Dancer with Cancer
#tumorhumor #chemochino #influcancer
Hendrik Quast turns the tabooing of illness in meritocracies into the grotesque in order to undermine common illness narratives. He develops a grotesque alter ego on the basis of interviews and pantomime workshops with cancer patients from Stuttgart. The alter ego elevates the ‘culture of concern’ about cancer with pantomime training to create a health fanatic cancer cult. In the framework of the festival "Die irritierte Stadt" (‘City of Irritation’, he offered digital and analog pantomime courses on Instagram-Live @dancerwithcancer and at the VHS Stuttgart, where he addressed a cancer-afflicted community as well as healthy audience members who could train for their future cancer illness. Beyond dramatic or dramatising narratives about the survival of cancer patients, new narrative forms emerge from his performance and on Instagram that mobilise the boundary between illness and health. With his alter ego, he reshapes the controllable body of mime during the performance into a new, uncontrolled, grotesque comic form. His performance is based on familiar experiential dramaturgies of sports classes and tutorials to establish them as narrative form across the boundaries of illness and health.
Idea, concept, performance, text, scenery Hendrik Quast
Dramaturgical advice Marcus Dross
Sound Les Trucs
Costumes, make-up Christina Neuss
Pantomime training Wayne Götz
Artistic collaboration, production Lisa Gehring
Co-production Akademie Schloss Solitude, Theater Rampe, Musik der Jahrhunderte, Freie Tanz- und Theaterszene Stuttgart, PZ Produktionszentrum Tanz, VHS Stuttgart.
Präsentiert im Rahmen von „Die Irritierte Stadt. Fest der Künste“, Stuttgart
Funded by Kulturamt der Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart im Rahmen von TANZPAKT Stuttgart, Beauftrage der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa
Premiere Festival „Die Irritierte Stadt“ Stuttgart 21.7.2020