“esnes.n.on2“ 14 October 2011 / by E.Pichler / News

Helene Weinzierl in cooperation with Anna MacRae premiered her new performance within the scope of "tanz-house Herbst 2011" at ARGEkultur. When reversing the mysterious title "esnesn.non" to "non.sense", the topic of the night starts making sense. This hunt for nonsense actually is fun.

A voiceover introduces the three tourists that accidentally meet at an Indian bus station. Helmut, a German that travels with his yoga mat, Jonny, an American, and Katarina, a Russian Singer. The protagonists transpire as they arrive with an overcrowded and superheated bus. The travelers almost enter a trance, overwhelmed by the ambient noise of the streets and rumbling wheels of the old bus.
They shake heavily as the bus stops and drives unexpectedly. They tumble over each other and start a struggle for the last free seat. As they arrive at their destination Katarina notices that she is in the wrong place, as she is most definitely not in Dubai. What will happen to her concert? The only alternative is a camping holiday with the two other travelers. However, they can’t count on the Indian weather: it is stormy, it rains, they are bothered by mosquitos.
While following the absurd and amusing happenings on stage the audience almost forgets about its task: at the beginning of the show they were asked to look for the murderer. So, who actually is that murderer? The outcome of the election is obvious: "Those in favor of candidate one, please raise your hand. Those who vote for candidate two, please stand up, and those that think that candidate three is the killer, please stay seated."

This dance performance by Helene Weinzierl and Anna MacRae does not encourage the viewer to look for a deeper meaning. However, the methodological approach of nonsense is very amusing.
Tuesday, 15 October 2011 “Who stole the coconut?“ / by Heidemarie Klabacher / Drehpunkt Kultur

TANZHOUSE / cieLaroque / esnes.n.on2 12/10/11

No idea. Probably Fritz. He is looking like the knight of the order of the coconut - with his yoga mat and an umbrella - hunting this coconut. Also it looks like he killed Johnny and Katarina. Why? As already said: no idea. It was fun.

The three of them met in an Indian bus somewhere around Mumbai. The opera singer Katarina anticipates to be traveling to Dubai. Slowly it dawns on her that she might be on the wrong trip.
In the beginning there are three sweating tourist in a non-air-conditioned, overcrowded, shaking Indian bus. Emergency stop. One tumbles over the foldaway seat, the other two are falling onto him. The ones lying underneath are trying hard to take over that only seat whenever there is another unexpected stop. It's shaking and it rumbles, it's noisy and hot.
The, both abstract and colorful, images are presented by three dancers on an empty stage. They are standing in a yellow quadrangle that is projected by the light onto the floor. One arm reaching up while their knees are following the rhythm of the shaking bus. Once in a while they fall off the foldaway seat. The scenery is combined with a melodious ambient noise that might had been recorded at the original setting. However, the set and simple movements of the performers are highly expressive.
The story does not completely work out without text: a few dialogues are put via the speakers: an effect that alienates the whole situation and prevents the non-actors from speaking on the stage.
The three strangers get to know each other on the journey, become friends, get closer and end up spending the night together in the tent. They happily smoke pot. Fritz is protesting: "this is a non-smoker tent", but this doesn't help. They are in India. Then they start telling sad stories from their childhood. In the end two of them are dead. However, Fritz owns the coconut. Fritz is a yoga freak. He has the comic of a Buster Keating when he starts hunting the mosquitos out of his "inner centeredness".

