A production by the Israeli Acco Theater left the audience at the “wortwiege” festival in Wiener Neustadt with goosebumps. “The Anthology” proved to be an artful blend of different genres. The play alternated between musical cabaret, psychodrama and history lesson, but with the best means the theater has to offer: two stage professionals.

Two Israeli directors reflect on stage about a new play as well as about their lives in Europe and life in Israel itself. Witty and profound, humorous and sad at the same time, they won over the audience at ‘wortwiege’ in the Kasematten in Wiener Neustadt.

The opening marathon is finished. The “Bad Ischl – Salzkammergut“ European Capital of Culture year kicked off in Bad Ischl on the weekend of January 19-21, 2024 with a whole series of events.

The Steirischer Herbst23 features a wealth of performances in the three weeks it lasts. At the same time, however, there are also static exhibitions that have a special feature. Everything that can be seen at the exhibition venues has a reference to Graz. This is probably a unique curatorial perspective that is not found to the same extent at other festivals, and for the most part not at all.

On the occasion of the musikprotokoll as part of the Steirischer Herbst 23, the audience in the Helmut-List-Halle was treated to a piano concert of a different kind as an entrée.

On the last day of the musikprotokoll on the occasion of the Styrian Autumn 23, the Institute of Music Theater of the Kunstuni Graz invited to an opera performance at the Mumuth.

With the ORF RSO Vienna under the baton of Marin Alsop, musikprotokoll offered its audience an exhilarating evening of contemporary music.

The second evening of musikprotokoll as part of Steirischer Herbst 23 was devoted entirely to nature. The Klangforum under conductor Lin Liao performed four concerts in the List Hall and was then replaced by the Schallfeld Ensemble.

For the opening of the musikprotokoll with the title “interconnected / interdependent” in the context of the Styrian Autumn 23, those responsible programmed a varied prelude for the Dom im Berg.

The director, author and performer Franz von Strolchen alias Christian Winkler created with the production “The Ship of Theseus” a post-dramatic piece on the topic of Roma.

Korhan Basaran impressed the audience of the “wortwiege” with his “Dido” in the Kasematten in Wiener Neustadt.

Austrian premiere of “Orlando Trip” in the Kasematen of Wiener Neustadt.

Aleksandar Acev shows in his performance “Lucy was not long ago” that our repertoire of movements is not only anthropologically well comprehensible. He also makes clear that we express our feelings with our body at every moment. Whether we want it or not.

Many of us don’t have the best memories of the lockdown era. That’s not the case for Ece Anisoglu and Julia Pacher. After all, they developed “The Orlando Project” together when culture was at a standstill on the outside. Now it had its open-air premiere in Vienna in August.

Life itself writes the most incredible stories. This sentence, often heard or read, is especially true for a special concert.

In Graz, the opera Katja Kabanova by Leoš Janáček underwent several reinterpretations by director Anika Rutkofsky. Some of them are open to discussion.

“Bones and Stones” – what rhymes so wonderfully in English sounds much more unwieldy in German.

Passing colourful forests and still green vineyards, we head through autumnal southern Styria to “Hiša Denk” in Slovenia, a few minutes’ drive from the Spielfeld border. At first glance, Gregor Vračko’s gourmet restaurant looks like a Sleeping Beauty.

Salzburg is always worth a detour. Not only because of its historical, architectural uniqueness. Theatre enthusiasts will also find a range of events there that is well worth seeing – even outside of the festival.

The production not only lives from the fact that it shows different views of a successful state and their respective representatives. The production also lives from strong, emotional moments.

Carmen C. Kruse and Manuel Zwerger achieved the feat of coupling a VR performance with a live experience. European Kitchen Encounters: VR_Bania became a not only theatrical but also epicurean experience for the audience on the occasion of the ‘Musiktheatertage Wien’.

The threat to the earth posed by technological progress, hybrid forms of human beings who practise art genres that can nevertheless never be animated by them, but “Chornobyldorf” contains all this and much more. Apart from all artistic intention, the piece is also a strong commitment to Europe.

