WENN ES PLÖTZLICH STILL WIRD („when it suddenly goes quiet“) is a solo dance piece that explores the perception and reality of danger and its profound manifestations in human behavior and postures. Inspired by the dark and intense atmospheres of horror adventure computer games such as “The Last of Us”, the focus is on the abstracted depiction of brutal combat. The live soundscape, composed and performed by Sebastian Wasner, and the immersive stage and lighting design by Lukas Ipsmiller create an atmospheric space in which the confrontation between two forces becomes visible through a single body. The absence of a physical counterpart directs the focus to the essential elements of the performance and expands perception by blurring the boundaries between the self and the world and between reality and fantasy. The performer's body becomes the embodiment of its surroundings, eliminating the divisions between inside and outside. It is not perceived as an isolated organism, but as an integral part of its environment.
The solo performance transforms combat movements from action movies and survival horror games into a dynamic dance. Through the magical pull of repetitive choreography, the audience becomes a witness to the unfolding confrontation and is challenged to perceive dance in a new way.

Duration  
ca. 30 min.

Production Year  
2024 - work in progress

Direction, Choreography and Performance
Zoë Schreckenberg

Live Sound & Music-Composition  
Sebastian Wasner

Stage, Light and Costume Design 
Lukas Ipsmiller

Acting Coach
Antonia Scharl

Outside Eye 
Felix Chang, Charline Corcessin

Production Management
Katharina Burgdorf

A co-production by Zoë Schreckenberg and the Hessisches Staatsballett as part of the Tanzplattform Rhein-Main, a cooperation project between the Hessisches Staatsballett im Staatstheater Darmstadt and the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden and the Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt.
Special thanks to Hausverwaltung Sohrweide in Darmstadt.

SHOWS 
(Work-in-Progress Show) Tanzfestival RheinMain 2024, Staatstheater Darmstadt  (Darmstadt, DE 2024)
(Work-in-Progress Show) Goethe Institute Paris (Paris, FR 2024)

english translation below

PRESS

Darmstädter Echo 22.10.2024

By Stefan Benz

" DARMSTADT - A man and a girl have to fight their way through a post-apocalyptic world full of zombified cannibals. Classic shooter material for nerds who play Playstation games in musty rooms between pizza boxes? Not necessarily, says dancer and filmmaker Zoe Schreckenberg. For her dance solo “Wenn es plötzlich still wird”, she was inspired by the game action adventure “The Last of Us”: “A masterpiece,” she enthuses.

Movement is more important than the message

Tension in the face of omnipresent danger Her new piece is primarily about tension in the face of omnipresent danger. Schreckenberg already showed what happens when this tension is unleashed a year ago in the fight choreography “Foot to Head” with a dance partner between building fences and thunderbolts. It really rattled - and was inspired, among other things, by a legendary sequence from the action film “Atomic Blonde”, in which a female agent fights and shoots her way through a stairwell with seven opponents until she is completely exhausted. Of course it's a riot at first, but the way Schreckenberg analyzes the action is about the rhythm of the bodies in the room. However, she is not interested in the aestheticization of the fight, in martial arts ballet.
“I'm looking for realism. It's also about the banal and the ugly,” she says during the conversation in the ballet hall of the Darmstadt State Theater, where the markings for the current dance evening ‘Broken Bob’ are still stuck to the floor. But now, for the next few days, the space belongs to Schreckenberg and her piece, which will be premiered at the
Rhein-Main dance festival.

After the powerful double “Foot to the Head”, the solo is quieter for the time being. “I want to go deeper,” says Schreckenberg. To do this, she did some research with a special police unit: How do they deal with fear there? Is it in the neck or in the stomach? And what tensions and reflexes are in the body after physical confrontations? Schreckenberg wants to trace what people have internalized in violent situations before it breaks out. This initially involves glances or the shifting of weight. “But it can be quite powerful,” says the woman with the long hair and the friendly smile that doesn't seem threatening at all. Is she also concerned with the militant emancipation of women? “That's definitely part of it, but I don't make it an issue.” For Schreckenberg, the movement is more important than the message. When her solo is finished, she wants to process her findings about fight scenes on film and see how the camera has to behave between opponents.

Film and stage have belonged together for Schreckenberg (born in 1991) from an early age. She is the daughter of Darmstadt film producer Günter Schreckenberg, also known as the regular photographer of the Staatstheater. After graduating from high school, she went to Vienna to study in 2011, where she got to know the dance and performance scene. Having grown up with apparatus gymnastics, she explored contemporary dance forms as well as film stunt techniques, kickboxing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu and knife fighting.
Although she has worked in Paris and has her sights set on Athens as a theater venue, her old home in Darmstadt provides a good basis for her next steps into the world of dance. "