ElseWhere Rhapsody - Impulse Festival 2025

Two people stand out as dark silhouettes against the light orange background. One person stands in the foreground holding a microphone, while the other person can be seen in the background with an outstretched arm.

Two people are in a dark room with intense red lighting. One person is kneeling on the floor, only their back is visible. They are wearing a dark suit. The other person is on all fours and wearing light-colored clothing. Several bright lights can be seen in the background, arranged in an arc. A few small objects are scattered on the floor.

Four people in an industrial room, with tiles and heating. One person kneels on the floor and holds another person, who is leaning backwards, by the nipples. This person is wearing a gray undershirt, underneath he has a tattoo on his chest. A third person holds a bunch of grapes over the mouth of the person leaning backwards. A fourth person stands next to them and holds a piece of bread or pastry.

Jen Rosenblit

ElseWhere Rhapsody

Performance

“Jen Rosenblit takes the audience along on an eclectic voyage investigating queer desire. Poetry, song, eroticism, line dancing and utopia combine to produce a collage located somewhere in between tender intimacy and spectacular sensory overload.” Maria Ladopoulos, tanzschreiber.de, 2.3.2024

“Elsewhere is a place that is not here, it by definition is somewhere else.” In a vague Western landscape in ‘ElseWhere Rhapsody’, Jen Rosenblit looks at the eroticism of wanting, the familiarity of unavailability and the repetition that helps us to forget. For this she brings four outstanding protagonists of the European performance scene together on stage and takes us along a poetic text in four loose chapters, through crumbling landscapes and flawed formations. Between the polyphonic ballads of a live band, the performers’ line dancing interventions and an auction with multiple meanings, in ‘ElseWhere Rhapsody’ Jen Rosenblit, Nic Lloyd, Gærald Kurdian and Li Tavor orbit issues of consent and boundaries.

Jen Rosenblit is a Bessie Award winner who lives and works between New York and Berlin and brings together bodies, architectures and ideas around the disaffections of desire and autonomy. ‘ElseWhere Rhapsody’ had its world premiere at Tanzfabrik Berlin, has toured across Europe and will be seen for the first time in NRW at the Impulse Festival.

Dates

5 July, 20:30 – currently sold out

6 July, 19:00

Tickets

Regular price: 16 €
Reduced price: 11 €
Supporters' price: 25 €
Minimum price: 6 €

→ Ticket shop

Venue

FFT Düsseldorf

Duration

80 minutes

Discussion

06.07. Aftertalk in English. Moderatey by Joshua Wicke, dramaturge Impulse Festival.

Language

English

Accessibility

Information

Comprehension is not provided throughout. There is a text booklet at the end of the play with German and English play text.

Credits

Concept, Text, Performance: Jen Rosenblit
Sound Design, Performance: Gærald Kurdian
Song Composition, Performance: Li Tavor
Assistant, Guest Performance: Nic Lloyd
Lighting Design: Joseph Wegmann
Technical Director, Performance Technician: Thibault Villard
Research Assistants: Alex Piasente, Chiara Pagano
Producer: Diana Paiva / High Expectations

A production by Jen Rosenblit in co-production with Tanzfabrik Berlin, Tanzquartier Wien, Arsenic – Centre d'art scénique contemporain, Lausanne, Théâtre Saint-Gervais, Genf, La Bellone, Brüssel, kunstencentrum BUDA, Kortrijk. Supported by La Becque Artist Residency.

Biographies

Gérald Arev Kurdian (she/they), born in Paris in 1980; musician, performer, teacher, studied fine arts at ENSAPC before embarking on the contemporary dance programme Ex.e.r.ce 07 under the direction of Mathilde Monnier and Xavier Le Roy. Their idiosyncratic concerts, which combine electronic music, performance art and documentary practices, have since been regularly presented in Europe and abroad (Usine C, Montréal; Crossing the Line, New York; Steirischer Herbst, Graz; Centre Pompidou, Metz; Fondation Cartier, etc). In 2018, they created HOT BODIES OF THE FUTURE!, a series of musical and performative research projects (performances, queer-feminist choral workshops, inclusive parties and more) around sexual revolutions. They are currently one of the artistic researchers of the ESACM research cooperative and presented their new piece X ! (un opéra fantastique) in 2022 as part of the French Festival d'Automne à Paris. They are currently touring under the name Hot Bodies. In 2025, they will release their first EP and are preparing a new extended concert series, The Transition Pieces (Glitches, Fairies and Warrior Goddesses).

