As part of the PERFORM! festival series, Yvonne Rainer’s dance piece Trio A is being performed several times daily in the Neue Nationalgalerie upper hall during Berlin Art Week. PERFORM! 2024 presents another highlight with the Galaxy Parade performance by Esben Weile Kjær in collaboration with the Berlin curator and artist collective TRAUMA. In addition, the site-specific concert performance Edge by experimental composer and saxophone virtuoso Giske marks the conclusion of this year’s Sound in the Garden series in and around the Neue Nationalgalerie Sculpture Garden.

Yvonne Rainer: TRIO A

Wednesday – Sunday, 11–15 September, at 3, 4, and 5 pm each day

The performance TRIO A (1966) by American artist, choreographer and dancer Yvonne Rainer (b. 1934) is one of the 20th century’s most influential choreographies. It consists of a four-and-a-half to five-minute sequence of discrete, never-repeated movements. Although the dance appears effortless, it is difficult to master because of its precise articulation of hands, arms, shoulders, feet and legs. The performance is Rainer’s best-known work, and revolutionised contemporary dance in the 1960s in parallel with similar developments occurring in Minimal Art.

Yvonne Rainer (b. 24 November 1934 in San Francisco) is an American choreographer, dancer and filmmaker. Her work is considered to have pioneered many trends in dance and performance art.

Muscle Memory: Conversations about dance with Sara Wookey and participating dancers

Friday, 13 September 2024, 6 pm

To enable performances of Trio A by other dancers, Yvonne Rainer developed a dissemination concept in collaboration with the New York non-profit organization Performa. For the Berlin Art Week performance, New York dancer Sara Wookey has acted as a “transmitter”, conveying the choreography in accordance with the agreed guidelines to a group of Berlin-based dancers: Esther Cowens, Emily Ranford, and Fred Gehrig.

Esben Weile Kjær: Galaxy Parade in collaboration with TRAUMA

Thursday, 12 September 2024, 6–8 pm

Galaxy Parade is a new performance developed by Danish artist and theatre-maker Esben Weile Kjær in collaboration with the Berlin collective TRAUMA at the invitation of the Neue Nationalgalerie. In the performance, conceived specifically for the terrace of the iconic Mies van der Rohe building, Kjær focuses on the parade as a performative creative form and a societal phenomenon. Parades and processions have consistently marked particularly important occasions and ideas in a wide variety of cultural contexts, from military pageantry to liberation struggles, from Carnival to funeral.

Esben Weile Kjær (b. 1992, Copenhagen) is a Danish artist and theatre director who in his works seeks to scrutinise his generation’s self-image. He always places particular emphasis on the extent to which technology and pop culture facilitate and influence our perception of reality.

TRAUMA

Troels Primdahl (choreography & creative production)
Madalina Stanescu (creative production)
Kyle Van Horn (creative production)
Leonardo Liccini (creative production)
EUROPA (composition)

Invited Clubs

Berlin Bears Cheerleading, BÄM! Drumline, Jam Skate Club, Fifi Fantôme Colour Guard, Spice Hoopers, Ribbon Gymnast Nathalie Köhn & Co., The Milky Way Group

Bendik Giske: Edge (Sound in the Garden 2024)

Saturday, 14 September 2024, admission: 6 pm

In his new concert performance specially conceived for the Neue Nationalgalerie, musician and composer Bendik Giske explores personal and societal borderline experiences. The title Edge refers on the one hand to the feelings associated with a borderline experience in the face of political and ecological threats and on the other to the connection between musician and instrument, between human and tool, which Giske’s music achieves through tapestries of sound and virtuoso circular breathing.

Bendik Giske (b. 1982 in Oslo) is a Norwegian jazz and improvisational musician (saxophone, composition).

Bridget Ferrill (sound direction / Live FX)
Theresa Baumgartner (lighting and stage design)
Andra Dumitrascu (costume design)

Attendance at all events is free of charge.

All performances and events take place in areas of the museum that are accessible without a ticket. In the case of limited capacity, admission will be granted on a first-come, first-served basis. Attendance does not require registration unless otherwise stated.

Curatorial Team

PERFORM! is curated by Klaus Biesenbach, director, Neue Nationalgalerie, together with Lisa Butti, curator, Neue Nationalgalerie, and Gregor Quack, Volkswagen Group fellow, Freunde der National Galerie e.V.

The PERFORM! Performance Festival

For the past two years, the Neue Nationalgalerie has organised the PERFORM! performance festival during Berlin Art Week. The 2023 festival showed historical works, such as Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (1964), and contemporary performances by Göksu Kunak, among others. In 2022 the seminal work Huddle (1961) by Simone Forti formed the festival’s historical centrepiece, accompanied by contemporary contributions by artists including Miles Greenberg.

Yvonne Rainer: Trio A has been made possible by Lise Stolt-Nielsen and Museum & Location.

Galaxy Parade by Esben Weile Kjær has been created in collaboration with TRAUMA at the invitation of the Neue Nationalgalerie.

Edge by Bendik Giske is part of the series SOUND IN THE GARDEN 2024, a programme made possible by Pace Gallery, Volkswagen Group Culture, and Freunde der Nationalgalerie e.V.

The programme takes place as part of Berlin Art Week.