Chris Haring with The art of seduction - Posing Project B, staged with Liquid Loft dance company, has been awarded the Golden Lion for the best performance of the 5th International Festival of Contemporary Dance directed by Ismael Ivo.
The work has been chosen by an international jury among the numerous performances presented during the Festival. The jury was composed of Ms Betsy Gregory, artistic director of Dance Umbrella –London’s International Festival of Contemporary Dance; Ms Jin Xing, artistic director of Jin Xing Dance Theatre and founder of Shanghai Dance, the International Dance Festival of Shanghai; Ms Francesca Pedroni, dance critic for the daily newspaper ‘il manifesto’ and the TV station ‘Classica’; Mr Pier Giacomo Cirella, deputy director of Arteven; Ms Andrée Valentin, artistic coordinator of ImPulsTanz -International Dance Festival (Vienna).
The art of seduction - Posing Project B had its world premiere in Venice on June 19th at the Teatro Tese delle Vergini. It is the second chapter of the triptych about images and their seduction power.
In the prize motivation the jury says that «Chris Haring in The Art of Seduction – Posing Project B has found bright, original and multi-faceted solutions to addressing the theme of the Biennale, Body & Eros. Using irony, he has mirrored and transformed the public perception of eroticism into a piece which displays our ubiquitous contemporary taste for exhibiting bodies.
It is an organic work combining sound, text, lighting, costume, setting and a dynamic rhythm of construction. The immediacy of the choreography and interpretation gets under the skin in a subtle and complex way. The Art of Seduction - Posing Project B expresses a fresh vision for the future of dance».
The awarding ceremony was held on Saturday June 30th 2007 at 9.00 p.m. at the Teatro Malibran in Venice. It was attended by Chris Haring, Andreas Berger, Thomas Jelinek and Stephanie Cumming, founders of Liquid Loft dance group. The Golden Lion for the best performance, which proves how the dance world is vital again, was given by Ismael Ivo, the director of Biennale Dance Festival, and by Gaetano Guerci, the managing director of the Venice Biennale.
Chris Haring, a choreographer and a dancer, lives in Vienna. He has performed with international dance groups such as DV 8 Physical Theatre, Nikolais/Louis Dance Cie., Man Act, Nigel Charnock and has cooperated with Pilottant, Willi Dorner, Tanz Hotel, among others. In 1995 he founded the Grenztanz Festival at Cselley Muehle, Austria. He also teaches contemporary dance in several Austrian and German dance schools. In cooperation with the artist and multimedia composer Klaus Obermaier, he has developed and staged the video-performances Dave and Vivisector which have been successful in Europe, Asia, US and Australia. Together with the artist Birgit Sauer, he has run the project Cyborg Moves 2003 in Kampnagel, Hamburg, promoted by Tanzinitiative Hamburg. Fremdkoerper, awarded at the Tanzquartier in Vienna, takes inspiration from science-fiction movies, where the human body is portrayed as a cybernetic landscape and it has been nominated as ‘best performance’ in Lyon in 2004. In 2005 he created Liquid Loft dance company together with Andreas Berger, Thomas Jelinek and Stephanie Cumming. They are internationally known for Kind of Heroes (awarded on May 2005 at the Burgtheater, Vienna) and My Private Bodyshop (awarded on October 2005 at Tanzquartier, Vienna), which were staged in Brussels during the Austrian Presidency of EU and at Tanzplattform in 2006. The performance Running Sishi has been awarded at the ImPulsTanz festival of Vienna in 2006.
