NU Performance Festival IV: On Hospitality

This year, the fourth edition of the NU Performance Festival leaves the theatre scene behind and conquers the stage of everyday life: from November 7–10, 2011, the biannual festival for international contemporary performance and theatre is hosted exclusively at the Sokos Hotel Viru, Tallinn.

During four days, around 50 performance and theatre artists present work that has been originally created for or adapted to the hotel’s premises. In the light of the festivities related to Tallinn – European Capital of Culture 2011, we have invited artistic contributions that revolve around the idea and practice of hospitality.

In times where Europe is closing its frontiers, where social and ethnic minorities are being treated as outcast foreigners, where the Other has to assimilate to prevalent codes, and where the arts appear superfluous in the face of multiple crises, the question of hospitality is increasingly important. What does it mean to be a host, to be a guest? What is the performance of hospitality? What are the related gestures in the arts and in society? And how  should togetherness be shared? However, we are not seeking answers to be declared in manifestos, pamphlets, or treatises. Instead, we are interested in the small gestures that occur in social situations, in the direct exchange of practices, in actions, in the reciprocality of togetherness. The festival attempts to provide a field where some of these questions can take shape and be tested in practice. We want the festival to leave the aesthetic security of the black box and dive into the contingencies of social life: performance is powerful enough to change and have an impact on what’s going on outside the playing field we are used to call stage and theatre.

Welcome to the NU Performance Festival 2011!

Silke Bake & Peter Stamer
NU Performance Festival IV curators

Performers: Peeter Änilane and the Põlva Brass Band (EST); deepblue / Heine Røsdal Avdal & Yukiko Shinozaki (BEL/ NOR/ JPN); PME-ART (CAN); Nino Bokan, Alice Chauchat, Pravdan Devlahović, Mihkel Ilus, Taavet Jansen, Jarmo Karing, Zvonimir Kvesić, Ivana Pavlović, Ivana Rončević, Nina Sakić (FRA/ CRO/ EST); Beide Messies (GER/SWI); Anton Vidokle (RUS/USA); VIRU Staff (EST); toxic dreams/ Yosi Wanunu & Michael Strohmann (ISR/AUT); plan b / Sophia New & Daniel Belasco Rogers (UK/GER); Kaja Kann (EST); Juan Dominguez (ESP/GER); Eleonora & Kalle Tikas (EST); a.pass (BEL) and more.

Supporters:
Tallinn - European Capital of Culture 2011; Cultural Endowment of Estonia; The Council Of Gambling Tax; Institut Français, Norwegian Embassy in Tallinn; The British Council Tallinn; Municipal Office for Education, Culture and Sports Zagreb; Pro Helvetia; Norwegian Foreign Ministry; Ministry of Culture of Estonia and Flemish authorities.

www.saal.ee 
www.nuperformancefestival.blogspot.com