THE SLOWEST URGENCY

For 10 channel audio
Premiered 2021 at Jugendstiltheater Steinhof / Vienna Festwochen
has been shown at MUMOK / Impulstanz Vienna (2022) and Sommerszene Salzburg (2021) so far.

Philipp Gehmacher has called his new piece The Slowest Urgency, which might sound somewhat paradoxical. With this title, the internationally acclaimed dancer, choreographer, and visual artist combines two apparent contradictions. Urgency implies a topicality that we find all­consuming, a sudden coincidence between inner and outer landscape. Gehmacher prolongs that moment when the wave breaks and tells of gathering clouds, of the thicket through which a path must first be cleared. How does such an urgency express itself in a physical body? How does it take hold or expand itself? Over the past 20 years, Gehmacher has established his unrivalled vocabulary of movement not only in theatres, but also in museums, and for him these considerations are associated with a stage that dissipates into the depths. With The Slowest Urgency, the Viennese artist reflects his choreographic practice, testing, sharing, and transmitting his language to a new generation of dancers.