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GERMANY: The 2019 COLOURS International Dance Festival

GERMANY: The 2019 COLOURS International Dance Festival

Company:

Presented by Eric Gauthier

Location:

Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

Dates:

Thursday, June 27, 2019 - 12:00pm daily through July 14, 2019

Tickets:

www.coloursdancefestival.com

Company:
Presented by Eric Gauthier

June 27 to July 14, 2019
COLOURS International Dance Festival 
Presented by Eric Gauthier

DIVERSITY AND CREATIVITY – MERCEDES-BENZ BANK MOVES COLOURS
Funded by the State Capital Stuttgart and the State of Baden-Wuerttemberg
Produced by Theaterhaus Stuttgart


 

Great prospects for the dance city Stuttgart! In a few weeks the waiting will be over and it's summer, sun and COLOURS again. Compared to the first two editions, COLOURS has once more raised its profile as a production festival. Not only is the Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart immersed in the preparations for the opening premiere Classy Classics, featuring works by William Forsythe, Marco Goecke, Ohad Naharin, Cayetano Soto and Eric Gauthier. The two companies which present world premieres in co-production with COLOURS, will also be rehearsing in Stuttgart: Bryan Arias with Watch from June 25, and Akram Khan Company with Outwitting the Devil from July 3.

The festival programme comprises 20 top-class productions from all over the world, including one European premiere, nine German premieres, two full-length world premieres and COLOURS co-productions as well as six world premieres as part of Meet the Talents. And although the heart of the festival beats in Theaterhaus, with its four stages and the gym, COLOURS is also systematically expanding into the city of Stuttgart. The „external venues“ in 2019 include the market square with COLOURS in the City, the Schlossplatz with the new open-air dance studio COLOURS Playground, the Dorotheen Quartier with COLOURS in the Streets, the zoological-botanical garden Wilhelma with the COLOURS Family Day, the Friedrichsbau Varieté and the Villa Reitzenstein Park with COLOURS outdoors. Once more, COLOURS has come a good step closer to its goal of getting the whole city moving.

 

THE PROGRAMME ON STAGE
 


Gauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart (Stuttgart/Germany)
Festival Opening & Gauthier Dance premiere
Classy Classics 
featuring William Forsythe, Herman Schmerman Duet / Eric Gauthier, Orchestra of Wolves / Marco Goecke, Äffi / Ohad Naharin, DECADANCE / Cayetano Soto, Malasangre
Just like with MEGA ISRAEL for the opening 2017, the new Gauthier Dance production is meant to get the audience in the mood for almost three weeks full of dance. In spite of the tongue-in-cheek title, one should not expect a lavish ballet evening, though! Classy Classics is a celebration of contemporary dance, combining three masterpieces by star choreographers with two favourites from the Gauthier dance repertoire.

Compagnie Marie Chouinard (Montréal/Canada)
Radical Vitality, Solos and Duets
German premiere
After four decades at the forefront of the avant-garde, an icon of modern dance proudly looks back. Marie Chouinard has compiled an anthology of miniatures and excerpts from her work for a new generation of dancers and spectators. In part reworked, in part in their original form, these pieces have been combined into a series that the choreographer hopes will „flow like breath“. Chouinard’s theatrical works have always been provocative, sensual, feministic and characterised by a raw energy – but how do we as an audience react to what were scandals at the time? The programme includes Chouinard classics such as bODY_rEMIX/gOLDBERG_vARIATIONS as well as newly discovered projects such as the quirky Love Attack and the literally titled Crying-Laughing Duet. The undisguised directness of Chouinard’s creativity unfolds in the richness of her solos and duets, which depict unfulfilled desire, the humour and madness of our neuroses, broken illusions and dehumanized bodies that are only capable of moving mechanically. A comprehensive portrait of a unique personality.

Stephen Shropshire (Maastricht/Netherlands)
We Are Nowhere Else But Here
German premiere
We all carry within us traces and knowledge from history. The great challenge is interpreting them. Inspired by political theorist Edward Said’s suggestion that coexistence would be the greatest challenge of the twenty-first century, Stephen Shropshire’s newest work explores the challenge of coexistence in our most intimate encounters, buried, as he writes, „in the density of the human knot“. Shropshire’s piece for two dancers explores very personal and sometimes painful endeavours to achieve coexistence, to find ways of understanding the other, our direct counterpart, beyond all generalisations. Piano music by Beethoven and Schubert floats through a door in the background; the man and the woman barely let go of one another. To what extent can she „bear“ him? How much respect for her can he maintain? Shropshire, an American based in Maastricht in the Netherlands, was a guest at the first COLOURS Festival in 2015. We Are Nowhere Else But Here was awarded the Dutch dance prize De Zwaan 2018.

