Eszter Salamon

Over ten days, ten dancers perform in a museum during opening hours, creating an immersive exhibition experience of choreographic rituals developed after non-European war dances and dances of resistance.

Choreographer Eszter Salamon premiered the first part of her Monument Series at the Summer Festival in 2014. The series focuses on the relationship between dance and history: MONUMENT 0: HAUNTED BY WARS (1913 - 2013) expanded European perspectives on tribal dances and on popular dance forms originating from regions with a history of crisis, and was thereafter invited to the Festival d’Avignon among other venues. After Salamon scored a touching hit with her dance chamber-piece MONUMENT 0.1: VALDA & GUS at last year’s Summer Festival, she is back and showing the newest entry into her series, focusing on the old-English word »lore« (as in, for example, »folklore«) which designates dynamic social knowledge transmitted by lived experience. She has created a work with ten dancers from nine countries, including Costa Rica and South Africa, for Hamburg’s Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe. As in the first entry of the series, the choreographer has transformed regional war- and dances of resistance from Asia, Africa, South America and the Middle East. In the context of the exhibition space, visitors can freely move between the dancers; these then share, through various actions, their own experiences incorporating and transforming folk and popular dances, thus raising questions about collective memory.