Homage To Companions

Christine Matschke
Dance journalist

Movement studies in combination with dance portraits are what Isabelle Schad is passionate about. In her exhibition at the Tanz im August 2018 festival, she had the dancer Naïma Ferré, who was wearing an oversized t-shirt, perform an attendance-absence dance and let her rotate around her own axis in dervish-like manner. In her pieces “Knotting” and “Rotations”, Isabelle Schad revives the theme of her series for two long-time companions: Francesca d’Ath then alternately engulfs reality and dream (with each other) on a deep blue background and designs physical cut-outs à la Henry Matisse. Claudia Tomasi rotates her body in her very own unique way, ritualistically exposing herself to a loss of control that blurs the boundaries between subject and artistic object.