Weaver | annemareikehess.com

Weaver

2023

“To me, ‘The Future is female’ means that no longer will female qualities be subordinated to male qualities. I want to live in a world that is collaborative. A world that is emotionally intelligent. A world in which we are linked and not ranked!”

- The Future is female by Madame Gandhi -

The trio Weaver by choreographer Anne-Mareike Hess is a choreographic round dance about the female body and its inevitable link to a history of violence and oppression, internalized over millennia. The image of weaving serves here as a metaphor for the connections between female fates across time and space, a choreographic basis along which the dancers' bodies connect and empower themselves. Perhaps the net of violence can be broken?

After the solos Warrior (2018) and Dreamer (2021), the trio Weaver is the third dance piece in which the artist tries to fight her way through the tangle of stereotypical ideas of being a woman. In order to deconstruct gender roles, Anne-Mareike Hess explores female identity inspired by mythology and popular culture.

Concept & Choreography : Anne-Mareike Hess

Performance & development: Laura Lorenzi, Julia B. Laperrière, Anne-Mareike Hess

Dramaturgy: Thomas Schaupp

Sound composition: Marc Lohr

Costume design, visual concept: Lynn Scheidweiler, Mélanie Planchard,

Light design: Brice Durand

Production: utopic productions

Co-production: Neimënster (LU), Weld Stockholm (SE), Skogen (SE), Centre chorégraphique national de Rillieux-la-Pape, direction Yuval PICK, dans le cadre du dispositif Accueil-Studio (FR)

Support: Centre de création chorégraphique luxembourgeois TROIS C-L (LU), Ministère de la Culture Luxembourg, Trifolion Echternach, Fondation Indépendance, Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg

Research support: Fonds Darstellende Künste aus Mitteln der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien im Rahmen von NEUSTART KULTUR

Residencies: Neimënster (LU), Dock 11 Berlin (DE), O espaço do Tempo (PT), CCRN Rillieux-la-Pape

Press

"Choreographer Anne-Mareike Hess concludes her trilogy on the female body with a veritable tour de force. In 45 minutes and with a minimal scenic setup, it shows the story of centuries of oppression, without complacency on the responsibility of women themselves in a system that is starting to crack."

"They leave the room with determined steps, arm raised, fist clenched on the stick which now no longer symbolizes oppression but the struggle for liberation. It's a strong image, expected in a certain way at the time of #MeToo, but the path to get there is as radical as it is masterful on the choreographic level."

"If Anne-Mareike Hess has not turned into a warrior, she is now on stage as a fighting sister. In this regard, her trilogy will be a milestone. The five years of creation devoted to the three pieces reflect this pivotal moment of a certain awareness of post #MeToo society on the status of women."

Marie-Laure Rolland La Glaneuse 29.3.2023

"...bitter, harsh, raw...

With “Weaver”, the third part of a trilogy begun in 2018 with "Warrior" and which focuses on the condition of women Anne-Mareike Hess invites us not to a laughing uchronia, an avenging manifesto or even a documentary tableau.

It is a physical, direct, disturbing experience."

"Proof is once again made that there is no need for great means to offer a powerful opening."

"They [the performers] seem to be the guardians of an original matriarchal society. But it is in fact the opposite that we are witnessing. The stake turns against them. The Amazons are actually victims.

The three dancers (Anne-Mareike Hess, Laura Lorenzi and Julia B. Laperrière) hold a phallic object of power in their hands, with which they perform a synchronized hara-kiri, punctuated by a gasp and a fall without grace. Dance, for Anne-Mareike Hess, is about emotions that run through the body and that are expelled by movements that track back the violence of their gestation."

"One might think we are witnessing an exercise in the exorcism of the power of men. One after the other, the blows and the falls seem little by little less painful, until a first respite, which marks the advent of new complicities between the three dancers. New, but shaky. The next blows are not very far away. And freedom is relative. We have to try to enjoy the roles that we associate with women, that we petrify in religious art as well as in mythologies. The dancers hold the pose, like ancient statues and medieval pietà, where women are devoted to the exaggeration of emotions, condemned to passivity, virtue, or contemplation."

"Anne-Mareike Hess said beforehand that there would be no happy end, that there would be no solution, at the end of her trilogy. But if an activist proposed a petition for some feminist cause when leaving the room, we would sign it with our eyes closed, the impression is so strong. We know, in case we need to be reminded, that the feminist fight is not over, even if all the conditions are met to move on to another stage. In any case, the show "Weaver" plays its part ."

Jérôme Quiqueret for Tageblatt 28.3.2023