Léonard Engel: CARCASSE

In the organizer's words:

"It's been a while since I haven't felt disgust, anger or hopelessness when reading the news. I am surprised that these feelings, which many people probably share, are not expressed more clearly in the public debate. As if they need to be suppressed. As if these feelings are the last taboo in our society, when all other taboos have already been torn down. In CARCASSE, I want to create a place where the body is free to experience these emotions, to acknowledge them, to surrender to them completely, to move to their beat." (Léonard Engel)

How to continue when abomination seems to prevail? When democracy is crumbling. When political hypocrisy is omnipresent. When everything we once considered sacrosanct is desecrated and shattered? When every emotion, every everyday gesture is tainted by disgust?

In Carcasse, five performers confront the remnants of their being. They inhabit a body whose structure is irrevocably marked - a skeleton, a carcass in which disgust and powerlessness determine every movement. How to make this body dance? Vacillating between gentleness and rage, torpor and ecstasy, they create a picture of a gloomy present and an uncertain future.

Léonard Engel, a former soloist with the Bayerisches Staatsballett who has been working in Munich since 2018, continuously explores the connections between the body, emotions and their social dimensions in his work. In CARCASSE, he also devotes himself to exploring the body and its emotions in the context of social issues and translating them into movement and choreographic language.

Choreography: Léonard Engel
By and with: Gizem Aksu, Tasha Hess-Neustadt, Jin Lee, Mikael Marklund, Tian Rotteveel
Music: Tian Rotteveel
Lighting design: Emilio Cordero
Costume design: Carla Renée Loose
Production management: Elsa Büsing
PR: Simone Lutz

Supported by the Cultural Department of the City of Munich