YOUR GIFT WILL MAKE HISTORY WHEN META | MOR | PHOS is PERFORMED

In it’s 38th season of making awe-inspiring dance, Hedwig Dances will be de facto ambassadors for Chicago Dance in this the YEAR OF CHICAGO DANCE, when its new work, META | MOR | PHOS - A Triadic Fiction premieres at the state-of-the-art Bauhaus Dessau Museum,Germany on September 2 and 4, 2022.

Hedwig Dances is honored and excited to create and perform this new work, a co-production with the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, in celebration of the centenary of Oskar Schlemmer’s iconic Triadic Ballet.

The work’s Chicago premiere will be a highlight of Hedwig Dances’ 2022-23 season.

You are invited to be part of this historic creative work. As a sponsor, you will receive public acknowledgements and thanks in various ways.Please help by underwriting our work and Hedwig Dances' presence on the world stage. Visit our

META I MOR I PHOS – A Triadic Fiction

OVERVIEW

"META I MOR I PHOS – A Triadic Fiction" is a sequel to Oskar Schlemmer’s "Triadic Ballet." The production, choreographed by Jan Bartoszek, includes authentic reproductions of Oskar Schlemmer’s original "Triadic Ballet" costumes as well as newly designed costumes by Jacky Kelsey and Torsten Blume and an original score by composer Patricia Taxxon with additional music and sound design by Richard Woodbury. Structured in three parts (larva, pupa, imago) with a prologue and epilogue, "META I MOR I PHOS" reimagines Schlemmer's classic work for the 21st century.

BACKGROUND

The "Triadic Ballet" is an icon of avant-garde dance and performance art. It premiered 100 years ago (1922) in Stuttgart, Germany, and was subsequently further developed by its creator Oskar Schlemmer at the Bauhaus. To this day, the costumes Schlemmer designed for this constructivist abstract ballet, which he characterized as sculptures moved by dancers, continue to inspire reproductions, adaptations, and homages. In this centenary year, the Chicago-based Hedwig Dances dedicates itself to reimagining the "Triadic Ballet" in an approximately 40-minute fluid, experimental interpretation and co-production with the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. The new work, "META I MOR I PHOS – A Triadic Fiction," will premiere at the Bauhaus Museum in Dessau, Germany on September 2 and 4, 2022.

As a painter, sculptor, designer, and movement theorist living through a time of rapid industrialization, Oskar Schlemmer was fascinated by the transformative abilities of the body in different material, formal, and spatial contexts. He continually rearranged his Triadic costumes to experiment with, and mirror, humanity’s evolving relationship with technology. That relationship is also reflected in the dance’s abstract-geometric environment. His "Triadic Ballet" posited that technology would radically alter the trajectory of human existence.

This thesis has proved prescient. Technology has fundamentally transformed humanity, but not always for the better. Today, Schlemmer’s 1920’s era enthusiasm for technology is exchanged for a renewed appreciation for humanity’s ties to the natural world. In an age of climate change and environmental degradation, this co-production focuses on how humans can connect with natural non-human life forms for the benefit of their own species as well as the planet as a whole.

Schlemmer’s original costume designs serve as a form of exoskeletons from which new figures, and a new evolution of humanity, emerge. Following a prologue in which the historical costumes appear, "META I MOR I PHOS" demonstrates how, through the metaphor of insect metamorphosis (larva, pupa, imago), a new image of humanity can emerge. In this way, Schlemmer's “Triadic Ballet” is reactivated as a living, unfinished experiment in human transformation, this time re-connected to the natural world.

https://hedwigdances.com/events/meta-mor-phos-a-triadic-fiction/