ARIAS Company (New York/USA)
Watch
World premiere in coproduction with COLOURS
Can we place the fate of the world in the hands of heroes? One of the inspirations for the creation of this world premiere by Bryan Arias was the bleak superhero comic book Watchmen. The choreographer explores the struggles of modern heroes with their own humanity. He confronts their ominous superpowers with the worst fears of our times and calls the concept of the hero itself into question. Born in Puerto Rico, Bryan Arias grew up in New York, where he was exposed to different styles of street and ballroom dancing. He has been a member of Nederlands Dans Theater (for which he is creating a work in March) and of Crystal Pite’s company Kidd Pivot. These experiences cultivated his love of theatrical, but not necessarily narrative, dance, and of storytelling characterized by melancholic symbolism and a penchant for the satire. In 2013 he founded his own company in New York, with whom he creates poetic, quiet, rather minimalistic works in which the movement of the human body takes centre stage.

Mourad Merzouki (Bron/France)
Folia
German premiere
Baroque and hip hop are two completely different worlds – here they come together in a magical piece of theatre full of flying stars and whirling dances. Mourad Merzouki has elevated break dance to a performing art, and with his Compagnie Käfig he repeatedly confronts hip hop with other styles and other artists. This dialogue produces new and striking images. For Folia he has united the spontaneous power of street art with the sublime artistry of the Baroque to create a poetic world theatre. Together with the renowned Baroque ensemble Concert de l’Hostel Dieu from Lyon Merzouki finds in the wild rhythms of the tarantella a magical connection beyond space and time. Spins and virtuoso tricks occur here and there when the folia, an old Baroque musical form, accelerates its dynamic to the point of abandon. Merzouki shows the emotional power inherent in hip hop movements, mixing in contemporary and Spanish dance, girls on pointe and a whirling dervish. Stardust shimmers and a thousand lamps glow in this danced deluge of imagery.

Maguy Marin (Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon/France)
May B
COLOURS is hosting an absolute classic. This bizarre adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s dramas was created in 1981 and continues to be performed around the world. May B established the international reputation of Maguy Marin, the grande dame of contemporary dance in France. A group of lonely souls, an eccentric collection of dusty geriatrics and derelicts, shuffles grunting to nowhere, constantly hoping to find a goal for their endless wandering. For all the absurdity of their existence these archetypal figures at times exude an effervescent cheeriness, whether discovering their primitive urges or hidden feelings under the layer of dust, dancing hip hop to Schubert or becoming entangled in Gavin Bryars’ mournful music loops. Marin finds delicate traces of dignity amidst the ridiculousness of being human in this subtle and detailed translation of Beckett's existentialism into movement: the waiting in the void, the hesitation, hope and self-deception, the brief, mostly cold comfort of companionship.

Compagnie Philippe Saire (Lausanne/Switzerland)
Black Out
Three people lounge on a white roof in the sun. Suddenly a large quantity of something black falls from the sky. It seems to be raining ash. From the unusual audience position of a clinical observer, namely from above the stage, we study how the three subjects engage with the black flood – how they sink, how they learn to live with their situation, how the shadows grow and how they themselves become shadows. Visually conceived like a drawing or a constantly changing mosaic, Philippe Saire’s parable deals with slow disappearance, with the erasure of oneself. As in action painting, the bodies leave traces in the blackness and mark out futuristic paths in the dust to whose dominance they are bound to succumb. The choreographer from Lausanne experiments with novel perspectives and diverse materials. Philippe Saire takes dance out of the theatre. His company performs in galleries, gardens, in urban space and on open land. Since its world premiere in 2011, Black Out has had almost 200 performances throughout the world.

