Echoic Choir

10.09.2021 / 20:00 – 23:30

Due to current audience restrictions, there will be two performances on the same night: 8pm-9.15pm / 10pm-11.15pm

Together with CTM Festival, the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program presents the German premiere of Echoic Choir, a new collaboration between vocalist and musician Stine Janvin (BKP Fellow 2020-21) and choreographer Ula Sickle. Given the frustrating impossibility of being active in nightlife and club culture during the pandemic, Echoic Choir invoked memories of the ritual of shared clubbing experiences and late-night dance floor frenzies.

Echoic Choir is an abstraction of the synaesthetic experiences of raves and nightclubs. The notion of the intimacy of dancing in a club has gradually become a vague memory over the past year. By revisiting this setting within new parameters, Janvin and Sickle aim to provide new perspectives on a familiar scenario. The audience is invited to participate in a collective ritual by being physically present between the performers, and by invoking their body memory, creating a feeling of togetherness while maintaining physical distance and hygiene rules.

The starting point for Echoic Choir are Janvin’s vocal techniques developed for her project Fake Synthetic Music with which she succeeds in recreating electronic and digital sounds without vocal processing. Together with an ensemble of performers led by Sickle, a voice and movement choreography is created, where performers physically articulate their own sensory memories of rave experiences, and activate similar memories in the audience. As a communal and immersive experience, the performance aims at a bodily resonance that echoes group communions past and now just barely again present, giving space to feel longing and desire as well as painful voids.

Echoic Choir was developed during Stine Janvin’s residency at the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin program (July 2020 – July 2021).

Concept, composition Stine Janvin Concept, choreography Ula Sickle With Michelle Cheung, Roman Ole, Rishin Singh, Annalise van Even, Stine Janvin, Ula Sickle Libretto, Dramaturgy Persis Bekkering Costume Wang Consulting Lights Marcel Weber (MFO), Ofer Smilansky Sound Olivia Oyama Graphic design D-E-A-L Coproduction Wiener Festwochen, MUNCH (Oslo), STUK House for Dance, Image and Sound (Leuven), Dampfzentrale Bern With the support of the Flemish Community, the Flemish Community Commission, DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program Residencies Kunstenwerkplaats (Brussels), DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program, Dampfzentrale Bern Executive production, diffusion Caravan Production (Brussels)

Tickets: 15,- € plus fee

KINDL – Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst, Am Sudhaus 3, 12053 Berlin

Picture credits: Nurith Wagner-Strauss courtesy Wiener Festwochen