PANORAMA SUR
Third international platform for performing arts in Buenos Aires
July 16 - August 10, 2012
Buenos Aires, Argentinia
After two successful years, Panorama Sur has established itself as an international working platform for the performing arts in Buenos Aires. Involving innovative artistic practices and their social anchorage, this intensive four-week program for young theater-makers and authors makes an important contribution toward the networking of cultural scenes of Latin America. Thanks to an Excellence Initiative from the Goethe-Institut, the radius of Panorama Sur will expand in its third year to include a program of grants for authors from eight Latin American countries.
Via direct personal sharing with the cultural scene onsite, the participants in Alejandro Tantanian’s and Cynthia Edul’s playwright seminar can spend four weeks working on planned projects, developing new ideas and cultivating long-term contacts with colleagues. Afterwards, the program of grants enables its participants to take their new skills and experiences home, where they serve as multipliers to enrich the cultural scene in their home countries.
Panorama Sur was initiated by the Siemens Foundation and THE – Asociación para el Teatro Latinoamericano in 2010 and will be realized in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut and a strong network of local and regional partners in 2012: Apart from the author’s seminar, the program comprises international workshops, performances from the US, Europe and Brazil, and the world premiere of an Argentinean production. The accompanying series of lectures will look at reality “beyond representation”.
„H3“ by Bruno Beltrão
The program of public performances kicks off in the Teatro San Martín with the play "H3" by Brazil's Bruno Beltrão and his Grupo de Rua that is more than just a dance company: Beltrão, coming from the world of street dance, but also trained in contemporary dance and philosophy, considers it a tool of social emancipation as well. On a roughly sketched playing field nine men systematically deconstruct and shift the codes and languages of breakdance to a contemporary choreography and a fascinating physical event, which deftly questions the way we perceive space.
The search for new forms of collaboration and contexts for presentation characterizes the work of Meg Stuart and her group Damaged Goods. As one of the most renowned choreographers she moves between the boundaries of genres. With "sand table" she is bringing a live installation to Buenos Aires, a collaborative project with visual artist Magali Desbazeille. "sand table" turns many of our perspectives upside down: from above, spectators view bodies projected onto a glass table covered with sand. The hands of the two performers move the sand and thus mutate the bodies into all kinds of shapes or situations – an intense moment of theatre that leaves no one untouched.
A very special, intimate spatial experience offers "Showcase" by New York dramatist Richard Maxwell and his group New York City Players, which is performed in a hotel room. It is the story of a businessman preparing to attend a conference. Alone, yet not alone he uses the time spent in his room to reconcile his thoughts in the room with what exists outside of it. Maxwell's minimalistic theater qualifies him as a visionary and innovator in New York's Off-Broadway scene.
Las Multitudes (Photo: Sebastián Arpesella)
Argentinean author, film maker and director Federico León confronts the audience with some 120 actors of all ages at the premiere of his play "Las Multitudes". The experimental spatial arrangement builds on the force of the diverse, anonymous mass of humanity which faces the audience as if in a mirror: two groups of people who in the course of the play find common ground.
International workshops with Christopher Roman, Varinia Canto Vila, Richard Maxwell and Jim Fletcher introduce offer new ways of looking at performing arts and their creation, and provide a fresh approach towards developing improvisational and compositional skills. Strategies, based on the ideas that William Forsythe, Meg Stuart, Bruno Beltrão and Richard Maxwell developed and used to create their work, serve as practical tools and as a basis for further research and work.
Two of the artists der Künstler will then travel to Chile, where the Siemens Stiftung and the Goethe-Institut are setting up another workspace entitled “Movimiento Sur” together with the Chilean Ministry of Culture, based on the model of a "Winter Academy" for Latin American. It is likewise planned to be held annually and will be followed by another academy in Colombia in 2013. Through these activities the Siemens Stiftung hopes to help create a lively network of the diverse theater scenes in Latin America, which shatters the traditionally one-track fixation on Europe and directs attention to the continent's own highly creative scene.
Artists
Bruno Beltrão / Grupo de Rua (BR), Beatriz Catani (AR), Cynthia Edul (AR), Jim Fletcher (US), Federico León (AR), Manuela Infante (CL), Richard Maxwell / New York City Players (US), Christopher Roman (DE), Meg Stuart & Magali Desbazeille (US/BE/FR), Alejandro Tantanian (AR), Varinia Canto Vila (BE/CL)
Program
Cynthia Edul, Joachim Gerstmeier, Stefan Hüsgen, Alejandro Tantanian
Cooperating Partners
THE – Asociación para el Teatro Latinoamericano, Siemens Stiftung and Goethe-Institut
In collaboration with
Malba (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires) – Fundación Costantini, IUNA – Departamento de Artes del Movimiento, Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires, INAE/Dirección Nacional de Cultura Uruguay, MEC, Espacio Callejón, TEMPO Festival, Funceb, Centro Cultural de España en Buenos Aires (CCEBA) and Siemens Fundación Argentina, supported by Cámara de Industria y Comercio Argentino-Alemana and Hotel 725 Continental
