Dance, Dance, Dance

Christina Werner
Performers & Voices: Denise Palmieri, Iris Dittler, Lisa Kortschak, Magdalena Schlesinger, Nora Jacobs

Staged in Vienna’s George-Washington-Hof, Werners video “Dance, Dance, Dance” (2019) originates from multifaceted research, beginning with the building’s history and name. Focusing on its construction period, the city’s concurrent working-class movement, and the area’s transformation into a business district—Werner also learned about George Washington’s love of dancing. 

Her video features five female performers, presenting a choreography uniting elements of modern dance, gymnastics, and kinematics, which Werner found in historic instruction manuals and archives. Along with their performance, we hear them chanting “lift your voices” and other encouraging prompts that Werner pieced together from texts and lyrics. The piece is so compelling because of its intentional imperfections, like the small aberrations in the dancers’ movements and timing, as if actively opposing the notion of a conformist group. 

Given the current political climate, there is a kind of comfort in watching these movements and diverse bodies—like acts of resistance, or finding something we considered lost.

Text © Sabrina Mandanici, independent art critic and writer

Christina Werner studied photography and moving image with Prof. Tina Bara and media art with Prof. Alba D’Urbano at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig. Werner’s current artistic works deal with the resurgent nationalism, culture of memory and questions of representation.