Now

It’s time. It’s about time. In time, on time. Time by our side, time on our hands. Take your time, take time out. Tell the time, time will tell. Spending time, timing it. A long time, a lot of time, the whole time. Killing time, wasting time, doing time. The times have changed, the time has come. Time passing, time running out. Time’s up.

How is Now is archaic. The stage is set with a drum kit and a dancer. We are stuck in its expectation. We are loaded with the history of the songs we’ve played before and the dances we made in the past. But these bones are not as young anymore.

We are here to observe time and re-visit the way it frames the way we move. We walk, talk, blink too fast or too slow. All these gestures that we make in a lifetime is uncountable. Unquantifiable.. Gestures change their meaning with repetition and age and we find ourselves slipping into a way of using our limbs to which we are unaccustomed.

What if you could see gestures frame by frame and through the lens of a different rhythm? How does this affect the way we perceive a body? Within this frame, this cell of movement, how many other thousands of movements are happening? Within this second, how many moments are passing? With these rhythms we will celebrate the failures and mistakes of trying to fit in. We move until we no longer can, we move until we disappear.

Laurie Young is a Berlin based Canadian choreographer and performer. She was a long time member with Sasha Waltz & guests and has enjoyed working with Hanna Hegenscheidt, Nasser Martin Gousset, Meg Stuart, Eszter Salamon, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller among others. Her latest piece, Natural Habitat  (2011), was created with Heike Schuppelius in the Naturkundemuseum, Berlin.

Johannes Malfatti is a composer and sound designer from Berlin. His diverse work for film, television, theatre and music projects ranges in style from electronic music to orchestral composition. Malfatti is part of the canadian experimental pop project ensemble with whom he has collaborated with artists such as Björk, Cat Power, Lou Barlow, Dominique A and The Twighlight Sad.

DIRECTION, PERFORMANCE Laurie Young COMPOSITION Johannes Malfatti ARTISTIC SUPPORT Jared Gradinger LiGHT DESGIN Mark Howett LIGHT Martin Pilz COSTUMES Mody Al Khufash COMPANY MANAGEMENT M.i.C.A. – Movement in Contemporary Art

Produced by Laurie Young in coproduction with SOPHIENSÆLE. Funded by Regierender Bürgermeisters von Berlin – Senatskanzlei – Kulturelle Angelegenheiten. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $157 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. media partner: taz.die tageszeitung

photos © Gunter Kravis, Raphael Dau