“Motion Detectors”
Siemens apprentices learn about contemporary dance and performance in a series of special workshops.
“Motion Detectors” is a new company cultural project organized by the Siemens Arts Program involving three young choreographers at the K3 – Centre for Choreography | Tanzplan Hamburg, who hold contemporary dance and performance workshops for apprentices and young Siemens employees.
Going with the movement
Headbanging – it’s something we’ve all seen at least, if not practiced in earnest. And it’s this rhythmical movement of the head in time to music – backwards, forwards, sideways or in circles – that helps choreographer Sylvi Kretzschmar to quickly drum up enthusiasm for her workshop among young Siemens employees. How does headbanging feel? And what kind of moves can you combine with headbanging? That’s what young people at Siemens are finding out at K3 – Centre of Choreography | Tanzplan Hamburg. And not just there: They’re also traveling to other parts of the city to try out their moves, and they record everything on video.
The workshop is part of the Motion Detectors project set up by the Siemens Arts Program in association with three young choreographers, Lucia Glass, Sylvi Kretzschmar and Doris Stelzer, currently completing a nine-month residency at K3. They spent five weeks working with Hamburg trainees and young Siemens employees, and the results – dance performances, videos and photos – were presented in Kampnagel on May 21.
Siemens apprentices and young employees take part in a company cultural project on contemporary dance.
Changing where you’re – in an instant
Motion detectors are highly sensitive and respond rapidly to foreign objects within their range. The three choreographers use this principle as a model to raise workshop participants’ awareness of what’s going around them. How you react depends where you are, and you can change that, through movement, in an instant. For Sylvi Kretzschmar, the workshops are not about teaching young people complicated sequences of dance steps. On the contrary, with the headbanging she encourages them to explore how movement feels and to understand how much it differs for the performer and for onlookers.
Presenting the human body
The way people’s physical movements are depicted in magazines or on posters – the fashion model pulling her shoulders unusually far forward, or the macho male pushing out his bare chest, for example – is often completely unnatural. In their workshops , Lucia Glass and Doris Stelzer have worked with young Siemens employees on portraying human movement and explored how this affects their sense of their own bodies. Participants rehearsed and performed simple sequences of movements that were captured on video and in still images. They also examined differences and commonalities in their fields of work and their working environments.
With headbanging the participants explore how movement feels.
Introducing employees to contemporary art forms
The Siemens Arts Program team seeks to advance art and culture through a range of initiatives and projects in the visual and performing arts, music, and contemporary and cultural history. It operates in-house cultural programs intended to encourage interested employees to engage with contemporary art forms as a means of promoting a cultural dialogue, both inside and outside the work environment. Besides organizing events and projects for specific company locations designed to promote active participation in the region’s cultural life, the Siemens Arts Program also works with curators, artists and collectors to loan works and engages in in-house participative projects that aim to foster a dialogue and exchange of perspectives between the worlds of art and business.