XieXin Dance Theatre (Shanghai/China)
From IN
Situated between age-old folk art and imported ballet, contemporary dance is a very young art in China yet one that over recent years, with the emergence of new companies and new discoveries, has become increasingly exciting. Xie Xin and the dance company she founded in 2014 are playing a ground-breaking role in this development. The young choreographer previously danced with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and continually seeks exchanges with international artists for her own troupe. Her new piece focuses on the moment of encounter, the moment in which two lives enter into a connection and cease to exist in parallel universes. Xie Xin’s striking style features expansive, intensive movements performed with great elegance by her flexible dancers but also infused with a deeply spiritual quality. The popular choreographer has created works for nearly all of China’s modern companies. She has won a number of awards, including the audience award at the International Choreographic Competition in Hanover in 2015. In May 2019 she will be an artist-in-residence at the Hessian State Ballet.

Circa (Brisbane/Australia)
En Masse
European premiere
Circus as a total work of art: Accompanied by the music of Schubert and Stravinsky, the legendary avant-garde circus troupe from Australia presents a vision of a dying world that blooms again. The expression “art circus” was coined to describe Circa, whose work is at once astonishing and emotionally captivating, approaching contemporary dance by combining theatrical elements and acrobatics choreographed to music. In the first half of their performance, Circa shows us a darker side of circus as trapped figures struggle against the end of the world. Electronic loops point to an apocalyptic future and a lone tenor (Hans Jörg Mammel) sings Schubert‘s exquisite songs of loss and love accompanied by piano (Klavierduo Grau/Schumacher). In the second half a new civilisation rises from the ashes, blossoming in images of growth and ascent as Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps is played live by the piano duo Grau/Schumacher. The Rite of Spring is performed as a struggle for a new beginning is fought out by acrobats. Hands and bodies form endless stairs, three story human towers tilt dangerously: the anarchic energy of the body shows how the old dies and the new is born, and that circus can touch us emotionally.

Compagnie Philippe Saire (Lausanne/Switzerland)
Hocus Pocus
Two friends take a fantastic voyage. They meet a knight and a gluttonous whale; they fly through billowing curtains and land in a spider’s web. Every task they face makes them stronger and requires all their ingenuity. The work ingeniously deploys the bodies of the two dancers, only a few props, and light and shadow to create fantastical figures and eerie and funny episodes. Gravity dissolves; everything appears to float in the air. Everyone can invent their own story to accompany these images; everyone can be puzzled, astonished and amused. The young audience see how expressively the human body can narrate a story without words, purely through movement. Accompanied by music from Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt, this work enchants with a blend of dance and puppet theatre, illusionism and magical lighting. Ideal for dance novices from seven years of age!


A.I.M by Kyle Abraham (New York/USA)
Mixed Programme: Kyle Abraham, Drive / Show Pony / The Quiet Dance / Doug Varone, Strict Love
Four German premieres 
Kyle Abraham is one of the most sought-after young talents in American dance today. Rather than working in pure genres, he cherry-picks from styles ranging from street dance and hip hop to Martha Graham and classical ballet to create a zany fusion of high culture and Afro-punk. Abraham dances to rap, elegant jazz, driving electronic rhythms, and to silence – in a style he refers to as a „postmodern gumbo“. His works pulsate with an elastic jazz feel. They are sensual and provocative, combining great speed with great clarity. He is the first black choreographer in over a decade to be commissioned by the New York City Ballet. For COLOURS, Abraham is bringing his own company, A.I.M, to Stuttgart to perform four pieces, including a work choreographed by Doug Varone: cutting-edge New York dance that ranges between nonchalant, glittering twirls and quiet, seemingly improvised jazz meditation.

Pierre Rigal/Compagnie dernière minute (Toulouse/France)
Press
A man in a box two by three meters – which shrinks. „A choreographic tragedy or the disquieting strangeness of the ordinary“ is the subtitle of this solo, in which the Frenchman Pierre Rigal presents a living space that becomes progressively smaller. The pressure from outside rises continually, while the person inside stoically faces the new challenges this presents, assiduously endeavouring to adapt. There is an element here of Charlie Chaplin and his confrontation with modern technology, for the gentleman in the three-piece suit is not so very alone. There is a chair in the room and the apparently harmless lamp reveals itself to be a kind of artificial arm that interacts with the protagonist. Is he being monitored? Is this how the system manipulating him communicates? How far can adaptation to technology go? Will the human being ultimately become a robot? Before Pierre Rigal discovered dance, he was a track and field athlete and studied business mathematics and cinematography. Using old film tricks, acrobatics, light and shadow he presents a Kafkaesque vision that is at once frightening and amusing.

