MATA DORA – El Cuco Projekt (en)
“Tennis and Europe have in common,
that they follow rules that no one actually understands.”
– Ernesto Guachafrán
Dates:
July 08, 2023, 8 p.m. TICKET / REGISTRATION.
July 09, 2023, 6 p.m. TICKET / REGISTRATION.
Barnes Crossing, Industriestr. 170, 50999 Cologne, Germany.
Admission on a donation basis. Limited seating, so please register / book tickets!
In July, El Cuco Projekt introduces his new creatures and presents the impact for his multi-year dance performance project “MATA DORA”. Two cows face each other on the tennis court and play out the European utopia of a community in solidarity. But who actually understands and explains the rules?
As the primeval cow and ancestor of today’s domestic cattle, the extinct aurochs was the model for the deceptively real animal masks that El Cuco Projekt made for the new production “MATA DORA” true to life and with great attention to detail. The aurochs is to the modern cow what the wolf is to the dog. However, in the process of domesticating the world, man domesticated himself first and foremost. Now the primeval cows show us in a tennis match how absurd it is to be a human being living according to our present rules. We humans do not yet know how they will do it or what they will teach us – but they already know. The cows of the past are becoming the cows of the future, and they’re completely wild.
About El Cuco Project
El Cuco Projekt’s repertoire of human-animal characters so far includes cats, birds, lizards and bats. They each oscillate in a species-specific way between the absurdity of everyday life and the danger of (un)known nature. Since 2015, the play with hyperrealistic animal heads has been the starting point and focus of El Cuco Projekt’s performance work. In the process, everyday elements and actions repeatedly contradict the fabulous associations that the human-animals (could) create. For the characters exist through combination as beings that are not only visually inherent in multiple states. The ambivalent relationship of man to his environment is relevant across generations and cultures and offers the collective a rich potential for uncanny and, above all, absurd scenarios. elcucoprojekt.com
By and with:
Idea, choreography as well as masks & stage set: Sonia Franken & Gonzalo Barahona; Performance: Jimin Seo, Margherita Dello Sbarba; Composition: Jörg Ritzenhoff; Costume: Lena Thelen; Outside Eyes: Li Kemme, Marcelo Omine; Light: tba, Press: neurohr & andrä; Trailer, photos and video documentation: Julia Franken; Organization: Claus Adler; Administration: Ruth Spitzlei; Production: Sonia Franken.
With the support of Barnes Crossing e.V.
Funded by: Cultural Office of the City of Cologne, Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, NRW Landesbüro Freie Darstellende Künste.
El Cuco Project / Barnes Crossing e.V. receives 2023 structural support from the Rheinenergie Foundation.
