GLITCH WITCH

In GLITCH WITCH, choreographer Meg Stuart, dancer Omagbitse Omagbemi, and composer/musician Mieko Suzuki meet in a sparklingly desolate, enigmatically burned-out landscape. Moving within and beyond the personal histories imprinted on their bodies, they glide and glitch between different possible worlds—between above and below, between the before and after of every passing moment.

While trying to break the spell of personal and ancestral memories that keep them apart, they search for a not-yet-existent shared language. In their quest, a pulsating progression of shimmering, mutable dances unfolds. Within this series of overlapping movement patterns, the three women gradually uncover a shared (witch)craft: a resonant force of mutual transformations and a vulnerable ritual of solidarity that elevates them above their differences.

Glitches emerge at the volatile points of their encounters, becoming a growing vocabulary of resistance and surrender, a collective chant that disrupts all enchantments.

This performance was created as part of a collaboration between Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods and the Berlin-based Dance On Ensemble, which works with dancers over the age of 40. Within their Encounters series, the company is launching new performances where the choreographer is visible as a dancer, engaging with a dancer from the Ensemble.

• Meg Stuart moves freely between dance, theatre and visual art. She is a choreographer, dancer and director who shares her time between Brussels and Berlin. Her company Damaged Goods has collaborated with Kaaitheater for many years and she has brought most of her work here. Meg won the Golden Lion for 'Lifetime Achievement' at the 2018 Venice Biennale. 

• Omagbitse Omagbemi is an American dancer and received the Bessie Award for Sustained Achievement in Performance in 2012. As a dancer, she has danced in works by Joanna Kotze, Yvonne Rainer, Maria Hassabi and Deborah Hay and more She has been part of the Dance On Ensemble since 2018. 

• Mieko Suzuki is a sound artist and composer based in Berlin. In between the field recordings, her work echoes deep bass and drone sounds. She always starts from a particular look on space and people, whether it is a club in a basement or a dance performance. Mieke and Meg were last seen together at the Quay Studios in Meg's performance Celestial Sorrows. Mieko was also on the programme of Barbara Raes' project U-Loss at Performatik 2019 and played an unforgettable set at the Performatik closing party.