lee meir

safe&sound

Photo by Gretchen Blegen.

CHOREOGRAPHY & CONCEPT: Lee Méir / WITH: Cajsa Godée, Dessa Ganda, Eli Cohen, emeka ene, Marie-Lena Kaiser/ Cary Shiu, Willie Stark / VOICE COACH & MUSICAL DRAMATURGY: Alessio Castellacci / DRAMATURGY: Lidy Mouw / LIGHT: Catalina Fernández / COSTUME COLLABORATION: Saskia Schoenmaker, Ruby Willson / STAGE ADVICE: Valentina Primavera / PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT: Saskia Schoenmaker, Annett Hardegen

A Production by Lee Méir, co-produced by HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin. With support from PACT Zollverein.

Funded by the Capital Cultural Fund (Haupstadtkulturfonds).

The 2023 performances at Radialsystem are supported by the Berlin Senate for Cultural Affairs.

In “safe&sound”, six performers constitute an environment that continuously falls into and out of rhythm. Merging dance, gesture, voice, and objects, the performers immerse themselves in a percussive play of resisting and giving in to the wish to sync, as imagined cultures and echoes of familiar worlds appear and dissolve. Through an exploration of rhythm elements as loops, polyrhythm, linear and cyclical time, the choreography gives form to questions of belonging, freedom, and collective decision making, asserting rhythm as a social and political tool.

Méir continues to explore her research on the emergence and transformation of meaning through forms of repetition and modulation, the coexistence of chaos and order, the dialectics of randomness and control.

In previous works she used spoken language and its deconstruction, whereas in ‘safe&sound’ she departs from the idea of rhythm, which she perceives as more immediate to humans than language. Through an exploration of rhythm elements as loops, polyrhythm, linear and cyclical time, the choreography gives form to questions of belonging, freedom, and collective decision making, asserting rhythm as a social and political tool.

“safe&sound” was originally planned as a dance premiere on the stage of HAU3 in May 2021. Due to Covid-19 regulations, the work could not be presented live. Instead, Méir collaborated with film maker Noam Gorbat, who documented the stage piece “safe&sound”, as well as with film maker Dalia Castel for “working on ’safe&sound’’– a film documenting the process of work on the stage piece. Both these films premiere online on June 29th at 19:00 on HAU4 . The live premiere of the piece took place in April 2023 at Radialsystem Berlin.

""safe &sound" is a true ensemble piece, laying open the flat hierarchies that led to its creation - and at the same time a masterfully constructed space of possibilites where a group can emerge without having to dissolve individualites.In this time of isolation and bitter discussions about identity and power structures, this is as well a philosophical as an ethical statement."

(Frank Weigand, Journalist & Translator, THE ETHICS OF RHYTHM, tanznetz.de)

Photo by Dalia Kastel.