Dance piece
Harvest
Isabelle Schad & Theater o.N.
Premiere: 16 September 2021
Direction/choreography: Isabelle Schad music/live sound: Damir Simunovic Light/Artistic assistance: Emma Juliard stage: Isabelle Schad dance/go choreography: Jan Lorys, Aya Toraiwa, Manuel Lindner Dramaturgical advice/youngest audience: Dagmar Domrös Harvest of pastures: Volker Hüdepohl Organizational cooperation: Heiko Schramm
What does a willow stick sound like? How is he in his hand? How are the big rods different from the small ones? The brown of the green? The old ones of the boys? And how do they become a puppet, a whale belly or a forest, like a monster or a whip?
Mindfulness is what Harvest is all about; and the question of how to work with nature, make it usable and respectfully confront it. The choreographer Isabelle Schad explores the Reisig with three dancers and a musician and creates surprising and constantly changing landscapes. Between exploring the material, layering, storing, bending the twigs, twigs and branches, and listening to the crackling and crackling in silence, an imaginative game develops with seemingly weightless magic creatures and other small wonders that appear – and disappear again. With poetry and lightness, the ensemble explores the relationship between man and nature – but also the sound cosmos of the pastures, which produce the rhythms for harvest and dance.
Isabelle Schad studied classical dance in Stuttgart and danced for many choreographers until she started her own projects in 1999. Her works are located at the interface between dance, performance and visual arts and are shown at international festivals such as ImPulsTanz Wien, Tanz im August, International Arts Festival Beijing. She has worked several times with the Goethe Institute and is a regular guest at the International Dance Platform Germany. As part of the German Dance Prize 2019, Schad received an award for outstanding artistic developments in contemporary dance.
HARVEST is the first work of the choreographer Isabelle Schad, which was developed for a very young audience from 3 years. In 2019/2020, Isabelle Schad has already adapted her production ‘Der Bau’, based on the story by Franz Kafka, for a children’s audience aged 6 and over (for the FRATZ Festival), thus gaining initial experience with the young target group. Both works were co-produced with Offensive Tanz für junges Publikum Berlin.
Nominated for the IKARUS Prize 2022
Invited to the AUGENBLICK MAL! 2023
‘Wide branches, long as the claws of a prehistoric animal, clack on the ground. Branches scrape on the wall, where, leaning on it, they look like the ribs of a whale. Quietly rustle bunches of rice, which look like mythical creatures ducked into the field. Abstract yet very concrete is what the three dancers in Isabelle Schad’s Harvest do with the reddish-brown branches of a willow tree. Deeply sinking into the stream of miraculous images, which pass by here and which appear full-body, one can put into a trance state and at the same time sharpen the perception. [...]’
“For mindfulness, installative dance meditation calls for respect for natural materials and attention to what is happening at the moment. For children exploring their surroundings, this is a familiar attitude. They can learn how their game becomes art in ‘Harvest’.’
