Vienna's Impulstanz Festival explores collective choreography as metaphor for social cohesion

Impulstanz Festival: "What the Body Does Not Remember" — Source: Danny Willems

Acting together without losing step? The Impulstanz Festival turns dance into an experimental setup for community — and provides answers.

Since 1984, the Impulstanz Festival has been inviting audiences to Vienna in high summer. Founded by Karl Regensburger alongside the late dance legend Ismael Ivo (who passed away in 2021), it has become the most important dance meeting point in Europe. With over 100 performances, countless workshops, and parties famous throughout the city, Impulstanz attracts around 200,000 visitors again this year. Highlights include sensational new works and classics.

The Collective in Focus

A standout theme this year is the focus on the collective. Many choreographies explore humans among their peers, navigating between individual rhythm and that of the group. This reflects the increasingly fragile relationship between private and social life today, coupled with the oppressive realization that one cannot escape the polycrises alone.

The central question emerges: How should we collectively manage life that has fallen out of step, without being brought into line, integrated, or even "synchronized" from above? How to live together?

Opening Production: "My Fierce Ignorant Step"

In the acclaimed opening production by Greek choreographer Christos Papadopoulos, the deepest black is transformed into something utopian. Ten dancers stand on a dark stage. At the beginning, the ensemble only dares small, hesitant movements; gradually they become larger and more expansive, without taking space away from each other. It is the slow groping for a shared space of movement — without archaic fantasies of merging, but always with distances for individual movement.

What Papadopoulos creates, the philosopher Roland Barthes once called the utopia of idiorrhythmy: the communitization of distances. The dancers synchronize themselves, instead of being synchronized. In the end, they burst with strength and joy, sweeping the audience out of their seats during the final applause.

The Tao Dance Theater's "Numerical Series"

Can harmonious interplay succeed even in larger groups? Barthes saw the best conditions for idiorrhythmy in eight to ten people. Following this, the "Numerical Series" of the Chinese Tao Dance Theater can be described as a long-term study on the effects of group size.

Founded in 2008 in Beijing by choreographer Tao Ye and dancer and costume designer Duan Ni, the company — awarded the Silver Lion of the Venice Dance Biennale three years ago — is now world-famous. In the "Numerical Series," the number in the title corresponds to the number of dancers. Four pieces are shown: "13," "14," "16," and the premiere "18."

Scene from "18" — Source: Fan Xi

While in "16" the dancers, accompanied by driving bass, form geometric figures influenced by the Chinese dragon dance, "18" — with two more dancers — is an ode to the art of calligraphy with its flowing movements. The choreography, inspired by the centuries-old poem "Body, Shadow, and Spirit" by Tao Yuanming, seems like an unceasing sequence of brushstrokes, creating a filigree space between light and shadow.

Again and again, the ensemble with its flowing garments almost disappears into the darkness, before the spotlights return and let the minimalist stage shine in full beauty with delicate movements. Here too, the relationship between the collective and the individual is constantly balanced, with the pendulum swinging more towards the collective.

"What the Body Does Not Remember"

In the furious piece "What the Body Does Not Remember," plasterboards fly through the air as men and women become entangled in combat choreographies.