Offensive Dance for Young Audiences
Can Touch This
Trailer and Workshops
In the current time, when we are not allowed to get closer to each other by more than 1.5 metres, the title “Can Touch This” takes on a whole new meaning. Thus, the planned performances of the piece and the accompanying school workshops cannot take place. That's why we want to give a digital insight with the release of the trailer and a small contribution.
Touch is provocation. Touch is beautiful. Touch is out of place. Touch is vital. Cultures and traditions determine whether a touch is pleasant or embarrassing. Or are we the ones who determine this?
"Can Touch This", which is the first dance piece produced as part of Offensive Tanz for young people aged 12 and over, is about precisely these questions, about closeness and distance and the dilemma of modern man. Because on the one hand we long for touch and on the other hand we want to be protected from injuries. Five performers allow closeness and lose control. They test their own and foreign boundaries, stumble across fat bowls and embarrassments and gently catch the audience in the end.
In addition to the ideas of ‘Can Touch This’, Strahl offers dance pedagogical workshops for young people in order to counter the often ambivalent ‘points of contact’ with humour, joy and curiosity. The choreographer and dancer Florian Bilbao leads the workshops and was able to carry out one or the other on site in the schools before the developments related to Covid-19.
During the two-hour exchange, the young people are brought closer to the art form of dance theatre in a playful way by practically researching and taking up the topic of touch.
“My goal is for pupils to discover the artistic freedom of a creative process themselves and also to convey some elements of dance history.” Florian Bilbao
For this purpose, photos of important choreographers serve as the basis for the mediation, in a next step, the movements that can be seen in the photos are re-enacted by the students. The principle of improvisation, research and discovery plays a central role and is the key for Florian Bilbao to uncover the creative process.
The topic of touch, which is the focus of the piece Can Touch This, also comes into play in the workshops. The students create 30-second scenes with or without voice and in groups of 3-4 people. In their execution they are completely free. The basis was again photos from the play: “I can say that this freedom was wonderfully exploited! The pupils made real scenes with beginning, development and end.”
More information about Can Touch This and the workshops can be found here. Under the hashtag #ZuhauseSTRAHLen, Theater Strahl currently also offers homeschooling tasks for your own four walls. For questions and/or suggestions, the team of Theater Strahl is always available at strahl@offensive-tanz.de.
