Erde & Plastik

Performance | Choreography I Introspective Circus
2025

50  min
Indoor

Between origin and artificiality, earth and plastic, familiarity and estrangement:
Erde & Plastikis an introspective, interdisciplinary performance at the intersection of choreography, contemporary circus, and performance art. Emerging from a personal crisis – a series of injuries and the necessary deconstruction of my artistic practice – it is a performative exploration of the body’s vulnerability and its relationship to the earth.

At its core lies the question of the body’s ecologies:
How are body and environment intertwined? What happens when this connection becomes fragile? What happens when the ground beneath us is artificial? How can a body remain resistant – touchable, imperfect, alive?

Here, circus is not spectacle, but artistic research – a physical enquiry into balance, agency, and the potential of failure. The performer becomes both player and played, instrument and resonance space. Object and material manipulation, fragmented handstands, choreographic scores, and spoken word create a poetic tension between order and decay. Moving sculptures emerge – graves, towers, ruins, ghost images.

 

„Agency is not a quality that resides solely in human individuals; it is distributed across a network of human and nonhuman bodies, things, and forces.“ — Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter, 2010

Credits

Concept, Creation, Performance: Verena Schneider
Mentor, Dramaturgy: Peter Stamer
Artistic Consultation: Arne Mannott, Martina Stapf, Christophe Rulhes
Costume, Artistic Collaboration: Sarah Sternat
Sound Design: Lukas Bamesreiter
Lighting Design: Sveta Schwin
Production: Verein Freifall, Verena Schneider

Supported by: Bundesministerium für Wohnen, Kunst,  Kultur, Medien und Sport, Land Tirol, Stadt Innsbruck, OFFTANZ Tirol, BRUX / Freies Theater Innsbruck
Residency support: Circus Researched, ON THE EDGE (AT), Zirkushalle Dornbirn (AT),  Bears in the Park (AT) Zirkusquartier Zürich (CH), Labo CircusNext – Rīgas cirks (LVA), OFF TANZ Tirol (AT), Act Out Residency Support IG Freie Theater, Fontys Tilburg (NL), Codarts Rotterdam (NL), SOHO STUDIOS (AT), Monthelon (FR)

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Verein Freifall

freifall.office@gmail.com

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