more about Surreal Impro (in english)

Surreal improv means to transform what happens in you and/or between us into movement, voice and language. Into pictures, patterns, stories, scenes, dances, three dimensional embodied poems and atmospheres to be shared with others. Letting happen scenes and situations of all kinds: Absurd, melancholic, hilarious, wild, tender…. Your body knows a lot about the world and being a living, human being, and it’s sensations are an infinite source of joy and grieve, play and beauty, irritation and insight. And – alone oder together – we can realize this material, explore it and shape it. When we do the shaping in the same moment as the material surfaces, we might call it real time performance composition – and this is what improvisation as an artform is about.

Like a calligrapher the improviser does what she does just now, there is no rehearsing or repairing. Unlike the calligrapher, though, we do not know, what we will write, before we put the pen on the paper. We make ourselves the pen through which the godess of improvisation (© Johanna Seiler) can manifest itself.

This art is quite exotic, and if you start to investigate it, it may happen that you will never enter an official stage where to perform (if you want to „perform“ at all. Which is no precondition to enjoy surreal improv. But imho some kind of witness is crucial for our artist energy) So we do not divide our time into learning and making art. Making art happens in the studio, interwoven with training and learning.

In order to discover what matters to us and what we really enjoy we usually have to take a lot of attempts. The art is to value the attempt by feeding it with the things you experience while attempting. Even if it is unpleasant feelings, like anger, boredom or frustration – which most of improvisers come across regularly. But when you accept and use them, the magic is very likely to happen in the same moment, transforming shit into gold. Or better: into fertile humus. But that accepting and embracing is a challenge over and over again. It is the single most important capability we have to develop for satisfying improvisations.

Nevertheless our approach is to stay playful and lighthanded about this work, appreciating every tryout and experiment as valuable just because the risk was taken and the attention given.

The body and noticing sensations and feeling states are the base of the work, these are the main entrances into improvisations that matter – first to ourselves, but in the consequence also to the audience.

Finally we shape our sensation and impulses be they movement, voice or word – we give them a form. And the form transforms them and adds new layers of meaning and enjoyment.

And why „surreal“? because what we get, when we open up to our body and our associations and sensationsal qualities and our partners strange things can surface, transcending naturalistic and rationally designed stories and scenes. It is kind of a collective dreaming in full daylight awareness we start to enter. Or maybe that is just my choice and preference and you might end up somewhere else. If you try, you will see.

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