The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents
The Utopians
At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2024
A film by
Michael Kliën and En Dynamei
Theater, Dance, Documentary, Performance Art
This film will be available to watch online on the festival website May 16th onwards for 3 weeks.
About The Film
Country
Greece
Language
Non-Verbal
Running Time
95
minutes
Year of Release
2023
Is it possible to defy the narrow constraints of our personal identity, discover and develop new fields of relationships among humans, and achieve co-existence on equal, soul-democratic terms?
In 2023 choreographer Michael Kliën worked with his team at the Laboratory for Social Choreography (Kenan Institute at Ethis at Duke University) to create a uniquely immersive experience based on Robert Musil’s play 'The Utopians' for the inclusive performance ensemble En Dynamei. This is the stunning documentation of the premiere in the Athens Epidauris Festival, one of Europe’s most prestigious festivals. The work features an original soundscore by Volkmar Kliën.
The choreographic concept is inspired by Robert Musil’s play Die Schwärmer (The Utopians), tackling the possibility of logic and dream going hand in hand. In an empty industrial space, an environment consisting of an electroacoustic soundscape and pertinent lighting, a group of approximately fifty people with seemingly mixed abilities move around, personally marking their own trajectories. A deeply complex, collective logic generates a special condition, with the roughly two hundred spectators becoming part of the piece, aided by a group of “guides”. In this manner, from spectator, each participant becomes an active agent.
Camera: Christos Efthmiou Editing: Apostolis Koutsianikoulis Production: Thalia Griva; produced by Athens Epidauris Festival 2023
About The Artist(s)
Michael Kliën is a choreographer and artist whose work has been situated worldwide. Kliën’s artistic practice encompasses interdisciplinary thinking, critical writing, curatorial projects, and, centrally, choreographic works equally at home in the Performing and Fine Arts. He has been commissioned by leading institutions such as Ballett Frankfurt, Martha Graham Dance Company, New Museum, PS122, Volksoper Wien, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Athens Festival, Hayward Gallery, and ZKM. As Artistic Director/CEO of Daghdha (2003—2011, Ireland), Kliën developed a distinct movement aesthetic in correspondence with influential concepts of politically engaged choreography, performance, and dance. He received a Ph.D. from the Edinburgh College of Art in 2009. After living and working in Greece, he was appointed Professor at Duke University in 2017, inaugural director of the MFA in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis in 2018, and founding-director of the Laboratory for Social Choreography at the Kenan Institute of Ethics in 2020.
En Dynamei Ensemble is a theater group comprised of young artists with and without disabilities, operating since 2008 as a non-profit entity led by artistic director Eleni Dimopoulou. The purpose of the group is to support and facilitate its members to join society as equals, using art as a means of integration. Using the research of new methods of communication as their main tool, the group organizes and presents fully developed artistic proposals in the fields of visual and media arts, theater, dance, and music. En Dynamei Ensemble maintains a collaboration with renowned art professionals and leading institutions in Greece and abroad. The group’s performances have received rave reviews from audiences and critics alike, claiming a spot next to the most groundbreaking works of the Greek artistic production.