Lucy Guerin Inc (Melbourne/Australia)
Split
This is a square, a stage, a world, a life. Australian choreographer Lucy Guerin confronts us by way of an unadorned choreographic investigation with a rigorous structural frame. Two women perform the same movements, one clothed and one naked. How do we perceive the difference? Does the naked body strike us as unprotected, sensual or as something untamed in the midst of the civilized world? And how does our viewpoint change when the women communicate? Suddenly the space is halved, there is less room, their time is shortened and they struggle over the last resources. Here, what is actually an extremely austere structure gives rise to a dramatic arc of oppressive tension – an ambiguous chamber play which, in its subtle dynamism, raises more and more questions about our relationships to one another, to our bodies and our prejudices. How are our images conditioned?

Gauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart (Stuttgart/Germany)
Meet the Talents
Six world premieres
The Meet the Talents concept is ideally suited to the festival: Eric Gauthier invites up-and-coming young choreographers to create short pieces for the Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart. The rehearsals take place in the second week of the festival – partly in the Gauthier Dance studio, partly in the gym. Everyone who is interested may watch the creative process. In the closing week of the festival, Gauthier Dance performs the new works at the gym. The early-evening shows are complemented by short interviews with the choreographers, with Eric Gauthier acting as host.
Meet the Talents was enthusiastically received by the audience, but also by the artists themselves. The stage is now set for a new edition and the new talents Arianna Benedetti (Italy), Eyal Dadon (Israel), Valerio Longo (Italy) and Norge Cedeño Raffo (Cuba). The line-up is completed by two artists who are no strangers to Gauthier Dance, the Floating Flowers choreographer Po-Cheng Tsai (Taiwan) and Nadav Zelner (Israel) who made quite a splash at the festival in 2017, contributing both the COLOURS trailer Alte Zachen and a piece for Meet theTalents. Eric Gauthier was impressed and commissioned a full-length production for the next season. The result became an instant audience favourite – in spite or possibly because of its cheeky title: BULLSHIT.   

Open rehearsals from Tuesday, July 2 to Sunday, July 7, 2019 from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., Theaterhaus Gym. Admission free. Please let me know if you'd like to attend a rehearsal so that we can reserve a seat for you.
Open rehearsal in the city on Friday, July 5, 2019 from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., Dorotheenplatz. Admission free.


Ballet BC (Vancouver/Canada)
Mixed Programme: Emily Molnar, To this day / Crystal Pite, Solo Echo
German premiere Sharon Eyal, Bedroom Folk
This evening of dance is united by three inspiring creative women. One of them is the artistic director of Ballet BC, which is based in Vancouver, Canada. Emily Molnar has formed this regional troupe with a powerful vision that has catapulted the company onto the international contemporary ballet scene. The primary emphasis here is on creativity: in ten years Molnar has commissioned 45 world premieres. The dynamic Canadian, who has roots in William Forsythe’s Ballett Frankfurt, is now bringing her latest work, To this day, which premiered in November 2018, to COLOURS. Born in British Columbia, Crystal Pite, with her dark theatricality, is one of the most sought after choreographers in the world. Danced to cello music by Johannes Brahms, her Solo Echo exudes a winter melancholy, when the emotions of an individual echo in waves and structures through the collective. Sharon Eyal’s strident works pulsate with a grotesque, sometimes machine-like quality. In Bedroom Folk the Israeli choreographer fractures hypnotic fascination with ironic laughter.

Tero Saarinen Company/Tero Saarinen/Kimmo Pohjonen (Helsinki/Finland)
Breath
German premiere
A breath of air from the far north: two Finnish nature-boys dance through the apocalypse. Kimmo Pohjonen has been described as the „Jimi Hendrix of the accordion“. The husky virtuoso has digitized his instrument and plugged it into the cyber-age. Constantly in motion, he conjures up veritable symphonic soundscapes. The choreographer Tero Saarinen, like his accordionist compatriot, also revels in crossing boundaries. His career has taken him from ballet to butoh and in the process he has developed his own, very personal, off-kilter movement language. Inspired by the grotesque imagination of the land of trolls and infused with absurd humour, this piece presents two figures wandering through a futuristic desert, spurred on by Samuel Beckett’s exhortation: „Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order.“ In the midst of flashes of light and luminous colours, two free spirits confront one another in search of a way out of their loneliness. How does one open up to something new without losing oneself in the process? How do we find the shared breath? This production employs stroboscopic effects.

