---

DECEMBER 2, 2001 SUSANNE KIRCHNER “Dance Sculpture” SUSANNE KIRCHNER (Germany) focuses on the development of contemplative body training and over the years has held lectureships at the Academy of Art, Berlin in body sensitizing training as well as for ‘Dance Sculpture”, dance sculpture / behavior and space at the Academy of Art, Nunberg and Leipzig and the Academy of Art, Weibensee and Stuttgart. A versatile stage performer in Germany and abroad, she has been an independent chorographer and director since 1996. “Dance Sculpture” is the result of the research for a body expression, which uses the human body without the help of other requisites, which dates back to the archaic worlds but yet remains current due to the extreme handling of time. Different states of being are reduced to a concentration on gestures and balance, and this unfolds into moved and abstract body forms. Absolute silence focused the observation of the audience on the performer. Clad in a white leotard, Susanne bent her body into incredible postures, moving her muscles so slowly that one could hear a pin drop. Susanne froze into a sculpture at one spot, and then moved to another spot to another spotlight. The silence was quite unnerving at times.

Thank you very much for inviting us all into the silence. It was very difficult and required a great deal of self-restraint from all of us to resist our coughing and sneezing and all that electronic noise that still pervaded. Your work seems to have had a huge amount of meditative quality. At what point do you feel when you are performing that you are connecting with the audience or is it very much internalized?
What I feel depends on the whole concentration in the room. For instance, I felt that only after the 2nd sculpture, there was enough concentration to get into contact. Sometimes, it takes a while like tonight, sometimes it happens immediately.

How do you choose the spots where you form your sculpture poses?
That also depends on the stage, on the architecture of the room. In a museum, it was just an open space, just the sculptures around, so I worked with the space, with the sculptures, with the architecture of the room and tonight is the same. Same kind of stage and audience. So according to this, I develop my choreography.

Are your movements spontaneous or improvised?
Not spontaneous in that sense that I do it the minute I am on stage. I had the whole of today, from morning to work on the lights and the choreography. So, in a way it is spontaneous, not improvised.

What is your inspiration to do this kind of dance sculpture?
I am actually trained as a classical singer. I always wanted to be a musician and stay a musician. While studying, I thought I would like to find something that has a totally different contact with the audience. So, I started to work with my body, thinking that a body is what everybody has. So, that’s something very direct. And then I started to get slower and slower and I realized that the slower I get, interesting things are happening to my mind and to the mind of the audience. I thought that this is something that I really have to work out because I want to try to find another kind of perception; That’s one reason why there is no music, everything is very slow; since I am working only with my body, nothing else. I also wanted the audience to only work with their bodies, mind and senses and concentrate fully on this. So this work has a lot to do with perception.

What sort of exercise and diet do you follow?
Well, I started this kind of work when I was 22 and I am not on a diet!!

It’s slightly difficult to accept your dance as dance. More than dance, it seems like yogasana.
I do not personally care if it’s called dance or sculpture, or art. I think that it’s all kinds of arts. We should try to find new ways and as for how we call it, we can find a name later.

Do you have a special way of breathing, special breath control?
It’s very much controlled. I don’t know about special. The breathing is very much inside. It’s not like when you dance, you have to necessarily move fast and breathe outside. The breathing, the heartbeat, everything slows down.

Can you tell us about your training, which dance companies you work with, yoga….
When I work with other companies, the basis of the training always is not yoga in the pure way, but something similar. But then, I had more like training for actors, not so much for dancers, with stress on gestures and we try to put gestures to an extreme. Therefore we need yoga, we need relaxation and a lot of control. I have also worked a lot on the slowness of the movements. Its very hard for anybody, for dancers, for actors to do slow movements, it takes a while to realize what it means to move very slowly.

Do you always wear only a white costume?
Not always. It depends on the piece I am performing. Sometimes I wear black, but very rarely it’s red. In black, you don’t see the breath, for instance. Most of the time, it’s white because you can see it the most and in good detail.

e-mail:tanzskulptur@yahoo.de

The Other Festival Q & A: Audience Artist Interface