That’s the way it has to be: dense, daring and with the promise of meeting each other often. And that’s how it is, the program of the double festival of the independent scene “Freischwimmen meets Rodeo”. The Theater Hoch X, which was awarded the Federal Theater Prize in 2021, has developed a stage celebration for nine days that is confidently planted at the start of the season. The house invited 15 productions from October 7th to 15th and distributed them over various venues. It’s a bunch of different positions and ideas about the stage. And it’s a chance to make the independent scene more visible again after the past two tough years.
“The pandemic has made it clear once again how precarious the situation is for all those who work in the independent performing arts,” write the festival directors Ute Gröbel and Antonia Beermann in the wonderfully successful program booklet. “If nothing changes, we can also forget the dream of a more inclusive, diverse scene.” That sounds somewhat pessimistic. Nevertheless, the two directors of Hoch X thought big at the festival. It starts with the fact that they set up a festival center in the creative district on Dachauer Strasse as a meeting place for artists and the public. For this purpose, the “Freckgut” storage initiative is to design Hall 6, and next door, Studio 1 is to become a quiet retreat. The neighboring Schwere Reiter, Mucca, Pathos Theater and Import Export are venues. In addition, there is the Hoch X on Entenbachstraße, the Einstein Kulturzentrum on Einsteinstraße and public places.
The two Munich artists Rosalie Wanka and Kassandra Wedel perform with “Visual Vibrations” in public space.
(Photo: Paola Evelina)
The two formats “Freischwimmen” and “Rodeo” are now linked. Both take place every two years. While “Rodeo” is a festival of Munich’s independent scene, eight German-speaking independent theaters have joined forces for “Freischwimmen”. They support dedicated works by young artists. What will now be seen in Munich is an inside and outside show.
The first category, which includes the seven productions for “Rodeo”, includes Kolja Huneck from Munich and his performance CM_30. Huneck, born in 1994, worked on his 50-minute solo for two years, beginning while he was studying circus in Rotterdam. The result was a combination of light, color and juggling (Mucca, October 7th and 8th). The dance and performance duo Rosalie Wanka and Kassandra Wedel have also been invited from the Munich scene with “Visual Vibrations”. They perform with it at various public places (October 7th, 9th, 10th). The starting point of her work is to deal with words that have gained importance in the media during the pandemic and are polarizing in the process.
Nine “Freischwimmen” productions are part of the festival. Among others, S. Rudat and the (i)dentityteam are coming to Hoch X (October 7th and 8th). “Shame you what!?” is the name of their performance, which combines concert and failure into a performance under the motto: courageous, but not necessarily advantageous.
The cross-feminist performance collective Chicks* has also been invited with “Deep Dancing” at Schwere Reiter (October 7-9). An interactive, close evening. The audience, which is called upon to dance in pairs in order to shake the old, patriarchal balance of power, can’t do it either. Chicks* definitely rely on encounters – how fitting in this ambitious double meeting of the independent scene.
Freischwimmen meets Rodeo, Fri. 7th to Sat. 15th Oct., various locations, information: www.festival.theater-hochx.de