The Emotional Season

In the course of our durational performance, we weave an associative fabric, reflecting on personal emotional landscapes as well as on how emotions are talked about, dealt with and conceptualised in our society. 

HOW do we think and talk about emotions?

HOW do we move our emotions?

In the daily practice at Der Betrieb  we meet to work, departing  from the idea that dance and choreography are processes of thinking. We embody, deconstruct and translate concepts and metaphors used to talk about the emotions. The body takes on the role of a dismantler of meanings, a grinder, a confused translator, emotionalising the rational, rationalising the emotional.

In our quest we search for common denominators, for bridges and connections between people and the way they feel and think, as well as for places of rapture and friction. Emotion interest us because we are made to share them and because they represent how we see the world and try to make it our own.  

compassion as a landscape…

jealousy as longing wrapped in slime 

tenderness as a way of looking…

humiliation as a Hieronymus Bosch painting…

During the first season of Der Betrieb, The Emotional Season, we want to explore how emotions are conceptualised. In our spontaneous and improvised performance, we weave an associative fabric, reflecting on personal emotional landscapes as well as on how emotions are dealt with in our society. How do we think and talk about emotions? How do we move our emotions – and how do they move us? The metaphor is a key notion in this artistic practice. Conceptual metaphors bring two distant concepts into correspondence with each other, for instance when we speak of “joy as a tsunami wave”. Which kind of frames and metaphors do we use to ex press emotions? In our daily practice at Der Betrieb, we will embody, deconstruct and translate metaphors into our own artistic language. We will also invent our own metaphors. The body takes on the role of a dismantler of meanings, a grinder, a confused translator, emotionalising the rational, rationalising the emotional. The moving and talking performer is at the centre of this practice. In our quest we search for common denominators, for bridges and connections between people and the way they feel and think. We perceive dance and choreography as a process of thinking.