THINK FISH part I cieLaroque/Helene Weinzierl (Austria)
Audience participation. Joining in. Following instructions. Any of those couplets is enough to turn my blood chilly. But actually, the cieLaroque chaps are so warm and funny that it actually goes ok. It seems rather brave to me to come into the audience and thankfully it seemed to go not too badly. The rest of the piece was delightfully absurd, and full of the misunderstandings that can arise from someone giving or following seemingly simple instructions. Physically this was very impressive with mirroring, reversal and deconstructed dance. I felt a strong sense of the two characters working together and but also working against each other. A bonkers but very amusing and intricate work.

http://www.culturalshenanigans.co.uk/2011/09/21/best-of-be-fest/

audience feedback, 2011, Birmingham, THINK FISH part I

-Beautiful work. Please put me on your mail list.
-Dance performance was a light relief from previous show – engaging, funny and surprisingly easy to get involved.
-The first movement/dance based piece I have really enjoyed. Being funny definitely helped!
-Nice sense of humour, some lovely moments but didn´t go anywhere.
-You like it, sincerely also if great body, especially him.
-Close second and excellent.
-Ok, fun, nice to see something abstract.
-Great energy.
-A very charismatic and technically brilliant and original performance with many funny moments and audience participation.
-The fishy dance piece was my favourite.
-Enjoyable finale, not an abstract as I thought it would be.
-I want to know where the fish came from! Funny.
-Sweet, felt the connection was sweet but not really connected to the piece and therefore felt a bit cheap.
-No idea what it was about but found it very captivating.
-Abstract and funny. I quite like things like this. Gentle and enjoyable.
-Very good, witty, charming - great movement. Shame about me jumping CD player. Great show.
-Fun-good show-good audience interaction.
-Enjoyable, interactive that happens to balance!!! Loved it!!!!
-Brilliant

habibi problem

Facets of solitary confinement
“habibi problem”, guest performance of the renowned Austrian choreographer, a socio-critical and very political piece. […] Anxious one follows the prisoner’s routine, how he dances as if in trance in his cell, while one can see the breathless escape of his lover, through abandoned residential quarters and staircases, on the screen. […] What stays in the end is just the prisoner’s number, nothing more than figures, and the souvenir of his lover. […] The 50 minute-production has exactly the right length in order to communicate the topic precisely and it puts the audience into just the type of trepidation necessary to have a feeling for what is told on stage.
kultur-in-bonn.de, 04.02.09, Anina Valle Thiele

Life is not a picnic

Absolute perfection in mimic and gestic, combined with some cheekiness and humour – those were the ingredients with which the Austrian contemporary dance company got the audience. […] Helena Arenbergerova, Erich Rudolf, Juraj Korec and Nikoleta Rafaelisová showed dance of the highest standard.
Diana Armatage, Ruhrnachrichten, 02.10.2008


No supporting tools perturb the dance floor, only a screen showing a black-and-white video-installation of an endlessly ongoing elevator decorates the setting. And that is absolutely enough for this exciting, strikingly danced piece. […] We want more, please!
Ilka Heiner, Westfälische Rundschau Schwerte, 04.10.2008

"Life is not a picnic succeded in reflecting the frenetic pace of life".
Stephanie Burridge, The Flying Inkpot, Singapur

"[...] Austrian choreographer Helene Weinzierl scored more than a few snorts of laughter from the audience with her witty dance inspired by the tribes of shoppers she has encountered in her native Salzburg. The 52-minute dance was a good-humored jibe at consumerism and a revealing snapshot of the way modern life is organised around commerce and shopping"
June Cheong, ST Life!, Singapur, 31.01.08

A clever critique of our times. Dance can be more than just aesthetic.
Österreich, 18.04.2008

Ironic, humorous, inventive and intelligent is this production, not to forget the outstanding composition and soundideas of musician Oliver Stotz, which intensify the performance at the right moments even more.
Susanne Zellinger, Oberösterreichische Nachrichten, 18.04.2008

With quaint movements the dancers of “cieLaroque” exemplify the humorous critique of our society, presented by award-winning Salzburg choreographer Helene Weinzierl. […] The artists imitate unconventionally and always with a hint of naivety how people have arranged themselves in today’s society.
Sonja Golgowski, Westphalenpost, 19.05.2008

Precise dance on the conveyer belt of consumer’s society
Silke Rathert, Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 16.05.2008

