MERCI / THANK YOU / DANKE

Thank you

A person enters the stage. For whom and for whose pleasure? What motivates his/her moves? What structures them? Henry Wilde aka Antonia Baehr looks at scores as structures that put us into motion. Thank you started with the questions: what moves me? how do I imitate? The fact that we are always performing, both in our everyday lives as well as in the theatre, raises the question of how imitating in the theater is different than in life and how this imitation gets read differently. Here, Antonia aka Henry and Valérie aka Olivier pose the question of imitation – of mimesis, one of the fundamental ingredients of occidental theater tradition – from a point of view of post-moustache dykes and beyond the binary contrast between acting and costume on the one hand and so called neutral performance on the other. Thank you is first and foremost a work model, utopian and real, with two persons, one theme – in variations.

Thank you

Concept, Realisation: Antonia Baehr
In collaboration with: Valérie Castan
Light design: Begoña Garcia Navas
Set, Constructions: Damien Arrii
Production Management: Ulrike Melzwig
Coproduction: Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Parc de la Villette-Résidences d’Artistes, fabrik Potsdam, Ausland Berlin
Supported by: the NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETWORK with funding provided by the German Federal Cultural Foundation as part of its project Dance Plan Germany.

Thank you to: Ida Wilde, Sylvie Garot, Lulu Glayeule alias Anne Lucas, Mickaäl Phelippeau, Susanne Berggren, Rhythm King and her Friends, Nanna Heidenreich, Conrad Noack, Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, fabrik Potsdam, Parc de la Villette, und „Partiturenaustausch“ at Ausland, Berlin.

Duration: ca. 60min.

„Quand le théâtre s’ausculte le nombril, entre ironie et réflexion, Anne-Sylvie Sprenger, Région la Côte 24 Heures, 10.08.2007

Anne-SylvieSprenger.pdf

Antonia Baehr sagt „Danke“ – Deutschlandpremiere bei „Herbstleuchten“ in der Fabrik, von Constanze Klementz, Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung, 24.10.2007

Die Zeit vergeht in Nilpferden. Ob man im Schrank sitzt oder draußen Männchen macht. Ob die persönliche Dompteur-Animateurin ihrem Schützling gerade zur Belohnung ein Stück Zucker auf der Spitze ihres Zeige- und Züchtigungsstöckchens reicht. Oder ob sie dieselbe Stange dazu einsetzt, die seltsame Mannsfrau, die auf einem Podest auf allen Vieren neue Aufgaben erwartet, gezielt in Positur zu dirigieren – nach einer Abbildung, mit der Valérie Castan ihre lebende Skulptur Antonia Baehr immer wieder prüfend vergleicht. Was darauf zu sehen ist, bleibt, wie vieles, das an diesem Abend nur die beiden etwas angeht, ihr Geheimnis.

Hier der ganze Artikel: Constanze Klementz.pdf

„Merci“ program for Nyon

This program was written in french for the perfomance „,Merci“, in Nyon

Here you can find a pdf version of the program written in french

MerciNyon.pdf

„Merci“ program french version

This program was written by Valérie Castan & Antonia Baehr

Here you can fin the program in a pdf version :

Merciprogram.pdf 

Post-merci pour Maud by Antonia Baehr

fr.

An e-mail wriiten in french on the December 24th 2006 by Antonia Baher to thank Maud Desseigne, after the performance. Une collection inachevée de mercis … 

Here you can find the text in Pdf : 

mercipourMaud.pdf

Merci, Aude Lavigne

fr.

« Merci » est un autoportrait qui n’est étonnement pas, comme le genre le dicte habituellement, un portrait de la chorégraphe par elle-même.

Here you can find a pdf version of the text :

Merci.pdf

Je suis une Fiction / Des jeux d’identités, Alexandra Baudelot

engl. & fr.

„If Merci is a choreographic work, it is because it uses gesture and repetition of choreographic material as motor elements of its reflection on gender identity. Absurd and nevertheless familiar gestures are performed with a pleasure that the artist never hides. The execution of a gesture is therefore not performed for itself, but in order to reveal the intimate dynamics of the artist and her way of confronting them.“

Here you can find the pdf version of the text in its original language in french : 

Je suis une fiction/ Des jeux d’identités.pdf

Here you can find the pdf version of the text translated in englisch by Alice Chauchat and Goeffrey Garrison :

I am a fiction / Identity games