the thing I am - cie. toula limnaios

trailerreviews

pain and passion belong to our strongest emotions and comprise tremendous energies. they can be a driving force, as well as a trigger of tragedies and have always mirrored human desires and abysses. in »the thing i am« they appear as tableaux of deliquescent, yet pained and passionately swaying bodies in which blase strength and fragility. saturated with a sensibility that penetrates under the skin, they interlace the intensity of feelings into the scenes of touching vulnerability.

in contrary to a world, increasingly marked by superficial perception and dulling society, in which very few things barely move us instead of shaking us to our foundation, the new piece aspires to vehemence and truthfulness of feelings. sensibility and revolt, plight and devotion interweave into a hybrid panorama, whilst a crushed beauty slumbers behind the more tangible affliction. »the thing i am« being an anatomy of passion, in which unusual and hidden enthrall our senses.

»… a performance that truly gets under the skin!«
(tanznetz, 2013)

» toula limnaios succeeds in creating passionate dance sequences.« (der tagesspiegel, 2013)

guest-performance nuremberg

premiere 2 aug 2013

a cie. toula limnaios production supported by the cultural department of the city of berlin and the fund for performing arts, with federal means.

concept/choreography

toula limnaios

music

ralf r. ollertz

dance/creation

giacomo corvaia, marika gangemi, jozsef forro, samuel minguillon, hironori sugata, karolina wyrwal, inhee yu, ann-christin zimmermann

assistance

carlos osatinsky

lightdesign

jan langebartels

public relation

silke wiethe

space/costumes

antonia limnaios, toula limnaios

fotos

dieter hartwig, cyan

reviews

„the burning under the skin … last weekend the audience celebrated eight dancers, four men and four women, as well as the production team for the tremendously intense »daydreams in movement«. with the vehemence of the multilayered pictorial inventions and physical presence, in the piece »wut« (2012) the … ensemble had already created in dancing an energy field composed of pieces of the broken »i-selves« conjuring a »we« only as a fiction. »the thing i am« … further pursues this fundamental theme. the … performance contours and condenses the »i« isolated within the society with countless precisely calculated movement details, dance scenes and image sequences. toula limnaios seeks after life and consistently asks for the causes of unrelatedness, of failure. … »the thing i am« – »daydreams in movement« – a performance that truly gets under the skin.« (tanznetz /neues deutschland, karin schmidt-feister, 2013)

»the company, she (toula limnaios) leads together with the composer ralf r. ollertz, belongs to one of the most successful contemporary dance ensembles in germany … talking of »the thing i am«, one can look forward to an evening of enthralled senses.« (tagesspiegel, ticket, sandra luzina, 2013)

»limnaios made a name for herself with her existential ›core drilling‹. ›the thing i am‹ as well, pursues to a greater degree the philosophical question, what we, people, are made of. limnaios shows not only how strongly we are driven by emotions, but she also intimates a dual nature of people as sensual and spiritual beings.toula limnaios succeeds in creating passionate dance sequences to the atmospherically dense music of ralf r. ollerzt. in the end she holds up a distorting mirror to a ubiquitous and hedonistic ado. at the same time, the scene is greatly striking.« (der tagesspiegel, sandra luzina, 2013)

»new premiere, the secured performance venue, sold-out shows and tours – the dance company toula limnaios is highly successful, …
from the very beginning the superb dancers appear as purveyors of emotions, their duets take on increasing sharpness and their actions on radicalism. driven by the suggestive and complex music of the composer ralf r. ollertz, a couple slaves away desperately throwing and lifting (each other) in the cushioned corner, another one, with distorted faces and earphones, appears as a caricature of modern absence of communication. with her poetically expressive and eidetic language of movement, the greek choreographer toula limnaios stands completely in the tradition of the german dance theater. she is not interested in formalisms, her representations rather emphasize emotional universality and widely interpretable common comprehensibility. thereby, she has conquered the distinct, loyal, attentive and enthusiastic audience of all ages and beyond theater circles.« (berliner zeitung, elisabeth nehring, 2013)

»toula limnaios is a master of strong emotions.« (zitty, 2013)

»it‘s all about the bodies, the deepest feelings… it‘s all about us, about people in their strength and fragility. those are small scenes and immense big images, flowing and swift movements.« (berliner zeitung, 2013)

»the new piece of the dance company cie. toula limnaios truly penetrates under the skin.« (taz, mareen ledebur, 2013)