Moritz Ostruschnjak
Moritz Ostruschnjak

CRY WHY

In CRY WHY, two solos merge, intertwine, become a duet and drift apart again. With Miyuki Shimizu and Guido Badalamenti, Moritz Ostruschnjak sends two dancers onto the stage together with pianist Reinier van Houdt. When they meet, inline skates morph into limbs, arms into legs, Alvin Curran into Yoko Ono and pianos into rooms. A duet of people and objects that creates strange, bizarre beings, worlds and stories. Real images and narratives emerge, break off, take off again. The sentimental, romantic and melodramatic are paired with destruction, violence and rawness. CRY WHY plays with concreteness and abstraction, with originality and stereotype, coating Holiday on Ice with cyber punk.  

World premiere: 13. September 2024, schwere reiter Munich 

Choreography: Moritz Ostruschnjak 
Choreographic collaborator: Daniela Bendini 
Dance: Guido Badalamenti, Miyuki Shimizu
Music out of Alvin Curran's piano cycles "Inner Cities" and "Dead Beats"
Piano: Reinier van Houdt
Light design: Thomas Zamolo 
Dramatic adviser: Armin Kerber
Costume: Daniela Bendini, Moritz Ostruschnjak 
Production management: Susanne Ogan
PR: Simone Lutz

A production by Moritz Ostruschnjak in cooperation with schwere reiter, Tanztendenz München e.V. und Muffathalle Betriebs GmbH. Sponsored by the Cultural Department of the City of Munich, by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of NEUSTART KULTUR and by Bavarian State Association for Contemporary Dance (BLZT) with funds from the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts. Moritz Ostruschnjak is a member of Tanztendenz München e.V.

Moritz Ostruschnjak

Images

Moritz Ostruschnjak
Moritz Ostruschnjak
Moritz Ostruschnjak
Moritz Ostruschnjak
Moritz Ostruschnjak
Moritz Ostruschnjak
Moritz Ostruschnjak
Moritz Ostruschnjak

Videos

Moritz Ostruschnjak
Moritz Ostruschnjak

Texts

It is a furious pas de deux. Guido Badalamenti spins in circles with a piano at breakneck speed, each exploiting the centrifugal force of the other. The piano on its sleek transport wheels. The dancer with one foot in an inline skate trimmed for absolute agility. It is an absurd image that pushes dancers and spectators to their limits. (...) Through the pianos and the inline skates, Ostruschnjak creates a form of man-machine, an extension of the human body. But there is nothing monstrous about it, nothing science fiction-like, but a delicate, analog force like a counter-design to AI and high-tech. Not conservative, no one here wants to go back to the past, Ostruschnjak has always been aesthetically closer to the future, to pop, to the now.

Rita Argauer, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 13. September 2024

CRY WHY is extraordinary for several reasons. It tells a very intimate and intense love story between two people, who barely touch each other, and express their love through the unusual medium of a set of inanimate rollerblades. The movement quality of the dancers is characterised by a total lack of any sort of aggression, even pain is expressed with softness: Badalamenti’s movement with the curving fluidity of the skater; Shimizu’s, even when angular, full of gentleness. The music carries all the emotions and the pianist with his two moving pianos constantly define the space.

Jeannette Andersen, Seeing Dance, 19. September 2024

Shimizu's first solo, which sets the tone in terms of content, characteristically leads into a purely musical dialog of melancholy harmony. It is a touching and strangely intimate moment that follows a curious dance performance in a bizarre stylistic mix of kess-fippy show and ballet elements tamed into poses. You can well remember the sound at the very beginning of the performance, in which pretty much everything seems to be out of kilter. Nevertheless, the artistic balance between spatial and sound effects, between the three performers and their completely different movements, between the live music and the song-text recordings that burst in from offstage is always maintained.

Vesna Mlakar, tanznetz, 19. September 2024

CRY WHY

Moritz Ostruschnjak

In CRY WHY, two solos merge, intertwine, become a duet and drift apart again. With Miyuki Shimizu and Guido Badalamenti, Moritz Ostruschnjak sends two dancers onto the stage together with pianist Reinier van Houdt. When they meet, inline skates morph into limbs, arms into legs, Alvin Curran into Yoko Ono and pianos into rooms. A duet of people and objects that creates strange, bizarre beings, worlds and stories. Real images and narratives emerge, break off, take off again. The sentimental, romantic and melodramatic are paired with destruction, violence and rawness. CRY WHY plays with concreteness and abstraction, with originality and stereotype, coating Holiday on Ice with cyber punk.  

World premiere: 13. September 2024, schwere reiter Munich 

Choreography: Moritz Ostruschnjak 
Choreographic collaborator: Daniela Bendini 
Dance: Guido Badalamenti, Miyuki Shimizu
Music out of Alvin Curran's piano cycles "Inner Cities" and "Dead Beats"
Piano: Reinier van Houdt
Light design: Thomas Zamolo 
Dramatic adviser: Armin Kerber
Costume: Daniela Bendini, Moritz Ostruschnjak 
Production management: Susanne Ogan
PR: Simone Lutz

A production by Moritz Ostruschnjak in cooperation with schwere reiter, Tanztendenz München e.V. und Muffathalle Betriebs GmbH. Sponsored by the Cultural Department of the City of Munich, by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of NEUSTART KULTUR and by Bavarian State Association for Contemporary Dance (BLZT) with funds from the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts. Moritz Ostruschnjak is a member of Tanztendenz München e.V.

Images

Moritz Ostruschnjak
Moritz Ostruschnjak
Moritz Ostruschnjak
Moritz Ostruschnjak
Moritz Ostruschnjak
Moritz Ostruschnjak
Moritz Ostruschnjak
Moritz Ostruschnjak

Videos

Moritz Ostruschnjak
Moritz Ostruschnjak

Texts

It is a furious pas de deux. Guido Badalamenti spins in circles with a piano at breakneck speed, each exploiting the centrifugal force of the other. The piano on its sleek transport wheels. The dancer with one foot in an inline skate trimmed for absolute agility. It is an absurd image that pushes dancers and spectators to their limits. (...) Through the pianos and the inline skates, Ostruschnjak creates a form of man-machine, an extension of the human body. But there is nothing monstrous about it, nothing science fiction-like, but a delicate, analog force like a counter-design to AI and high-tech. Not conservative, no one here wants to go back to the past, Ostruschnjak has always been aesthetically closer to the future, to pop, to the now.

Rita Argauer, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 13. September 2024

CRY WHY is extraordinary for several reasons. It tells a very intimate and intense love story between two people, who barely touch each other, and express their love through the unusual medium of a set of inanimate rollerblades. The movement quality of the dancers is characterised by a total lack of any sort of aggression, even pain is expressed with softness: Badalamenti’s movement with the curving fluidity of the skater; Shimizu’s, even when angular, full of gentleness. The music carries all the emotions and the pianist with his two moving pianos constantly define the space.

Jeannette Andersen, Seeing Dance, 19. September 2024

Shimizu's first solo, which sets the tone in terms of content, characteristically leads into a purely musical dialog of melancholy harmony. It is a touching and strangely intimate moment that follows a curious dance performance in a bizarre stylistic mix of kess-fippy show and ballet elements tamed into poses. You can well remember the sound at the very beginning of the performance, in which pretty much everything seems to be out of kilter. Nevertheless, the artistic balance between spatial and sound effects, between the three performers and their completely different movements, between the live music and the song-text recordings that burst in from offstage is always maintained.

Vesna Mlakar, tanznetz, 19. September 2024