Life’s no bed of roses. Indeed not. Isn’t it sad, downright nightmarish, how we instinctively fall into daily routine? How we get up, go to work, sit down, sometimes remain waiting, keep on walking, queue up in the supermarket, in the traffic, on the elevator, then go to bed again, get up again, go to work again. Is everything always the same? Are we today where we have been yesterday? The daily grind?
The approx. 60 min production confronts the audience with these questions, suggests hustle and bustle, and creates anxiety. The four dancers, two women and two men, provide a multi-faceted, harmonic interaction. Like automatic puppets they do their daily jobs in mechanical staccato movements. They slide through space, simulating virtuously daily routine, like queuing up at the supermarket check-out.
Helene Weinzierl’s composition „Live is not a picnic“ transfers the audience into a state of cringing. What we see is fascinating due to the aesthetics of the performers as due to the aesthetics of the black-and-white video-installation. It reminds us of ourselves and we perceive its disgust.
Kultur-in-Bonn.de 12.09.2007

Bonn, a felicitous evening. No support, just a screen showing a film of an endlessly moving elevator decorates the stage for the dance piece “Life is Not a Picnic”.
The dancers Erich Rudolf, Juraj Korec, Helena Arenbergerova und Nikoleta Rafaelisová do their job. Their dance is striking, exciting and at several moments even hilariously funny.
Repeatedly they obsessively feel urged to return into a narrow light bar in order to perform an exaggeratedly cheerful dance of consumption. At the end, their aim seems to be to break through this constraint and to determine themselves, when and how the music sounds.
General-Anzeiger, Bonn, 14.09.2007

Duo para ella – Comida para dos

is a hilariously ironic survey on familiar everyday situations.
A young woman is preparing an evening for two: the big screen shows her in the kitchen, cooking pasta, and the virtual table seemingly sets itself, the real table stays empty. Helen Arenbergerova dances touchingly curious expectation, little coquetries and poses of a potential seduction, growing frustration due to being waiting and the anger about the guest who fails to appear.
(Bonn, General-Anzeiger, 12.07.2005)

[Dancer Helena] Arenbergerova observes innovatively, expressively danced and with striking, easily accessible images heteronomy and self-discovery from different perspectives. The multimedia-based stage concept and a distinct symbolism facilitate this dance-wise sophisticated solo piece, which allows the dancer to fully present her broad repertoire of expression. Appropriate euphoric applause in the sold out Theaterlabor.
Heike Krüger, 04.07.2008


TROPEA - ON COUCH AND SOFAS

A couple sitting on a couch watching TV. Seen on video screen as part of Helene Weinzierl’s new production for "Laroque Compagnie". In front of the screen (fabulous) dancers pretending to be the TV programme. Which requires some virtuosity seeing as the (virtual) TV audience on the couch is incessantly zapping from one programme to another. Consequently dancers have to be quick to move from football field to talk show to soap opera and back. One dancer alone can be both Ronaldo in red (from behind) and his opponent in blue (from in front) at the same time. What a cunning idea to let the real artists of movement synchronise a film on stage which the video screen only shows as written text. Helene Weinzierl merits an "Oscar" for her new invention: following subtitles and supratitles she now comes up with titles from behind.

Here is a brilliant performance of making the pretend and the real world appear perfectly synchronized. Occasionally the couple on the video actually falls asleep. Which of course is during a cultural programme. And it all ends with an anarchic room fight.
(KARL HARB Salzburger Nachrichten 6.11.2004)

TROPEA - DANCING INTO MY SOUL

The “tanz_house Herbst 04“ (tanz house fall 04) began on Wednesday, November 3 with a Laroque-Dance company performance at the republic - fascinating production by Helene Weinzierl

04.11.04 They danced their way into my heart and soul: Wednesday, November 3, the four dancers from Laroque-Dance company staged the first of many “tanz_house Herbst 04“ performances before an almost full house at the republic. (...)