Nic Lloyd (1977) has been based in Austria for ten years. He is a performer, DJ/brioleur. He has an MA in Performance & Creative Research (Roehampton) and a BA in Philosophy from Middlesex University. He grew up between Germany, London and New Zealand as the child of an opera conductor and a prima ballerina. Nic Lloyd made his debut as a performer in 2005, before which he sat behind a drum kit for 14 years and worked repeatedly with Simone Aughterlony (Zurich). He has worked with numerous directors, choreographers and collectives in Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, Austria and elsewhere, performing on stage, on screen, on the street, in caves, on mountain tops and wherever needed.
‘Writes regularly. Teaches very occasionally. Does sound design when asked. Smarter than he looks. Masculine by disqualification, beautiful by choice. Almost over what happened in 2019. Stood on stage for the first time in the womb when his pregnant mother was accompanied by Nureyev; this is still the highlight of his CV. Needs money and will settle for your approval.’ (Nic Lloyd)

Jen Rosenblit (1983) makes performances based in Berlin after many years in New York City, surrounding architectures, bodies, text, and ideas concerned with problems that arise inside of agendas for togetherness. Rosenblit’s works lean toward the uncanny, locating ways of being together amidst (un)familiar and impossible contradictions. Desire and sexuality linger as reoccurring points of departure without demanding a singular aesthetic or representation. Rosenblit is a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of a 2014 New York Dance and Performance 'Bessie' Award, a 2023 La Becque (Vevey, CH) artist in residence and has collaborated with artists including Simone Aughterlony, Miguel Gutierrez, A.K.Burns and Philipp Gehmacher.

Li Tavor, born 1983 in Basel, Switzerland, is a musician, composer, performer, sound artist and architect based in Zurich and Basel. In recent years, Tavor has been a guest lecturer in the MFA programme at Bard College, New York, a researcher/teacher at the Department of Architecture at ETH Zurich, a visiting professor at RMIT Melbourne and a lecturer for the BA in Fine Arts at ZHdK Zurich. In the past, Tavor has shown her work at the Swiss Institute New York, Kunsthalle Basel, Amore Basel, Istituto Svizzero Milano, NGV Melbourne, HOW Art Museum Shanghai, São Paulo Architecture Biennial 2019, Sharjah Architecture Triennial. Together with Alessandro Bosshard, Matthew van der Ploeg and Ani Vihervaara, they were selected by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia to curate the Swiss Pavilion at the 16th International Architecture Biennale in Venice, where their exhibition ‘Svizzera 240: House Tour’ was awarded the Golden Lion for the best national participation.

Details on Accessibility

Information about the venue

Spatial access

Event takes place at FFT Düsseldorf.

The FFT is located on the first floor of KAP1. You can reach the first floor by lift - the floor is marked in Braille and tactile on the buttons. The lift only stops on the first floor during regular opening hours (starting one hour before each event).

The doors in the FFT are not self opening and are sometimes very difficult to open. If you need assistance getting around the building, please speak to us on site or contact us in advance.

Once you are on the 1st floor, the foyer and the event rooms are accessible without any steps. Stage 1 has an additional gallery that can only be reached via staircase from the foyer.

Distance

Paid car park approx. 170 metres (UFA Palast).

Distance to ‘Düsseldorf Mainstation’ approx. 150 metres. Depending on the means of transport and platform, the station has a lift and escalator. Current information on operations at bahnhof.de.

Audience situation/ Wheelchair space

There is no seating, you can move around freely in the audience space. If you have specific seating requirements, please let us know when you buy your ticket - we can then take this into account on site.

Please let us know, when buying your ticket, if you are using a wheelchair. This helps us to adjust seating to meet your requirements as well as restrictictions (such as fire safety) by the venue.

Informationen for hearing impaired people

Acoustic amplification via induction for visitors with hearing aids

The stages of the FFT Düsseldorf are equipped with an inductive hearing system, which is used as standard for all productions.
Reception extends up to row 3, so please choose your seat accordingly. Unfortunately, the inductive hearing system cannot be used in the tier. Feel free to indicate your seating requirements when purchasing your ticket.

In order to use the inductive hearing system, the hearing aid must be switched to T or M/T. Further information on how this works in detail can be obtained from your hearing aid acoustician, as these settings vary depending on the indicidual device; the T coil must be activated.

As soon as the hearing aid is set to ‘induction loop’ (i.e. T or M/T), it will receive the magnetic field and the audio signal will be transmitted to the hearing aid wearer.

Informationen on Comprehension and Perception

Language

English spoken language. Full comprehension is not expected throughout the whole piece. There is a text booklet available at the end of the play, with the text in German and English.

Content Notes und sensory stimuli

We have not yet put together any specific information about the content of this event. Please contact us if you are missing any relevant information to help you plan your visit.

Informationen on the general organisation

Assistance on site/pick-up service

If you require a pick-up service from the nearest public transport stop or car park, please contact us before your visit at the festival.

Tickets

For festival tickets, you and your companion can choose to pay a minimum price of €6 per ticket. Please select which price you can and wish to pay.

Contact

We would like to cater for individual requirements for a festival visit (seating, early boarding, pick-up from public transport, etc.) as best we can.

As a festival team, we have irregular working hours, so our availability is not guaranteed at fixed office hours:

E-Mail: barrierefreiheit@impulsefestival.de
WhatsApp-Messenger: +49 (0) 1575 5804 172
Telefon: +49 (0) 202 698 27 280 (You’ll reach an answering machine to arrange a return call. Please leave your name, telephone number and your request.)

Content Notes

Notes on potentially sensitive content and information on sensory stimuli may anticipate parts of a piece. Please decide for yourself whether you would like to continue reading.

The artists have provided the following information on the content of the play, which should enable you to make an individual assessment of whether you would like to attend the event.

If you are missing any individually relevant information to help you plan your visit, please contact us.

Content

There is nudity and erotic behaviour during the performances.

Sound

In places, high volume and intense basses are used.