In WITH US. EPISODE 4 by choreographer Silke Z., dancers Karel Vaněk and Bettina Muckenhaupt meet. They embark on an impulsive process of rapprochement in which they explore different versions of themselves and make themselves available to each other with skin and hair. Sometimes explosive, sometimes pleasurable, they peel themselves from one skin into the next and play passionately with their relationship to independence.

Bettina Muckenhaupt and Karel Vaněk have been realising dance performances together with choreographer Silke Z. for many years and are both part of Silke Z.’s intergenerational ensemble die metabolisten.

In WITH US, the three dancing bodies of different ages become landscapes that are relentlessly open and surveyed with a radical eye for all details in order to uncover the information they harbour.  WITH US vividly shows how the bodies and the landmarks attached to them provide information about their owners without being asked and divide them into categories such as disabled, old, privileged. Characteristics such as skin colour, wrinkles, scars, facial features, pigmentation or hair structure become landmarks on the map of social standardisation.

The dance and performative measurement takes place between two generations that rarely encounter each other so directly and physically. WITH US creates an intergenerational questioning and encounter in which eye level and categories such as age, disability and skin colour are negotiated. Prejudices, privileges and visibility are negotiated through play and reflected with great political relevance.

WITH US is an intergenerational dance performance with three dancers of the ensemble die metabolisten by choreographer Silke Z. The performance is based on two duos (“WITH US. Karel meets David” and “WITH US. Karel meets Hanna”), which were created in 2022 and 2023 as part of the guest performance series DIVERSITY and were further developed and elaborated into a full-length piece.

We are emotional.
We are resilient.
We are dependent.
We are loving.
We are uncertain.
We are jealous, assaulting, grateful.
We are strange, tender, ignorant, freaky.
We are online.
We are diverse.

Humans as social beings have the ability to empathise with others, to put
themselves in their place, to take the place of the other. WE transfers the
natural forms of emotional contagion into dance-choreographic settings. The
performers walk tightrope between attraction and aversion, affection and
assault.

In WE, Silke Z.’s ensemble die metabolisten negotiates empathy and
faces the invasive, encroaching side of empathy. This first production of the
project THE EMPATHIC BODY lays the foundation for a perennial
examination of the topic of empathy. The intergenerational company is
looking for new performative perspectives to approach the complexity of
themes and cultivate feelings of WE.