WALK + TALK

walk+talk is a lecture performance series initiated by the Austrian choreographer and dancer Philipp Gehmacher in 2008. In walk+talks choreographers are invited to create a solo work that makes the moving and talking run parallel. The topic is the artists’ concepts, the individual understanding of their body-in-motion and the history of their practice. Over twenty artists have participated in five editions of the project that have taken place in Vienna, Brussels, Stockholm, Reykyavik, Berlin and Poznań by far.

“I had the pleasure of being invited twice to participate in the walk+talk series by Philipp Gehmacher: in Stockholm in December 2013 and in Poznań in June 2017. The two versions are radically different: the first could be qualified as introvert, the second as extrovert. Between the two versions, my work went through important changes, reconnecting to buried parts of my pathway within dance and putting to the forefront my relationship to techno music and clubbing. Nevertheless, despite the difference between the two versions, the first is clearly announcing the second.

In the 2017 version, I share with the audience a catalogue of dances, key moments and encounters that took place since I started to work as a dancer when I was nineteen years old. They deeply marked me and evoke the bodily, sensorial, emotional, social and spiritual dimensions of the act of dancing. This walk+talk is also a tribute to dancers without whom I wouldn’t be the dancer I am today.

Creation: 2013
Premiere: Dec., 2013 * Stockholm, Sweden

Dance: Frédéric Gies and many dancers
Text: Frédéric Gies
Coaching: Philipp Gehmacher
Produced by: Art Stations Foundation by Grażyna Kulczyk

The 2013 version was created in December 2013 at Kulturhuset in Stockholm. The 2017 version was created on June 23, 2017 at Art Stations Foundation in Poznan. Presented also at My Wild Flag Festival (Stockholm), ImPulsTanz – Vienna International Dance Festival, Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art (Warsaw), DOCK11 (Berlin), Maison de la Danse at Ungdomens Hus (Malmö), Skogen (Göteborg).