For Four, Disturbance

When two choreographers, who, until now, had both primarily sought to explore the moving questions of their time, turn to a string quartet whose basic principles had been conceived in Central Europe almost 250 years ago, they are entering completely new territory in spite of or even because of all choreographic and musical tradition. For the question of how contemporary dance and music – whether modern or classical music – can come together has not been answered by any means. Does dance necessarily have to follow the music and it, in turn, the score, which itself is beholden to the composition? What does it mean to follow? In their first joint project, Cologne-based choreographer, Stephanie Thiersch, and Beirut-based choreographer, Omar Rajeh – together with the award-winning Asasello Quartet from Cologne – adventurously yet sensitively encourage unexpected encounters and poetic collisions. The result is two mutually complementing and mutually challenging attempts at choreographic and musical collisions that offer various answers to similar questions under the same test conditions (a highly professional string quartet, three contemporary dancers, the various origins and ancestry of all the participants, a three-sided, open, empty room):

The interruption of a settled and peaceful condition, Omar Rajeh’s choreography starts with the idea of an encounter, an accident, and an unexpected disruption that shifts our perception. A meeting in the sense of a collision, a new departure point, created through an unplanned and unexpected series of events. The piece confronts us with the transformation and shifting of an original music score by Mozart. It evokes questions as to what is ‘original’ and what is ‘transformed’, highlighting this fine line between dance and music, movement and sound, classical and contemporary.