Shamel Pitts (New York/USA)
Black Velvet – Architectures and Archetypes
Two bodies glowing as if made of liquid metal explore each other’s contours in the darkness. Shaved heads and naked torsos blur the boundaries between masculine and feminine; the dance shifts from formalised patterns to uncontrolled corporeal explosions. The loincloths worn by the couple suggest an archaic origin; geometric structures point to a technology of the future: Architectures and Archetypes is the subtitle of this multidisciplinary performance, with which Shamel Pitts celebrates the colour black. The titular „black velvet“ is soft in texture but also absorbs light and reflects it in its very own shadowed way. What does it mean to be black today? What do semi-naked bodies signal in an over-sexualized society? Can they also be simply beautiful? The New Yorker Shamel Pitts danced with the Batsheva Dance Company for many years and is a teacher of Ohad Naharin’s movement language, Gaga. The Brazilian Mirelle Martins was lauded for her „phenomenal performance“ at the ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival.

Gregory Maqoma/Via Katlehong (Johannesburg/South Africa)
Via Kanana
Fighting corruption with their feet: These pantsula dancers arm themselves against the abuse of power and intimidation with the power of danced, clapped, lived rhythm, through which they condemn the lack of moral standards in the post-apartheid era in South Africa. The Via Katlehong company originally emerged from a township youth project and, with the dynamic, foot-stomping rebel dance pantsula and the gumboot dances originally devised by mine workers, have become one of the African continent’s most well-known dance troupes. Their latest work was created by Gregory Maqoma, an award-winning South African who trained in Belgium and with Akram Khan. The title of the piece, Via Kanana, alludes to Canaan, the Promised Land of the Bible, and here specifically denotes a land that was promised but never handed over. Accompanied by traditional songs or a fiery anti-corruption speech, the dancers condemn the abuse of power and fraud, and with the infinite energy of their feet seek to anchor in the ground the hope that the youth of the townships will be able to bring about change.

Akram Khan Company (London/Great Britain)
Outwitting the Devil
World premiere in coproduction with COLOURS
Akram Khan Company, based in London, will soon celebrate its twentieth anniversary. Born in England with Bengali heritage, Akram Khan has long been regarded as one the world’s leading choreographers and a visionary in contemporary dance. Trained in the classical Indian dance form of Kathak, he continually explores new styles and forms and seeks to exchange with other artists fearlessly, crossing boundaries, both conceptually and spiritually. Khan creates a highly sophisticated form of performance that reinterprets the myths of different peoples and depicts the search for community, connecting each individual. One of the inspirations for the world premiere with which he aims to ‘outwit the devil’ at COLOURS, is the newly discovered fragment of the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the world’s earliest surviving great works of literature. Akram’s new work is a concentrated epic about ritual and remembering. In a landscape of broken tablets and fallen idols, six characters trade their remaining wealth and stories, seeking to make whole the fragments of ancient knowledge lost and forgotten over time.

Roberto Castello/ALDES (Lucca/Italy)
In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Exhausted wanderers, damned souls: four quivering figures struggle through the night, in the stark black and white of an expressionist film and accompanied by a relentless, trance-inducing musical soundtrack. A laconic voice announces dark and light over a loudspeaker; day and night alternate in an excruciatingly similar sequence. Resembling bizarre marionettes, the itinerants continue on, like a remotely controlled matrix that repeatedly finds a force within itself to counter uniformity. The figures doggedly maintain their course without a goal, never communicating yet finding small moments of contact, even tenderness. It is a race between the last, the lost, a tragicomic ever-onwards, which Roberto Castello positions somewhere between Samuel Beckett, Marcel Marceau and Pina Bausch. The mysterious palindrome making up the title translates as „We go around by night consumed by fire“. Backwards and forwards, moving in an endless circle. A cofounder of Italy’s contemporary dance scene, Castello’s experimental, political performances are pervaded by forceful images portraying the gloomy hopelessness of the human condition.

