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Raimund Hoghe
Raimund Hoghe was born in Wuppertal and began his career by writing portraits of outsiders and celebrities for the German weekly newspaper "Die Zeit". These were later compiled in several books. From 1980 - 90 he worked as dramaturge for Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal which also became the subject matter for two more books. Since 1989 he has been working on his own theatre pieces for various dancers and actors. 1992 started his collaboration with the artist Luca Giacomo Schulte, who is till now his artistic collaborator. In 1994 he produced his first solo for himself, "Meinwärts", which together with the subsequent "Chambre séparée" (1997) and "Another Dream" (2000) made up a trilogy on the 20th century. Since 2002, Raimund Hoghe works also on group pieces : "Sarah, Vincent et moi" (2002), "Young People, Old Voices" (2002), "Tanzgescchichten" (2003), "Swan Lake,4 Acts" (2005), and the duo "Sacre – The Rite of the Sprin" (2004) with Lorenzo De Brabandere. He went back to the solo form in 2007 with "36, Avenue Georges Mandel" created in Seoul and presented during the Festival d'Avignon. Raimund Hoghe follows his cycle on classical and history of dance pieces with "Boléro Variations" in 2007 ( creation for the Centre Pompidou / Festival d'Automne in Paris) and the solo "L'Après-midi", for the dancer Emmanuel Eggermont, on Claude Debussy "Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un faune" and Gustav Mahler "Lieder" (creation in Festival Montpellier Danse 2008 /Théâtre du Hangar). Hoghe frequently works for television on projects such as "Der Buckel", his 1997 hour-long self portrait for WDR (West German Radio and Television). His books have been translated into several languages and he has presented his performances all over Europe, as well as in Japan and Australia. He lives in Düsseldorf and has been awarded several prizes including the "Deutscher Produzentenpreis für Choreografie" in 2001, the French Prix de la Critique in 2006 for "Swan Lake, 4 Acts" (in the category "Best Foreign Piece"). Critics from the magazin ballet-tanz awarded him "Dancer of the Year" for 2008. Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote of throwing the body into the fight. These words inspired me to go on stage. Other inspirations are the reality around me, the time in which I live, my memories of history, people, images, feelings and the power and beauty of music and the confrontation with one's own body which, in my case, does not correspond with conventional ideals of beauty. To see bodies on stage that do not comply with the norm is important - not only with regard to history but also with regard to present developments, which are leading humans to the status of design objects. On the question of success: it is important to be able to work and to go your own way - with or without success. I simply do what I have to do. Raimund Hoghe In his first solo, "Meinwärts" (1994) Raimund Hoghe looked at the life and work of Jewish tenor Joseph Schmidt in the 1940s. "Chambre separée" dealt with his childhood in the Germany of both the economic miracle and persistent shadows thrown by the Nazi past. "Another Dream" is all about the sixties' mood of awakening. Raimund Hoghe's Tanztheater manages to be explicitly political without neglecting form. The ritual severity of Japanese theatre combines with American performance art, German expressionism and his own interest in human feelings and socio-political states to create his minimalist pieces. Short anecdotal texts highlight the contradictions of the time and the big, little yearnings that keep people going. The scenes' action is always presented in abstraction while the emotion is contained only in popular songs, carefully selected by Hoghe according to subject-matter and period. He formulates his memories so that the historic events are called to mind through subjective and purely private moments. His body, that due to his hump does not correspond with society's norm, holds a place for us all and our personal memories. He opens up spaces between things, words and songs for personal reminiscences and affective moments. They are moments for reflection but also for laughter. Gerald Siegmund "The Art of Collage" Mary Kate Connolly Dance Theatre Journal 2/2009 "An Audience with the Other: The Reciprocal Gaze of Raimund Hoghe’s Theatre" Mary Kate Connolly Forum Modernes Theater, 1/2008 "The Poised Disturbances of Raimund Hoghe" Dominic Johnson Dance Theatre Journal 2/2005 "Sacre - The Rite of Spring" Ramsay Burt Ballet-Dance/CriticalDance Forum, 2005 "An uncommon honesty" Ramsay Burt Ballet-Dance Magazine, February 2005 "Raimund Hoghe and the Art of Ritual Substitution" Gerald Siegmund Lecture at Kaaitheater, 2004 "Tanzgeschichten" Katja Werner Dance Europe, December 2003 "Focus Raimund Hoghe" Marianne van Kerkhoven Kaaitheater, September/October 2002 "A view of the stars through a pair of red binoculars" Gerald Siegmund Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 2001 "'Chambre Séparée' - a room behind the curtains" Camilla Eeg New York University, 2001 "Stream of Images" Helmut Ploebst Falter, 2000 "I remember" Text of the performance 'Another Dream' Raimund Hoghe 2000 "Meinwärts" Text of the performance Raimund Hoghe 1994 |