Performance

Performance as a modality of sharing current research with an audience. Crystallisations of thought and action that can illuminate the elusive task of being present to materials, movements, self, space and life within it.

I work both collaboratively and as a soloist and in 2024 am working on a local cemetery in my neighbourhood Berlin-Baumschulenweg.

Performance

april 2019 – [not a performance] in the morning hours, Berlin


  • © Venla Helenius

  • © Venla Helenius

  • © Venla Helenius

[05. & 06.04.2019]

Martin-Gropius-Bau, Südplatz (South Side)

I’ve never worked with such an elusive score, catch-me-if-you-can, but this is what it was. Matching the site, the situation, the hovering between appearing-disappearing. I and it – we cannot be held accountable.

What am I doing? I am measuring the immeasurable. Why? To make visible the invisible. To maintain and manifest that every place has more to it than we see.

 

 

[not a performance] in the morning hours was part of my postdoctoral research on intermateriality in the emergence of movement and choreography. Supported by CfAR – the Centre for Artistic Research of Uniarts Helsinki.

august 2018 – On the surface of time – Länsi-Mustasaari, Helsinki


  • © Venla Helenius

  • © Venla Helenius

  • © Venla Helenius

  • © Venla Helenius

  • © Venla Helenius

[17 – 19.08.2018]

I begin in the fold. Lying. Listening. Opening towards sounds. Sea, wind, birds, boats, airplanes, humans. On a small island of rock, cradled in the baltic sea. Here I begin. Distal end of my left arm moving in relationship to my sacrum, in relationship to the rock beneath, its temperature, form, density, texture, colour, markings. In relationship to the sky above, the wind, the slanted fold on both sides, the deep time, the age of these age-old rocks, the thousands of million years present here, where once was a mountain range high and tall. Here I begin …

 

 

on the surface of time was part of my postdoctoral research on intermateriality in the emergence of movement and choreography. Supported by CfAR – the Centre for Artistic Research of Uniarts Helsinki.

june 2017 – #CHARP – Research Pavilion Venice


  • © Vincent Roumagnac

  • © Vincent Roumagnac

  • © Vincent Roumagnac

  • © Vincent Roumagnac

  • © Vincent Roumagnac

  • © Vincent Roumagnac

  • © Vincent Roumagnac

[30 June 2017]

Performance and artistic exam in the framework of Simo Kellokumpu’s doctoral artistic research on Athmospheric Choreography. Collaborators: Outi Condit, Paula Kramer and Vincent Roumagnac.

Everything is already in movement, movement is everywhere. Particles moving, the building decaying, the wire outside – swaying. What happens to your body? Moving from and with the movement that already is.

Premiered in the Research Pavilion / Venice Biennale, 30.06.2017.

More info about the project and about the research pavilion.

november 2016 – A rock sent to Amaara Raheem (experiment)

  • © Paula Kramer
    © Paula Kramer

One white rock – hand-to-hand – now on its way to you. (2.11.2016)

A work in progress. Rock still en route (as of 2021). And otherwise: Our dance is a correspondance; an enquiry into multiple modes of transference and transformation, crossing distances, inquiring into possibilities of living.

Go well white rock!

 

september 2016 – Rock/Body Exeter

Working with — a granite from Cornwall (formerly from the Equator), a 300 year old Lucombe Oak, a Stone Oak in the further distance, liquidized China Clay, quarry man David A. Paton, choreographer Carolyn Deby and video artist Annette Arlander.

The wider setting – the wonderful and wonderous research network “Rock/Body“, initiated by Dr. João Flôrencio and Prof. Nigel Clark. Thinking together about deep time, substrata, human consumption patterns, copper, time, the South Pole, moving matter.

I feel grateful for such interdisciplinary research networks. I take my time to find my place in them but then am inevitably taken by the variety of knowledges present as well as the genrosity with which they were shared. It feels like this was just a beginning and I hope many lines of co-investigation continue. Thank you all!

Documentation materials on all three Rock/Body meetings and programme notes of the performative happenings.

All photographs © Rose Ferraby, all drawings © Sabine Kussmaul.

 

 

july 2015 – the sheep are black and white … @ DSP Conference Coventry


  • © Christian Kipp

  • © Christian Kipp

  • © Christian Kipp

  • © Christian Kipp

  • © Christian Kipp

the sheep are black and white                                               & they are not black and not white

Duet with Bettina Mainz, ca. 40 min

trials, correlations, incidences and independencies, practiced in performance in the company of things, objects and materials

Working with aspects of materiality and corporeality, extending from shared memories of our longstanding working relationship into the conditions of the present moment, in which every movement, interaction and intermingling takes place and is felt in its actuality.

 

How do we place, put and carry? How do we skip, creep and lean? How do we mend what has been broken? How do we keep the fragmented company?

We do not seek to create a common behavior through our being together, but to increase the awareness of being with differences of many kinds – atmospheres, identities, textures, the presence of an audience, the structure of the space. What we might call ‘outer circumstances’ but also including our inner being and all that we bring. The piece is composed in the process of performing, of movement material we bring, scores we have developed and questions we seek to answer in real time.

More about the Dance and Somatic Practices (DSP) Conference 2015

february 2012 – free:flight @ 100˚ Berlin


  • © Stefan Tietz

  • © Stefan Tietz

Phosphen

Etwas bewegt sich. Oder nicht? Ist etwas hörbar, verändert sich was? Jemand beginnt, sich zu bewegen, hält wieder inne. Jede Bewegung verändert den Klang. Licht taucht auf, es blendet, zeigt, verhüllt. Zwischen Ruhe und Ge­schwindigkeit, Stille und Klang, Dunkelheit und Licht verdichtet sich der Raum, entwickelt sich ein Gespräch. Dann ist alles wieder still. Hat man wirklich etwas gehört? Etwas gese­hen?

