Lucinda Childs & Dance On Ensemble
Choreography & Performance: Lucinda Childs
Performance: Miki Orihara
Set, Video & Music: Hans Peter Kuhn
Lights: Martin Beeretz, Hans Peter Kuhn
Costumes: werkstattkollektiv
Technical Direction: Martin Beeretz
Sound: Mattef Kuhlmey
Production: DANCE ON / Bureau Ritter. In cooperation with Radialsystem, Berlin.
Coproduction: CCNR Rillieux-la-pape – Yuval Pick; Le Phare – Centre chorégraphique national du Havre Normandie / direction Fouad Boussouf, as part of the Accueil-Studio Programme; Fonds Transfabrik – German-French fund for the performing arts.
Supported by Hauptstadtkulturfonds.
With the kind support of Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon.
With the support of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels.
Premiere: 24 July 2025, Radialsystem Berlin
STEIN is the second production in the Dance On series Encounters, where choreographers perform on stage, engaging in a physical encounter with a dancer of the Ensemble who takes on the role of co-author. This time, the choreographer Lucinda Childs and our dancer Miki Orihara will perform together, reflecting on a text by Gertrude Stein.
Lucinda Childs’ works explore the mutability of space and the manipulation of time through pattern recognition, rhythmic accuracy, and surprising changes in physical material. After leaving the Judson Dance Theater, she embraced a new approach, moving away from its principles of spoken word, found objects and pedestrian actions to incorporate text, music, gesture, and dance. In STEIN, Childs reflects on her earlier works through the lens of decades of experience.
Alongside her performs Miki Orihara, who is best known for her work as a principal dancer in the Martha Graham Dance Company, for which she earned a Bessie Award in 2010. Her dynamic career, spanning performance works with Robert Wilson, award-winning Broadway productions and ongoing work with numerous choreographers, has shaped her into a performer of remarkable power and sensitivity.
Hans Peter Kuhn and Lucinda Childs share a long history of collaboration in productions by Robert Wilson and are reuniting for STEIN after quite some time. For this world premiere, Kuhn has created a stage set featuring video projections of water, evoking the fluid, transformative, and yet constant nature of water, accompanied by an intense sound composition of noises and a piano improvisation. The choice of text by Gertrude Stein was driven by the artists’ shared fascination with the author and her distinctive language.
The Encounters series challenges traditional roles of choreographer and dancer by positioning the dancer as a co-author, exploring shared creative processes and the relationship between choreography and interpretation.
At the beginning of the evening, the Dance On Ensemble will present three works of Lucinda Childs from the 1970’s: Untitled Trio, Radial Courses, Interior Drama. These dances showcase a formative and important period of her creative development. A period in which her choreographic signature became radically evident.
Choreography: Lucinda Childs
Staging: Ty Boomershine
Performance: Ty Boomershine, Javier Arozena, Alba Barral Fernández, Emma Lewis, Gesine Moog, Lia Witjes Poole
Light: Martin Beeretz
Sound: Mattef Kuhlmey
Costumes: Alexandra Sebbag
A production by DANCE ON / Bureau Ritter in co-production with STUK. House for
Dance, Image and Sound / Münchner Kammerspiele.
Funded by the Doppelpass Fund of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation). The restaging is funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion. Part of DanceMap, funded by Horizon Europe, the European Union’s funding programme for research and innovation.