Then, on the stage, there were a blue plastic sofa, a green garden or spare bench (depending on the situation) and a coat stand draped with various utensils. Projected onto a video screen during the performance you could see an elderly couple on a couch facing the camera or rather the TV. They were fighting over which programmes to watch and at times even turned violent – a veritable battle for the remote control broke out. Meanwhile on stage three men and a woman dancer synchronized the programmes. Football, commercials, news, talk shows, love stories, horror and crime were all presented with a wink and at the speed of lightening. The belligerent couple on the screen did all the channel surfing.

Helene Weinzierl, according to a N.Y. newspaper article wants to make this world a better one with her choreographies. Her message is not a cynical but an ironic one if anything: the world of finance and capital are links in a chain triggering movement. It is not the journey which is the reward but the run for our beloved money. The game is made provokingly real with sound clips of America’s old and new Old Nicks (“We are winning“) and clever experts opinions on marriages between homosexuals.

The production, by the way, is called TROPEA / couch potatoes’ paradise. Concept and choreography are by Helene Weinzierl, artistic manager for LaroqueDanceCompany tanzimpulse Salzburg. Video sequences pleasantly kept to the background instead of ruining the performance on stage, together with dance and acting, make for a fascinating range of dramaturgy spoilt only by the lead in and out enterprise. Compliments also to each of the dancers, plus light and sound production.

The performance takes fifty minutes. “Just sit down and relax“ – not a problem.
(Georg Reittner, Drehpunkt Kultur)

.... and the damage done
The opening performance, and by far the most powerfully engaging, was "... and the damage done". Perfectly choreographed by Helene Weinzierl, Robert Tirpak danced with precision, animal-like aggression and the innocence of a child.
( Edinburgh evening News 8/2003)

.... and the damage done
H. Weinzierl has shown with "... and the damage done" a refined concept danced by the fascinating and impressive Dancer Robert Tirpak. With this Video- and Solo performance she has shown the existence Involvement of human being. In the smallness as well as in the society, a order of efforts, fails and recover.
( Kleine Zeitung Graz, 11/2001)

systems<damaging>s.
"systems<damaging>systems", an intelligent and sensitive dance as result of an attentive direction from a choreographer that obviously is not satisfied any longer with the impeccable steps, but needs to go deeper and committed herself to get deeper in the critical role that artists today have in the advancement of a better society.
( Patrizia Tombesi, TanzAffiche 10/2000)

The ensembles choreography, versatility and variety of interpretation is sensual, credible, a far cry from the sterile. The expression is excellent; dancing and acting unite in harmonious perfection; the performers exhaust themselves for the audience, approaching them at the physical as well as the spiritual level. The power and conviction of the dance is fascinating in the way it portrays happiness, pain, comedy.
Light, majestic, the dancers skip about the stage, hover above it,
displaying a pristine facility t represent the libidinous that is far
removed from perfunctory professionalism. The applause in the city theatre expresses the delight and appreciation of the audience.
(Liquid Underwear Passauer Neue Presse, 29.11.1999)

Egon Schiele. What a subject for a modern ballet ! Nudity, wild living, shattered taboos. What pleasures in store for the aesthete with a slight inclination to voyeurism. But, alas ! This is the wrong address for obscenity. No stridencies. No shocking images. Nothing. But this is not a drawback. Helene Weinzierls choreography approaches Schiele stealthily, with caution. She does not tear the mask off any faces, she lays bare the soul, shyly almost, with great care, she unveils the tender self-regard of the man of genius, the responses of those around him, mother and sisters. Over and over again images from the paintings
flash across the stage, not simply as some form of three-dimensional plagiary, but rather as an autonomous and self-willed (self-)portrayal of the painter. The gestural repertoire of the LaroqueDanceCompany is clear and fraught with power. One of the great strengths of this production lies in its reductive quality; another, in its irony. The audience was delighted.
(Ich Ewiges Kind, Schwäbische Zeitung 7/1998).