Simon Mayer combines high-tech equipment with a purely human-based choreography. Although he explores new techniques excessively, his piece “Being moved” conveys a lot of depth.

Ivo Dimchev was a guest at Impulstanz for the 15th time. And rightly so. Because each of his shows is and has been an experience. Although he has a good, recognisable USP, the artist always devotes himself to new topics. In doing so, he seems to be endowed with an almost inexhaustible creativity.

“The Köln Concert” by Keith Jarrett shows itself in Trajal Harrell’s dance arrangement as a successful symbiosis of different artistic genres.

Dada Masilo, the South African dancer and choreographer, has made a name for herself in recent years with new interpretations of classical ballets. With “Swanlake”, “Carmen” and “Giselle”, she set strong, new interpretative scents. With “The Sacrifice”, a new arrangement of the “Sacre du Printemps”, she wanted to explore what sacrifices we are prepared to make today.

In 2022, the Impulstanz Festival had invited Lenio Kaklea, a dancer and choreographer from Greece, to Vienna, as it had several times before. She was joined by the French pianist and composer of British origin, Orlando Bass, who performed live on a prepared piano.

“Dance. A Sylphidic Reverie in Stunts” by Florentine Holzinger transforms ballet dancers into bloodthirsty witches.

This year, the Impulstanz Festival is showing productions by international dance greats like a non-stop stream. Wim Vandekeybus was represented with two new works. After his show ‘Hands do not touch your precious Me’, he showed “Scattered Memories” at the Volkstheater – a retrospective of 35 years of Ultima Vez.

Dark, threatening, somnambulistic, powerful and poetic. This is how “Hands do not touch your precious me” presents itself with the eponymous subtitle “The mingled universe of Wim Vandekeybus, Charo Calvo & Olivier de Sagazan”.

Jan Lauwers created a multidimensional artistic masterpiece with his “Needcompany”.

With “Jungle Book reimagined”, Akram Khan created a story of Rudyard Kipling’s classic that has been revised in terms of content. Designed as a great dance spectacle, it is sure to conquer the stages of the world.

On the opening weekend, the Festival Impulstanz showed “Dances for an actress” by Jérôme Bel and “Vollmond. A Piece by Pina Bausch”. If you take these two productions as a taste of what may be to come, you can justifiably look forward to the next Dance Weeks in Vienna.

At readings, you don’t just get an insight into a new book. With luck, you also learn something about the author’s personality. Wolf Haas opened a small window for his audience at the Orpheum in Graz to a not ordinary writer’s story.

Humans live isolated from other individuals as hybrid beings, controlled by a global intelligence machinery. Caroline Peters and Ledwald impressed at the Hamakom as part of the Vienna Festival.

When it comes to voting, one is spoilt for choice in the truest sense of the word. Right, left, moderate, up or down, established party or newcomer – you should at least familiarize yourself with their election programmes. The Schubert Theatre, specialised in puppet theatre for adults, presents its audience with a special treat with “Election Campaign of the Animals”.

Graz housewives versus Viennese housewives – an astonishingly tiring combination

Bouchra Ouizguen presented a cross-border dance project with her work “Elephant” as part of the Wiener Festwochen.

In the years of the Trump era, we around the globe became familiar with the concept of fake-news. So much so that we now think we have to adopt lying ourselves in order to survive in society. Martin Gruber and his ensemble have taken a closer look at the phenomenon. But not only this one.

Blood wants blood. This sentence from “Macbeth. After William Shakespeare” by Heiner Müller was taken more than literally by director Stephan Rottkamp. The production of the play at the Schauspielhaus in Graz begins bloody and ends bloody. In between: Blood by the bucketful.

Abuse of power begins in the family and it is passed on from there. With ‘L’etang / Der Teich’, Gisèle Vienne succeeded in creating a highly emotional adaptation of Robert Walser’s play of the same name. It shows how children are emotionally at the mercy of their parents and how much they suffer when they are deprived of love.

Tschechows „Der Kirschgarten“ in der Inszenierung von Tiago Rodrigues, überzeugte bei den Wiener Festwochen gleich in mehrfacher Hinsicht.