Miriam Akkermann (Querflöte/Live Elektronik), Paula Kramer (Tanz) und Christian Decker (Licht) schaffen einen Raum, der lebt und sich bewegt, auch in der Stille. Körper und Klang werden zu Interfaces erweitert. Eine Improvisation.

Sound, light and movement create shared and changing space – alive and moving, even in silence. The dancer’s body and the musician’s flute are both interfaces controlling the live electronics.

Collaboration with Miriam Akkerman (sound) and Christian Decker (light).

Alle Fotos © Stefan Tietz.

Link zum Bericht über Phosphen in der Festivalzeitschrift 100 Wort!

sept 2010 – free:flight & friends @ Festival MIAU, Caldes de Montbui (CAT)

A meeting in a public space, the Roman bath “la Portalera” – two musicians, a performer, a writer and the audience. Nobody knows what will happen. We make ourselves available, gestures unfold and disappear. Together we create a shared space, following the traces of the past and the conditions of the present. We face the unknown together, listening to each other, whilst searching for our individual trajectories.

More info about MIAU 2010

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june 2010 – free:flight @ Festival Inselglück, Berlin-Moabit


  • © Stefan Tietz

  • © Stefan Tietz

  • © Stefan Tietz

  • © Stefan Tietz

  • © Stefan Tietz

  • © Stefan Tietz

  • © Stefan Tietz

free:flight participates in inselglueck – a celebration of art on Berlin’s largest island: the neighbourhood Moabit. In more than 100 locations more than 300 events happened on a long and sunny weekend between 17th and 20th of June 2010. free-flight was located at an underpass and non-place between Turmstraße and Ottopark.

Find more on Inselglueck 2010

All images © Stefan Tietz.

may 2010 – free:flight @ Gallery TamTam 8, Berlin-Friedrichshain


  • © YUN-TING HUNG

  • © YUN-TING HUNG

  • © YUN-TING HUNG

  • © YUN-TING HUNG

  • © YUN-TING HUNG

  • © YUN-TING HUNG

  • © YUN-TING HUNG

  • © YUN-TING HUNG

Ensemble free:flight:

Flute/Live-Electronics Miriam Akkermann & Dance Paula Kramer

meets

Prisma Sonorum:

Cello Hui-Chun Lin & Live-Electronics Rico Graupner

A meeting in a gallery space – musicians, performer, audience. We search for a dialogue, a short-term encounter of time, space, body, sound – some things fall into place, whilst others falls apart. How can a shared space gradually unfold, be intuitively shaped and yet not arbitrary?

Find more information about this event

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sept 2009 – free:flight @ Ohrenstrand mobil, Berlin Hauptbahnhof


  • © Özge Tomruk

  • © Özge Tomruk
  • © Özge Tomruk
    © Özge Tomruk

Amidst random movements and sounds, we define a space. Travellers are crisscrossing their way through Berlin’s main train station. Following their steps we leave our marks, first attempting to define, then to traverse and eventually to dissolve.

Produced in collaboration with ohrenstrand mobil.

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july 2009 – Wandlungsphasen, Berlin-Schöneberg


  • © Mikki Bleidner

  • © Jaya Sundberg

  • © Jaya Sundberg

  • © Mikki Bleidner

choreography and performance: Bettina Mainz, Paula Kramer
artistic director: Mikki Bleidner
music: Peter Laros
produced by: CAP A PIE, Berlin
supported by: Municipal Office for Art + Culture Berlin-Schöneberg, Grün Berlin Park und Garten GmbH

Wandlungsphasen was developed for a nature reserve in Berlin, located on a former freight yard. First performed in the “Darwin Year” 2010, it is inspired by the evolutionary processes of adaption in nature and culture.

Steel becomes moss, the performers a part of nature. Between stillness and standstill, metamorphosis and variation, disappearance and infiltration, urgency and alienation – the dancers search for a path through the niches, melt with their surroundings, stand out as strangers and disappear into the ground.

april 2007 – Beneath the Warmth of a Smile, Alexandria & Cairo


  • © Aude Henry

choreography: Bettina Mainz

performance: Eva Balzer, Aude Henry, Paula Kramer

supported by: Goethe Institut Cairo, French Cultural Centre Alexandria, Weinmeisterhaus Berlin, Nora Amin

The smile – this precious universal gesture of mankind forms the starting point of our story. Three performers set out to find their way to deal with it: a Geisha in her attempt to protect the goodness of the smile, guided by traditional wisdom and resisting the attacs of emotional change; a poet in her desire to generate deep happiness and fails; a rebel, who struggles to find a position in and for society and in the tempest of life happening destroys the ability to smile.

The performers constantly risk losing their balance on the fine lines their actions draw. This piece offers a wide range of emotional states that never claim to be just personal.

The company out of the mu is based in Berlin. Our work is nurtured by the different backgrounds of the participants and is situated between dance, theatre and movement. Our main source is practicing awareness in movement. We work towards understanding rough and subtle energies, which we use to guide our expression and the embodiment of spirit.

Breiter Weg 18

12487 Berlin

Germany

mobile de +49 (0)176 23429456

paula [at] paulakramer.de