Sat 24.5.2025 // 19.30
Photo: Biba Bell
Sat 24.5.2025 // 19.30
Performance sharing // Bräuhausgasse 40, 1050 Wien // pay as you wish // drinks & food
With thanks to Im_flieger.
We cordially invite you to an informal showing and gathering: Biba travels from Detroit to Vienna as a guest artist for the SCHULE@Im_flieger Spring Lab. Following up on her workshop “Epiphytes and (para)sites: an afternoon assembly”, Biba, Elizabeth, and possibly Robert Steijn will spend a week dancing together. Individually they have each drawn inspiration from plants in their choreographic processes. For this week together they will lean into Biba’s practice “Becoming Epiphyte”, first developed in residency in the Redwood Forests of Northern California, by stepping into the Wienerwald. Their last time dancing together was in 2017 when Elizabeth was part of Biba’s “Hustle in the Park“. That dance was created outside on Nellie’s Lawn in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and later performed inside at Roulette in downtown Brooklyn. An echo will be found in the outside to inside dance-making process – from the Wienerwald to the Im_flieger SPACE.
Biba Bell (US) is a dancer, choreographer, and writer based in Detroit. Her choreographic work, often set in unconventional venues, focuses on domesticity, labor, and architecture. Her current project investigates dance and arts activism as it intersects forest protection and conservation, through the lens of what she theorizes as epiphytic choreographies. Bell’s work has been presented at the Kitchen, Movement Research, Roulette Intermedium, Jack NY, Centre Pompidou, Garage for Contemporary Culture, Jack Hanley Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts, Insel Hombroich, Matéria Gallery, Galerie Camille, amongst others. She has recently performed in several Detroit Opera productions directed by Yuval Sharon, and internationally has performed with Maria Hassabi and Walter Dundervill. She continues to be influenced by her work as a founding member of the performance collective Modern Garage Movement (2005-2011, 2021). Bell earned her PhD in Performance Studies from New York University and is an Associate Professor of Dance at Wayne State University. Of her dancing the New York Times writes: “It’s invigorating to watch someone who borders on wild.” www.bibabell.com
Elizabeth Ward (US/AT) is a dancer, choreographer and occasional Outside Eye. She is interested in how individual and collective dance histories are shaped by geography and the movements of people and ideas. Her earliest performing experiences were dancing children’s roles with the Atlanta Ballet. Later she studied Post-Modern Dance in Vermont which eventually led her to New York City where she danced for downtown choreographers such as Cathy Weis, Yvonne Meier, DD Dorvillier, Rebecca Brooks, Miguel Gutierrez, Biba Bell, and Heather Kravas. In NYC, her work was shown at Danspace, Movement Research at Judson Church, AUNTS, the Chocolate Factory, and the Kitchen. Since moving to Vienna she has danced for Anne Juren, Philipp Gehmacher, Veza Fernández, and Samuel Feldhandler. Her work has been shown in Austria through brut, WUK, TQW, Wiener Festwochen, ImPulsTanz, and steirischer herbst.