laborgras
Picture: Phil Dera
"DAS FEST" combines Baroque music and contemporary dance, full of relish searching for new forms for historical performance practices and inviting the audience to an evening of surprising listening and exquisit visual impressions.
Within the framework of an audio-visual concert featuring selected works by Arcangelo Corelli and George George Friderich Händel, the performers of laborgras together with the ensemble CONTINUUM invite you to join in on a celebration. The fundamental idea of a celebration involves the gathering of different people and a shared entry into an atmosphere beyond everyday life. A celebration is always staged. It has its own dynamics, dramaturgy and choreography. For this it needs space, time and the act of encounters. laborgras stages "DAS FEST" as a meeting of Baroque music and contemporary dance. The host musicians and performers offer a space in present time to the selected compositions. The festive music is translated into a choreographic concert and the audience is invited to an evening full of surprising impressions revealing a new bodily form of the early music.
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Founded in 1994 by the dancers and choreographers Renate Graziadei and Arthur Stäldi in Hamburg, laborgras has been based in Berlin since 2000 and has established itself as an internationally recognized artists' collective. Since its founding, laborgras has been experimenting with dance as a form of expression, exploring its conditions and thinking it further. laborgras works as a collective, together with a wide variety of artists in the context of different artistic disciplines. Continuous exchange and constant encounters are part of the concept. The passion for interdisciplinarity, the "telling" of stories and the choreographing of poetic worlds is a common thread running through their work. Their productions have received several awards and have been invited to various festivals. In March 2015, laborgras received the Berlin Art Award in the performing arts category and in September 2015, Renate Graziadei was nominated for the German Theater Award DER FAUST for her dance performance in the production "Transition". From 2022 - 2025, laborgras will enter into a guest performance cooperation with the TauberPhilharmonie in Weikersheim. This three-year partnership is supported by the funding program Tanzland of the Federal Cultural Foundation. laborgras is funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe of the State of Berlin.
The ensemble CONTINUUM moves with its sound language between the 17th and the 21st century, between knowledge and innovation, between the vocal and the instrumental. The Berlin harpsichordist Elina Albach gathers artists around her who are looking for new paths in the traditional music business and want to enrich the concert life with excellent quality. Albach, born in Berlin in 1990, studied at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (Switzerland) and completed her master's degree with honors. She was a scholarship holder of the Concerto 21 Academy of the Alfred Toepfer Foundation Hamburg in 2014, taught harpsichord, basso continuo and chamber music at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden in 2016-2017 and is active as a répétiteur at the Leipzig Bach Competition and the German Music Competition, among others. Successful participation in competitions and numerous recordings are proof of the artist's outstanding talent. From 2017-2020, Elina Albach was an artist in the fellowship program #beethoven, a project of PODIUM Esslingen on the occasion of the Beethoven anniversary in 2020. Within this framework, she developed forms of presentation for the Baroque sound world with her ensemble CONTINUUM. She is primarily concerned with the development of a new, contemporary repertoire for the versatile possibilities of the historical instrumentarium.