KARACHI: Within the framework of NAPA International Theatre & Music Festival, three productions are taking place this year by the Goethe-Institut Pakistan at NAPA. A large number of people are expected to show up at the plays from various backgrounds. Among the organizers are Zoya Ahmed and Huma Tassawar from the Cultural Programs department of Goethe-Institut Pakistan.
For the NAPA International Theatre & Music Festival 2018, Goethe-Institut Pakistan invites Anna Konjetzky again this year to perform for the 2nd time in Pakistan!
Lighting – a dance piece by Anna Konjetzky on 16th March 2018
“Lighting,” the igniting, torching, kindling, is the title of Anna Konjetzky’s dance piece in which the choreographer fixates the audience’s gaze on the bodies of the nine dancers on a bare stage. Nine dancers who form a flurrying, pulsating mass in which the pressure seems to increase constantly. Inspired by the numerous pictures of protest movements round the globe, “Lighting” simply investigates that spark, that moment of collapse, of discharge.
Konjetzky’s dance piece is thus getting progressively more intense and dense; the mass subtly builds more and more power, energy and pressure. A diffuse, uncontrollable process is set in motion and climaxes in the head of the spectators. “The title Lighting is for me double-faced because the object and the subject partake in an active process. If I set something on fire, the action does not stay under my control but creates a ‘burning’ object that continues on its own, independent from my control.” (A. Konjetzky)
Choreography: Anna Konjetzky Music: Sergej Maingardt
Dance: Viviana Defazio, Sahra Huby, Michele Meloni, Quindell Orton, Taha Khan, Erum Bashir, Shabana Hassan, Abdul Haris Khan, Aqeel Ahmed and Sabiha
This will also take place in Islamabad (PNCA on 19th March) in collaboration with German Embassy and in Lahore (Rafi Peer Theatre).
2nd Play is Resurrection by Nora Amin on 19th March 2018
Egyptian Choreagrapher, theatre director and writer Nora Amin, who will present ‘Resurrection.
‘’Resurrection” is a dance ritual on breathlessness, passion, oneness and survival. It is especially dedicated to all those who lost their lives due to oppressive systems. Made with original music, the piece includes a poetic monologue written by Nora Amin in English and Arabic.
The piece was created and developed over the course of ten years, it reached its current performative form in 2016/2017.
“Resurrection” was triggered by the collective death of fifty theatre artists in the south of Egypt, on 5 September 2005. The Egyptian state is still to be held responsible for this collective death by means of negligence and disrespect to the theatre community in specific, and disrespect to human dignity in general. The fire took place in a small state theatre venue, and among the deceased was Saleh Saad, from whom part of the performance is inspired. Saleh was Nora Amin’s partner, and he had a vision of his own death which he told to her some days before the fire. This vision adds another dimension to the trauma. And it fuels the performance with the potential of personal and collective healing. In 2007, the story of Saleh and the fire grew to another perspective, and the artistic potential of expanding the biographical performance into a universal testimony occurred when Nora met with female survivors of the civil war in Sudan and conducted a workshop on storytelling and healing/transformation. From that workshop she carried the feeling of a witness to political oppression, war and torture, and how it influences the lives of women, and how women as natural storytellers and carriers of family archives are able to preserve the memory and revive the love and the spiritual connection. With that foundation, “Resurrection” aspires to be a political statement supporting human dignity and the value of human life, as well as a ritual that resurrects the human bonding related to the universal heritage of pain, survival, forgiveness and healing.
Choreographed, written, performed and directed by Nora Amin Music by Nader Sami and Ramz Sabry
Language: English and Arabic
Previously performed in Milan, Ragusa, Tangiers, Copenhagen, Alexandria and Cairo.
3rd Production is a German Pakistani Music performance! DOtone on 21st March 2018
Composition in realtime – with: Katrin Schafitel, professional contemporary Dancer/ Choreographer (DE), Sunil Shankar, professional Actor/ Director (PK), Gergely Lukács, Sascha Lüer, Simon Otto, three professional Musicians (DE) and the Audience at the International Musik Festival of the Academy of Performing Arts (NAPA) in Karachi, Pakistan.
Composition in realtime – an Art form that reacts spontaneously to the current circumstances and works with them. DANCE + MUSIC + AUDIENCE.
The focus is on the artistic discourse, a combination of interaction and communication with the artists and the public. An intuitively, firing interaction, which creates new, unexpected things and thoughts in Dance and in Music and for the public. Improvisation is one of the most honest Art forms, as intuitive action must be taken immediately and this action has a decisive and unforeseen effect on the Performance. What emerges and what remains? Who moves whom or what?
It is a game: It means freedom in the highest concentration, what counts is the perception, attention and awareness of the moment and always focused on: spontaneous, present, in the moment.
The performance promises a meeting of different people who have to overcome many different boundaries, demarcations, barriers. Together we will develop a performance that focuses on the central theme of encounter. We will create Moments of real life contact with another person. Our aim is to transcend borders and to create open situations. We live in times of increasing nationalism, in spaces, where constantly new walls are built. DOtone is a transition point and entrance leading to a place where real encounters can happen in the HERE and NOW. PR
