Künstlergruppe Violett (DE): Kerstin Schweers, Jörg Thieme, Isabel Wamig – performance | Arila Siegert – artistic direction | Ali N. Askin – music | Marie-Luise Strandt – set design | Helge Leiberg – live painting | Carola Cohen-Friedlaender – dramaturgy | Siegfried Paul – light
The director and choreographer Arila Siegert and the artist group Violett undertake the scenic realization of Wassily Kandinsky’s stage composition Über die Mauer from 1913/14 and the playful examination of his theory of the total work of art.
The title says it all: With Über die Mauer (“About/Over the Wall”) Kandinsky, known to most only as a painter, surprises with a piece for the stage that tells of the creative process of a work and the status of art in society. In a fictitious dialogue between artist and viewer that is as serious as it is amusing, he gives insights into the perspective of the painter, who breaks out of the two-dimensionality of the picture and expands it into the three-dimensional spatiality of the theater.
“I’m concerned with initiating or demonstrating an inner, existential creativity. Not via the way from the outside, but via an inner way. The experience of what Kandisky calls the soul. Or the experience of what moves us, what helps us, what lets us experience this life as a miracle. The sound, the colors. How someone says something. What energy is coming towards us? What does turning away mean? These are the things that we experience every day and that we need to decipher. And I see a forward-looking approach with Kandinsky, because he sees the arts in their possibilities side by side, acting freely. It always depends, what is the essential now… It’s about cold and heat, light and dark. Where can you leave out the objects and where are only the colors?” (Arila Siegert)
Arila Siegert comes from the dance, was trained in Dresden with Gret Palucca. She received her first engagement in 1971 in Berlin at Tom Schilling’s Tanztheater. In 1979 she went to the Dresden State Opera as a solo dancer, founded her first dance theater there at the Staatsschauspiel, and was a “appointed expert” for the stage at the Dessau Bauhaus. She began early on with reconstructions of works of expressionist dance: Vogelsang, Hoyer, Wigman. In doing so, she brought the tradition of expressive dance into the modern age. Through Kandinsky’s friendship with Palucca, principles of the Bauhaus flowed into their training. She realized some of Kandinsky’s stage compositions: Der gelbe Klang 1993, Violett 2019 (both at Anhaltisches Theater, Dessau), Über die Mauer 2021 (Akademie der Künste, Berlin). She is interested in the development of a new form of dance theater that seeks to combine the arts with new digital and media forms. In 2020 she founded the artist group Violett. https://www.arila-siegert.de/
Another performance of Über die Mauer will take place the following day, Sunday, December 11, 2022: https://old.exploratorium-berlin.de/en/veranstaltung/ueber-die-mauer-kandinsky-2/
On the day of the first performance, i.e. on Saturday, December 10th, 2022 from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm, Arila Siegert will give a workshop adressed to musicians, dancers and actors, together with other participants in the project (Ali N. Askin, Helge Leiberg and Carola Cohen-Friedlaender); in the workshop an artistic examination of Kandinsky’s theatrical ideas is practically explored on the basis of improvisation: Kandinsky – the language of the arts. From the concrete to the abstract on stage
Admission: 12/10/6 € (normal price/reduced/Berlin-Pass)
