“Goldilocks and The Three Bears” (2008) - Theater parcours in türkischen Kaffeehäusern in Berlin

Kahvehane - Ballhaus Naunynstraße

Choreography: Loulou Omer | Performer: Kerstin Lang

A site-specific performance exploring the dichotomy of the foreign facing the familiar, the “Other“ confronting “me”. Placing the famed fairytale, Goldilocks and the Three Bears (with a bit of a reinvented twist) in the context of a Turkish Coffee House in Berlin, the performer, masked with a bear’s head, plays the role of Mama Bear--preparing porridge for her family. During these domestic activities representing nourishment, comfort, and safety, a recorded voice tells the story in German with a foreign accent, while some Turkish men (the foreigners) drink their tea and play dice. Questions of host and guest, privacy and invasion, tease out as new customers enter this unexpected performance space. Where is the line that unites a sense of welcoming with honoring privacy, while inviting a certain acceptance and reverence for this foreign other? Perhaps it’s just as simple as opening a window, or a door to remind us this sense of separation has it’s own elements of illusion.

“A Story of Murder” (2007)

Dock11 - Berlin

Choreography: Loulou Omer | Music: J. S. Bach | Dance: Melanie Lane, Loulou Omer | Guitar: Steve Gibbs | Scenography: Paul Wenninger | Lightdesign: Benjamin Schälike

Punctuated by an unsettling set of harsh black and white angles, A Story of Murder explores the complexity of action, reaction, and consequence when the presence of the “Other” becomes unbearable. With Bach’s music for Lute as the visceral live soundtrack for a series of murderous acts, the duo of two nearly identical women play out a dance of death. Their proximity to the audience grows with each act of murder. It begs the question, when we kill, what are we really killing?

“Salle d’attentes” (2004)

Schauspielhaus - Wien und Mains-d'Œuvres - Paris Choreography and artistic direction: Loulou Omer | Music: Achim Tang | Dance: Benoît Armange, Fabio Barad, Sonia Enquin, Stéphane Fesnard | Costumes: Kathy | Szenography und Lightdesign: François Marsollier | Video: Eni Brandner

Navigating the different facets of success and desire for success, Salle d’Attentes, takes the audience on a fantasied tour of space-time through the maneuverings of three men and a woman throwing themselves recklessly into the volatile and soul-depleting market arena. Waiting rooms and ladders ascending to oblivion offer projections of a loneliness confronted by its' own excavation. This isolation is simultaneously nourished and destroyed by the sparkling limelight of success and the wild pursuit it demands. An exhaustive to and fro-ing, choreographic casino of libidos results--a genuine tour de force of the internal conflicts that arise when the self is compelled by betrayal.

“Khalon Pour Quatre Femmes” (2002)

Les Brigittines - Bruxelles / Künstlerhaus - Wien

Choreography and artistic direction: Loulou Omer | Music: Achim Tang | Dancers: Caroline Grosjean, Loulou Omer, Sabile Rasiti | Vocal: Margarete Jungen | Costumes: Cathy Peraux | Szenography: Ricardo Cosendey, Cathy Peraux | Lightdesign: Berno Deggelmann

Offering a journey throughout the imagery of the painter Y. Bergner, Khalon pour quatre femme exists within an evanescent world of the past and oblivion. Honest and raw research of the relationship between presence and absence unfolds through an elegy of ethereal figures--four women. A little family reveals itself among these women as the collective “uprooted us,” a timeless entity and haunting phenomenon in search of its’ existential anchoring, its’ history and identity. Marked by an undefined obstinacy, their search mirrors the devastated and strange qualities of their environment--an untold elsewhere.

“Le temps suspendu” (2000)

Les Brigittines - Brüssel / Künstlerhaus - Wien

Choreography: Loulou Omer | Music: Yves Mora | Dancers: Caroline Grosjean, Loulou Omer | Costumes: Cathy Peraux | Lightdesign und Technical: Florence Richard, Isabelle Van Peteghem

Diving further into this ambiguous and often enigmatic zone separating “me“ and “the Other,” Le temps suspendu examines the spaces between here and elsewhere. Bathed in crimson, the stage and dancers are imbued with a quiet yet urgent intensity. Two dancers and two musicians aim to capture this fugitive moment of suspension, like that of a pendulum, where momentum meets stillness.