 

COLOURS OPEN-AIR & PARTICIPATORY EVENTS



COLOURS XXL WORKSHOP WITH ERIC GAUTHIER
Dancing doesn’t just keep people physically fit, it also makes them totally happy – as everyone knows who has laughed and sweated their way through this workout with Eric Gauthier. At this festival the dance star from Stuttgart’s Theaterhaus will once again be leading participants through a series of short, humorous movement sequences which include elements ranging from tango to hip hop to contemporary dance – anything that’s fun to do and engages the body in coordinated movement. Of course, the choreographies will be different from the ones presented last time, and the dancers from Gauthier Dance will be on hand to demonstrate the moves and help participants learn them. Whether as a fun fitness workout, a physical and mental makeover, or a way of finding out what dance style is the most fun: the three hours with Eric Gauthier provide a wonderful release from the daily grind. A few weeks later the choreographies will be presented at the big COLOURS Flash Mob in front of Stuttgart’s Königsbau. Just like last time. Well, almost – this year this celebration of movement leading up to the festival will not take place in the afternoon but in the prime time slot of 7:00 p.m. on Saturday.
Saturday, June 1, 2019 at 7:00 p.m.
Theaterhaus T1

Meet the Talents – Youth Project with Nadav Zelner
A workshop for young people from 14 to 20 years old 
In June and July 2019 up to 20 young people from the Stuttgart area will be given the opportunity to take part in a dance production under professional conditions. Rehearsals will be led by the Israeli dancer and renowned choreographer Nadav Zelner, who has already created several works for Gauthier Dance. The young participants will not only be learning new steps. They will also gain a valuable experience of the fact that in the internationally diverse world of dance it is completely normal for people from different cultures to develop a project together. And of course at the end of the project they will give a performance of their work – in a public presentation within the framework of Meet the Talents. 
Ten three-hour sessions between Friday, June 21, 2019 and Wednesday, July 10. 2019 supervised by two dance and theatre teachers. Participation is free of charge but numbers are limited.
For more information and registration contact Jakob Dambacher-Walesch, Tel. 0711-40207-720, jakob.dambacher@theaterhaus.com

COLOURS IN THE CITY
As always, the warm-up to the festival takes the form of a free event held on the market square in the city centre, which Eric Gauthier will transform into a giant dance floor for everyone who wants to get involved. His mission, now more than ever: Everyone should dance! The festival director and his company will present excerpts from their programme and teasers from Theaterhaus. The event will again feature surprise guests from the city and the dance scene. After the balls and pompons of previous years, this year’s city event will present a „toy“ very much welcome in the hot months of summer, and Eric will teach the audience (spoiler alert!) the „Fan Dance“. When the entire market square dances in the bright hues of COLOURS, Stuttgart is guaranteed to get into a summery festival mood!
Friday, June 21, 2019 at 4:00 p.m., Marktplatz (market square) Stuttgart. Admission free. 

COLOURS Playground
Over three days, a new location in the centre of Stuttgart will be enticing innocent passers-by directly into the arms of Eric Gauthier. Eric will create an open-air studio on Stuttgart’s Schlossplatz, where you can shake a leg from morning to evening. Open classes and showings in styles ranging from Flamenco, HipHop, Jazz Dance and Musical to Zumba, Line Dance, Ballet, Swing, Tango and Standard encourage everybody to join in. In addition, Eric Gauthier (Dance for Everybody and Dancing for Children), Egon Madsen (Body Work 50+), Tanzschule Wolf (Jumping Fitness) and Jutta Schüle's inclusive project Zeit zum Tanzen will to get Stuttgart moving. Each dance-packed day will culminate in a tea dance, accompanied by a live band. The programme includes Standard on Saturday, Milonga on Sunday and Swing on Monday. Prior to the event, at 7:00 p.m., beginners and those who haven’t danced for a while are welcome to participate in a thorough introduction. From 8:00 p.m. the dance floor is open for a dance into the summer night.
Saturday, June 22, 2019 from 11:00 a.m. / Sunday, June 23. 2019 from 11:00 a.m. / Monday, June 24, 2019 from 11:00 a.m., Schlossplatz Stuttgart. Admission free. 

