Astonishing parallels exist between Wild West heroine Calamity Jane and the physical phenomenon of the supersonic boom. The cowgirl’s whip cracking breaks the sound barrier. In “6 Feet Deeper” the border lines between video and scenery melt into each other. The surface of the sand is the point of intersection of reality and fiction, a pretended past and a presented reality of the performance moment.
Premiere and Touring
Premiere:
Deutsches Museum Munich (Museum for Technology, Traffic Department),
January 2004
The project toured to Japan, Poland, Belgium and various festivals and theaters around Germany, including Tanz im August (Berlin).
Press Quotes
“(Maren Strack) combines in her peculiar way visual art and dance, object and sound. The resistance of the object and the material join in her attractive person with wit, poetry and ironic easiness… She swings her whip above our heads, we feel the breeze, the whip hums, whistles, sings, hisses. An echo in one«s own stomach. The video to her feet shows oscillating waves. With her whip crack Maren Strack calls small, video-animated whip-ladies on the sand, that swarm around her like scorpions, get in a circled order, and disappear after a crack. Does the performer direct the video? Or do her actions react on the very beautiful installation? “
(Katja Schneider in Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 17th / 18th, 2004)
“… a bull-whip show, so performed with ease, that the audience could possibly estimate the difficulties and the precision of the act.
… Rarely has there been a dance so clear and impressive as Strack’s “6 Feet Deeper.
… The projections by the Japanese video artist Hiroko Tanahashi (post theater), create astonishingly simple, accessible images, far from the 1990s hieroglyphs that were considered a must by media artists and dancers then. In Maren Strack’s work all becomes easy – never the less it follows rigid precision and perfect timing – one even forgets the incredible effort this must take. The spectator’s mind is not lost in riddles, though he faces an increasing amount of information with increasing speed. He receives information under the flying whip, unfolding in slow motion…”
(Arnd Wesemann in Ballet tanz, June 2004)
Documentation
Credits
Artistic direction: Maren Strack, Max Schumacher, Hiroko Tanahashi
Installation, choreography, performance: Maren Strack
Dramaturgy: Max Schumacher
Co-Installation, video: Hiroko Tanahashi
Foleys, sound: Max Bauer
Funded by the Munich Cultural Department