The young and wild: New voices in the dance scene

They are already delighting audiences in Frankfurt, Dresden, Berlin, London, Provence, Lyon and Rome. These exciting young choreographers, whose artistic works are characterized by immediacy and play with both the present and deeply rooted traditions, are currently shaking up the dance scene with their new perspectives. The powerful, sometimes unconventional pieces by these “young and wild” can now be seen for the first time as Austrian premieres at the Festspielhaus in the 2024/2025 season!

Yasmeen Godder sees her production Shout Aloud as a kind of dialogue in which different elements come together. Dance and music on the one hand, two artists – Godder created the evening together with pop star Dikla – on the other. The evening is conceived as a concert show: the music of the Egyptian-Iraqi pop-rock singer Dikla (she performs the Arabic-Hebrew tracks from her first album Ahava Musica, which translates as ‘Music of Love’) is on an equal footing with Yasmeen Godder's choreography.

The work is characterised not least by the reality of Yasmeen Godder's life and deals with the contradictory nature of life in her native Israel, as well as with empathy. Eight performers meet on stage and form connections with each other. It is about how they find a sense of strength and support together, a kind of female expression: unfiltered, generous and forceful.

It was only in October that cellist Raphaela Gromes wowed audiences with her programme Femmes, which brought together a variety of female composers that even well-informed music lovers had probably never heard of before. Jan Martens is also driven by a similar concern in VOICE NOISE, which can be seen at the Festspielhaus at the end of April and is also dedicated to the voice and ‘being heard’. The dialogue that emerges here is between dance and ‘forgotten’ female voices. How did this collective forgetting come about? These voices have been silenced as redundant or as unpleasant noise – ‘irritating noise’ – from ancient Greece to the present day.

With his pop sensibility, Jan Martens and six dancers recall female composers and singers who have worked in their own innovative and exciting artistic ways and seem almost forgotten today. Here, dance itself becomes a language to tell life stories.

Ireland's Oona Doherty celebrated her brilliant Festspielhaus debut in the 2022/2023 season. Helmut Ploebst expressed his enthusiasm in the Standard: "Oona Doherty's Navy Blue is dark and sad, but also poetic and imbued with dramatic beauty. The choreographer manages to incorporate the force of the social crisis and climate change into her piece in such a way that it does not tip over into the pathetic or pedagogical, despite all the strong feelings and sympathy."

The exceptional young artist is now returning to the Festspielhaus with her new work: Specky Clark once again includes a social dimension, but also plays with Doherty's personal life story - and draws on Irish mythology. Nine performers blur the line between reality and fiction to the folk music of the indie group Lankum.

Perhaps it is above all the courage to present their own artistic position so loudly on the big stage that unites the young choreographers who are guests at the Festspielhaus this season. Let's clear the stage for fresh perspectives that we are already eagerly awaiting!