Petra Sabisch - Contaminated Relations

Introduction

contamination: to make (something) impure by exposure or by addition of a poisonous or polluting substance

Taking off with a biographical account, Petra Sabisch elaborates on contamination as a conceptual tool to think choreography. In the frame of More Than One Tie, this contribution allows us to think the assembling of people as different lines and substances crossing, penetrating and merging with one another. The thought of seeing oneself as becoming “impure” renders a framework for approaching the gathering of people and how relations between them are established. If one thinks relations, one has to think contamination: it constitutes us as (social) beings. The contaminant substantially affects its new host, and therefor allowing for other articulations of affinities and desires. Having performed the work of Antonia Baehr - Holding Hands with Sophia New and Un Après-Midi - she talks about her affinities with Antonia Baehr being expressed. Being both a choreographer and a theoretician, she addresses the problems but also the potentiality that can arise from these two fields being a contaminant of one another. In her latest production Relations (2013), Petra Sabisch proposes a concrete choreography where the relationships that are established are not limited to human dynamics. It is an attempt to rethink choreography through addressing the dynamics and relations between things and objects.

contamen (Latin)= contact