Summary:

Drawing on the eerie past of the site’s animal anatomical research, two ghostly beings dance across parallel spaces, whilst discovering their human bodies and physical environment. Their movement journey imparts an energetic transmission of intimacy, curiosity and possibility via choreographic forces of glitch and fluidity. The dancers discover the tactile nature of their flesh and architectural surroundings for the first time. In Paar, dance becomes a language through which the story is told, and the scenography shifts and materializes into expansive imaginings.

The audience is invited to join the dancers in their discovery of the liminal space between virtual and physical worlds. The immersive experience reveals a transformation of past to present; avatar to human; material to immaterial existence.

Director Bio:

Carly Lave (she/ they) is a choreographer and director based in Berlin, Germany.

Carly holds a BA from Stanford University. She was an artist-in-residence with the Goethe Institute (2020-2021) as the choreographer and artistic director of the Golem-Labor, a workshop series researching motion capture technology with dance in cities internationally. Carly was a 2018-2019 US Fulbright Artist to Germany (affiliated with gamelab.berlin at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and in residency with Tanzfabrik Berlin) exploring dance styles with new immersive technologies. In 2019, she choreographed and directed a pioneering performance work, Golem, which used motion-capture technology and Virtual Reality to explore movement between the physical and virtual worlds. Golem premiered at Uferstudios Berlin July 2019.

Carly has been commissioned by the Maxim Gorki Theater, presented work at Mutek San Francisco, the Republica Digital Technology conference, and given lectures on dance with technology at Stanford University, Lüneberg University, Cottbus Technical University and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin.

She previously worked in San Francisco, California, where her work appeared in theatres including ODC San Francisco, the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, Joe Goode Annex, and through residencies with the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance & Mark Foehringer Dance Project. She received her early training from San Francisco Conservatory of Dance under Summer Lee Rhatigan, Alex Ketley, Robert Moses, Bobbi Jene Smith, Diane Frank and Muriel Maffre among others.