The Nettle Dance – A collective activation
Gregory Stauffer – Opening ritual
Saturday, 6 July, 3:30 pm
Nettles are strong tasting plants, extremely healthy and always ready to sting us. Fortunately, a lot of them grow on the Narr farm! Together with choreographer and performer Gregory Stauffer, we will pick bunches of nettles, whip ourselves with them and dance the nettle dance. You can either watch the dance being activated or join in if you want to let the nettle get you moving. And to sweeten the pot, we will cook and eat our own nettles.
Schnecken gehören nicht zu meiner Kosmogonie
Valentine Paley – Dance
Saturday, 6 July: 4 pm, 5:30 pm
Valentine Paley is a dancer, performer and choreographer from Lausanne. She creates and interprets choreographic pieces for the stage, performances for outdoor spaces and performative installations in Switzerland and abroad. In 2023, Valentine Paley was invited to take part in the “se décentrer” research project at the University of Lausanne, where she is working intensively on a living creature that, as a vegetable gardener, creates many questions (and problems) for her: the slug. While many thinkers ask us to rethink our relationship with other people, living beings, plants and “things”, she finds that it is very complicated, if not impossible, for her to apply these concepts to her relationship with snails. With tenderness and humor, she tries to understand what is going on in this complex relationship, where disgust, fascination, appreciation and murderous desires intermingle. For the Arten Festival, she joyfully dives into the space of the vegetable tunnel as a dancer to see what new observations and discoveries she can make there!
Dawit Seto – Dance
Sunday, 7 July: 1 pm, 2:30 pm
In his work, the Ethiopian dancer and artist Dawit Seto interweaves the stories of migrants from East Africa with an energetic advocacy for climate justice. For his performance on the goat podium at the Arten Festival, he was inspired by the quality of movement of shepherds, their grace and authenticity. The ritual movements evoke a sense of tradition, history and community and create a captivating, deeply moving spectacle.
Code of Engangement
Hea Min Jung – Dance
Sunday, 7 July: 4 pm, 5:30 pm
Hea Min Jung is a Korean choreographer and dancer based in Berlin. In her work, Jung explores physical imperfections and human limitations, transforming her own autobiographical experiences into a source of creative possibilities and reinvention. At Arten Festival, Hea Min Jung will show material from her production “Code of Engagement”, venturing between the sheep to explore the intricacies of connection, interaction and communication. Inspired by Korean shamanic rites, the choreography serves as a platform to explore connection not only with the audience and the sheep, but also with something beyond our immediate perception.