Well Brothers (Ascholding/Germany)
Folk dance with the Well-Buam
COLOURS is expanding in the direction of Bavaria, specifically the district of Beerenmoos, from where the Well Brothers are bringing local folk dance styles such as the Zwiefache and the Siebenschritt to their Swabian compatriots. Michael Well shows how it’s done. The moves can be learned on the spot so that everyone can join in when the Well-Buam (formerly known as Biermösl Blosn) celebrate Alpine tribal dances ranging from the Sternpolka to the Sautanz. The three brothers’ gently anarchic brass band, ably supported by colleagues on instruments that include the harp, percussion and bagpipes, transform an old tradition into an exuberant display of lust for life. With typical Bavarian generosity, the brothers also include a few other dance styles, which they affectionately Bavarianize. In short: the Bavarian Dance Floor performance in the Friedrichsbau promises to be a happening! 
Cast: Michael Well (baritone, tuba & Master of Ceremony), Stofferl Well (trumpet & Flashmaster), Karl Well (clarinet & sound), Heini Zapf (clarinet), Maximilian Well (percussion & Youngster), Max Lang (accordion & Beer Drinker), Franz Eimer (harp & Chain Smoker)
Please reserve O one press ticket O one press ticket + an additional reduced ticket for
O Sunday, June 30, 2019 at 6:00 p.m.
Friedrichsbau Varieté

COLOURS in the Streets
company Idem, Three Ages
We tend to see human nature as divided into two antithetical poles: good versus bad, female versus male, body versus mind. However, there is a third element that needs to considered, the hyphen, as it were, that links the duality. Taking this aspect into account leads to a better understanding of ourselves; we have a beginning, a middle and an end, we find unity and circularity. The number three is central to the new work by Switzerland’s company Idem, which participated in the first COLOURS festival, when its members danced for everyone on the streets of Stuttgart. Three Ages, which will be performed in Stuttgart in a version lasting around half an hour, translates the concept of the triptych from the visual arts into dance, employing three energies and three rhythms to portray life as a complex mix of memory, present and hopes for the future. Using elements of hip hop, breakdancing, Capoeira and contemporary dance the two choreographers Clément Bugnon and Matthias Kass link three different periods in a human lifetime and three types of movement, which only produce a whole in combination with one another. The music for the piece is by the Polish composer Szymon Brzoska, who has a special love for contemporary dance and has written music for numerous choreographers.
Friday, July 5, 2019 at 3:00 p.m. & 5:00 p.m. / Saturday, July 6, 2019 at 1:00 p.m. & 3:00 p.m., Schlossplatz, at the corner of the Wittwer-Thalia bookshop. Admission free.

COLOURS Flash Mob
With the dynamic support of the XXL Workshop participants, Eric Gauthier and his dancers will once again surprise unsuspecting Saturday shoppers! Together they will perform the short choreos, which were rehearsed on 1 June. Afterwards there will be an autograph session and the opportunity to meet the company.
Saturday, July 6, 2019 at 1:00 p.m. Schlossplatz in front of the „Königsbau“. Admission free.

COLOURS in the Park
For the final weekend of the COLOURS festival, Eric Gauthier and his troupe have been personally invited by state prime minister Winfried Kretschmann to stage an event in the beautiful park surrounding the Villa Reitzenstein, the seat of the Baden-Wuerttemberg government. Visitors and the hosting politicians will be treated to a varied programme which includes a stage show by Gauthier Dance and mini-workshops designed for spontaneous participation by dancers both young and old, ballet stars and future cabinet ministers. In front of the imposing three-winged sandstone villa, shaded by redwoods and ringed by fountains, the audience can enjoy a wonderful view over the dance city of Stuttgart to the sounds of classical music. 
Saturday, July 13, 2019, Villa Reitzenstein. Dance programme between 1:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m.. Park open all day. Admission free.  

COLOURS Family Day
This time Dad has to shake a leg as well. When we last held our Kids Day in the zoo, the parents stood at the side and enjoyed watching their kids dance. Now we are warmly inviting them to take part, too! Over a course with eight stops the dancers from Gauthier Dance show how differently giraffes, penguins, kangaroos and even water lilies move, performing short choreographies in which simple steps evoke laughter and the urge to dance along. The children taking part are made up as animals and all of them receive a small gift at the end. Their parents are of course free to look on and take pictures – but think about how proud the lion cubs will be if their lion parents dance along with them!
Sunday, July 14, 2019 from 11:00 a.m., Zoological-botanical garden Wilhelma
Attendance is included in the Wilhelma admission fee. Tickets are sold directly at Wilhelma or can be booked online: www.wilhelma.de

More information: www.coloursdancefestival.com
Tickets: phone ++49-711-40207 - 20 / -21 / -22 / -23 (daily from 10:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.) or tickets@theaterhaus.com

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