PERFORM PERFORMING
A trilogy on the sense and senselessness of looking at dance as work.

A production by Jochen Roller in coproduction with Kampnagel Hamburg, PODEWIL Berlin, IndustrieKultur Saar und FFT Düsseldorf.
Supported by mime centrum Berlin.
Funded by the Art Council of the City of Hamburg.

PERFORM PERFORMING has played: Schaubühne Lindenfels in Leipzig, VOXXX Chemnitz 2003 + 2005, Schauspielhaus Hamburg, LOT Braunschweig, Schicht-Wechsel-Festival Saarbrücken 2003, Tanztage Basel 2003, Tanzquartier Wien, Tanzplattform 2004 in Düsseldorf, Tanz Bremen 2004, Mousonturm Frankfurt/Main, La Villette Paris, Europäische Tanzwerkstatt München, IndustrieKultur Saar 2004, Halles de Schaerbeek Brüssel, STUK Leuven, Festival Solo Soli Kortrijk, Tanzspeicher Würzburg, Nationaltheater Weimar, Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, FFT Düsseldorf, Festival "Les Antipodes" im Théatre de l'Instant Brest, Scène nationale de Petit-Quevilly/Rouen, Teatr Naradowy Warschau, Festival "auawirleben" Bern, Rote Fabrik Zürich, Festival "Theater in Bewegung" im Theaterhaus Jena, DEPOT/Staatstheater Stuttgart, Festival Politik im Freien Theater 2005 Berlin, Tanz International 2005 Hannover, Fondation Cartier Paris, BID-Platform Festival/Monnot Theater Beirut, Culture Commune/Scène nationale du Bassin Minier du Pas-de-Calais/Lens, Tanzkongress Deutschland Berlin, Recontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis/Centre National de la Danse Paris, Centrul National al Dansului Bucuresti CNDB, Internationale Tanztage Oldenburg, Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay Singapur, Break 2.4 / Plesni Teater Ljubljana.

Part 1: NO MONEY, NO LOVE
Premiere: 27.11.2003, PODEWIL Berlin
"Oh, baby, what a place to be, in service of the bourgeoisie." (Iggy Pop)

Part 2: ART GIGOLO
Premiere: 30.4.2003, Kampnagel Hamburg
"Oh, God, welfare! I need welfare. I deserve it." (Andy Warhol)

Part 3: THAT‘S THE WAY I LIKE IT
Premiere: 23.9.2004, Bergwerk Göttelborn / Saarbrücken
"Photographs are small. They reproduce well. I enlarge better." (Gertrude Stein)


Concept / Choreography / Performance: Jochen Roller
Artistic collaboration part 1: Angela Guerreiro
Artistic collaboration part 2: Florian Feigl
Artistic collaboration part 3: Dorothea Grießbach
Produktionsleitung: Ans Brockfeld

Part 1: NO MONEY, NO LOVE
In "perform performing," dancer Jochen Roller explores the conditions under which he practices his profession. In the work's first part, "NO MONEY, NO LOVE" , Roller, assuming that work means earning a salary, calculates how much he earns with his work and what dance actually costs. In light of insufficient state funding, he acknowledges that one must do several other professions in order to continue working as a dancer. In "NO MONEY, NO LOVE," he demonstrates to the audience how one can still rehearse and produce a dance performance during work hours. In each job - whether as an H & M salesman, a call-center agent at the German railroad, or an escort-service employee - Roller draws analogies to his actual profession of dancer. From these jobs' work conditions comes "NO MONEY, NO LOVE," a performance in which a dancer performs other work to earn money.

Part 2: ART GIGOLO
In the second part of the trilogy, "ART GIGOLO" , Roller questions the relevance of dance as art and the concept of state cultural funding. What tax monies are actually danced away? Why must art be subsidized by the state? And how does a dancer justify what he does? In search of answers to the question of the value of his art, Roller focuses in "ART GIGOLO" on the position he takes in the labour market with his profession. He wants to know whether his work is even worth it: Using the methods of a managing consultant, he explores the economical and societal relevance of his art production. Here, he comes to the conclusion that art is never worth it when one begins to calculate. So he offers himself to his audience as an ART GIGOLO who satisfies his need for art arising from pure love.

Part 3: THAT'S THE WAY I LIKE IT
In the third part of the trilogy, "THAT'S THE WAY I LIKE IT", Roller attempts to develop a vision for the future. How does one behave as an artist when the societal demand for art seems to have declined and state cultural funding has been cut so far that it no longer exists? Unable to answer this existential question as an artist whose work foundation is retracted, he interrogates himself in the form of five German taxpayers who share his name and subsidize the work of dancer Jochen Roller with their work. In the dialogues with these doppelgänger, he develops different models of a cultural-political view of the future marked by the work-related and sociological realities in which each Jochen Roller lives. Jochen Roller asks Jochen Roller about the value of art, what role art plays in the life of Jochen Roller and what Jochen Roller would like to see onstage. In this way, he hopes to find out what other Jochen Rollers do for society in his name and investigates the function of identity-creating work, in order to finally be able to answer the question of whether looking at dance as work is senseful - or senseless.