Philipp Gehmacher
Practice (walk+talk)

Practice (walk+talk) This Coaching Project attempts to map out each participants concepts, experiences and practice of movement through engaging in a walk+talk score. walk+talk was originally conceived as a lecture performance format highlighting individual practices and concepts of movement and therefore individual presences in dance performance today. Practically speaking the format is an attempt to let 'demonstration' and 'explanation' run simultaneously, to create a third level where utterance takes place physically and verbally and a body in reflection is allowed to be witnessed by the public. On another level the walk+talk series (as presented at Tanzquartier Vienna in 2008 and Kaaitheater Brussels in 2011) opened up a platform of voicing concepts on movement next to the usual presenting of stage works, pieces or aesthetic objects. The desire to say 'I', 'I believe' and 'I think' is part of the concept, which hence created a marathon of people articulating their concerns and a festival where no conventional pieces were presented, yet a site of reflection. I will initially share my own practice of physicality in relationship to my walk+talk performance and during the course of the week everybody will devise their own walk+talk score and perform or share parts of it. Physicality, Embodiment, Movement are all terms contingent on theories and experiences, yet conventional notions of the subject, the body as object, linear time and Euclidean space often fail to address the multiplicity of events happening in each physical state. My interest is to generate articulations physically and verbally, through utterance, which describe and embody those physical states and individual concepts of movement. As much as movement and physical presence are key themes of this Coaching Project, it is also a moment to reflect on your current ideas of making and on what practice you need to devise for these ideas to be embodied. (http://www.philippgehmacher.net/#/projects/walk-talk-series-248) Philipp Gehmacher lives in Vienna. Between 1993 and 1999 he studied at the London Contemporary Dance School and at the Laban Centre London. He created his first choreographic works, "in the absence, Holes and Bodies" and "embroyder", between 1998 and 2000 in London. His engagement in gestures, touch and space ended in the duet "good enough" for the opening of the Tanzquartier Vienna in 2001, followed by: his first evening-long group performance "mountains are mountains" (2003), "incubator" (2004), a project consisting of several stations with different versions in Vienna, Berlin, Brussels and Lyon, "das überkreuzen beyder hände" (2006) and "Iike there's no tomorrow" (2007), for which Gehmacher was not performing on stage for the first time. In 2007 he started to work together with the American choreographer Meg Stuart. They created "MAYBE FOREVER" and "the fault lines" (2010). In 2008 he started the collaboration with the visual artist Vladimir Miller for the video installations "dead reckoning" and "at arm's length" a.o. Philipp Gehmacher developed "walk+talk", a lecture performance series presented by different choreographers, talking about movement during their performance. It took place at the Tanzquartier Vienna in 2008 and at the Kaaitheater in Brussels in 2011. In 2010 the group piece "in their name" premiered at the steirischen herbst in Graz (AT). 2011 he followed the invitation of the Leopold Museum in Vienna and created the installation "grauraum" (with works of Egon Schiele). In the same year he started to work with the director Laurent Chétouane at Schauspiel Köln (Cologne, DE) for H. v. Kleist's The Earthquake in Chile (premiere in January 2012). Philipp Gehmacher continuously works with renowned contemporary dance institutions in Europe, which co-produce and present his work. In 2009 he received the grant of the Austrian Ministry for Culture and Education. More information: www.philippgehmacher.net