TOTALITARIAN BODY

THEATRE /// DANCE /// PERFORMANCE
                                                                                         

 BIOGRAPHY

A group of artists of different nationalities, professions, and ages was founded by Anton Rudakov in 2017 and has been working together in various constellations and artistic focuses ever since.

Since the beginning of this collaboration, our performance collective has taken part in various international dance and performance festivals. Our interest in dance and performance lies in critically questioning and reflecting on current political, cultural, and social issues. The focus of our aesthetic research is on connecting the different qualities and media of the performing and visual arts.


The polyphony of our ensemble makes it possible for the audience to encounter vocally, linguistically, and perspectively just as diversely. Our long collaboration creates a collective community both internally and externally. Our goal remains to participate in socially crucial discourses with our artistic work. With the help of artistic research and performative, genre-fluid techniques, we want to develop dance and theater pieces that illustrate the motivation but also the contradictions of human action.


Artists from the Totalitarian Body Collective:

Anton Rudakov, Insa Griesing, Alekszandr Szivkov, Bas van Damme, Maciej Piotr Beczek, Andreas Bach, Najel Graf, Sinan Ösel


Theater productions; Totalitarian Body, Between the Walls, Impo®tent (Hessischer  Theaterpreis 2021) Meeting with Monsters, Wiederkehr, Paradise Lost, ICH

In 2023, the collective will be supported by the Performing Arts Fund as part of NEUSTART KULTUR, #TakeHeart: Process Funding, and by the Hessian Ministry of Science and Art.

Anton Rudakov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. He received his dance education at the Vaganova Ballet Academy. In 2000 he started working at the Boris Eifmann Ballet Company in St. Petersburg and in 2002 he joined Aalto Ballet Theater in Essen, Germany.  

From 2007 until 2014 he has been a member of the State Theatre Ballet in Wiesbaden under the artistic directorship of Stephan Thoss. During his last season there, he participated in several International Competitions for choreographers. He won various awards, such as the Golden Butterfly at the International Dance Festival in Skopje, the Production Award in Berlin, and 2016 the "Pretty Creatives" award at the NW Dance Project in Portland, Oregon.  

In October 2017, Anton Rudakov completed a master's degree in performance studies at the University of Hamburg. Since graduating, he has worked on various artistic projects; TanzKollektiv Bremen, Erfurt Tanz Theater, Kunsthalle Bremen, Nederlandse Reiseopera, K3 Hamburg, Landestheater Marburg. His choreographic creations have been shown at various international festivals. In the summer of 2021, he received the Hessian Theater award for his dance creation "IMPO(R)TANT"
                                                                      CHOREOGRAPHIC WORKS

       ICH

ICH(A:T) Work in Progress

Presentation in Haus Mainusch Mainz


While the media's daily reporting once again deeply affects us the incredible atrocities of war echo in our minds Heads wider. We are not involved. We practice compassion without really grasping it what the countless pictures since the beginning of the war suggest: Acts that appear inhumane but were started by humans to whom the true, cruel face of war is revealed. The unpredictability and brutality of the countless crimes since the beginning of the war leaves us back in shock.

The question burns in us whether transformations towards... Inhumane attacks can only be triggered in “certain borderline situations”? Or there are, a priori, monsters hidden in all of us that are capable of such cruel acts are? When researching dance performance, I look for sparks like that could fuel an inferno of inhumanity.

       PARADISE LOST

Paradise Lost

Premiere 2023



“Only those who grow up and remain a child are human.”

- Erich Kästner


It is said that only children are irrepressibly curious, terribly angry, or overwhelmingly happy, because there is an immediate, pure essence in the child's expression. Who we are is therefore closely linked to how we feel and experience ourselves as children.

The wild, untamed inner child in us always takes on more than it can carry, it withdraws in fear when uncomfortable decisions must be made and leaves the road because the long trail of possibilities shines so fantastically!

However, if the friendliness of the child becomes the permanent state of the supposed adults, the path to the unresistant consumer as a submissive object is quickly taken. With the dance performance Paradise Lost, the Totalitarian Body collective explores the creative potential of the infantile and its enormous destructive power.

       WIEDERKEHR

WIEDERKEHR

Premiere 2022


"Wiederkehr creates a space of association in which past and present, reality and imagination can hardly be separated. The audience can expect an incredibly exciting atmosphere and four dancers who create an unforgettable dance evening with presence, power, and precision".

– MADE.Jury


Again and again they come to light, flash briefly in front of the inner eye and are overwhelming in all their practice and beauty - special memories that suddenly come to us and in which we dream ourselves with pleasure in order to immerse ourselves in everything that was, because it was so is beautiful was! Or not? They are past moments whose radiance endures over time and regains their beauty with every reset. Memories that have long since grown into places of longing in which the ability to distinguish between reality and imagination dissolves and is overlaid by feelings. 

Orders can easily be overridden mentally, which is why the appeal of reliving is to ignore the transience of the moment and to be rewarded again and again. It's natural to want to share memories and yet the desire for collective reward sometimes turns out to be contradictory. A familiar melody, for example, seduces some people into lightness, while it rings with an unbearable shrill sound in the ears of others. 

Looking to the horizon awakens hope and the promise of something new - a possible future within sight. This future, which we imagine in the most beautiful colors, motivates us over long distances. Releases unexpected powers. However, without past experiences, without being able to remember formative moments, the horizon only appears as a narrow line between heaven and earth. Only in the longing to relive or in the will for change do we see the motor that lets us move forward. Bravely towards the horizon.


MEETING WITH MONSTERS


 MEETING WITH MONSTERS

Premiere 2021

Bloodthirsty beasts, disfigured creatures, peripheral beings: monsters deviate from the norm. They spread fear and horror, invade inhabited living spaces, and destroy idyllic structures. They live in secret and are buried deep inside us at the same time. Monsters embody the fears and longings of human nature. That makes them attractive and repulsive at the same time. The symbolic figure of the monster implies in many ways the excesses and dynamics of civilizations. In times of globalization and superpowers, the traditional discourse about monstrosity is re-established. It creates superlatives and supports economic and ideological interests. The supposedly monstrous can also be seen in the religious or ethnic other. Fantasies and stigmatizations create the impression that this other, stranger is bringing us - the beginning of a war rhetoric that denies other people being human by "monsterifying" them..

TOTALITARIAN BODY 

TOTALITARIAN BODY 
2017 Premiere in Hamburg Kamonagel

“You can survive all economic, state, physical disasters, not spiritual ones. If we give up, if we stop believing in our future, then we are done" Alexander Solschenizyn “Neuen Züricher Zeitung” 12/98 

The Choreographic research on theme of Totalitarian Body or craving for the power.        
Our days are faced with extreme political, cultural and social changes. How will our body react on these changes, will it have also an impact on out physical perception? This question I asked in the relationship and in the reflection on the post- Soviet time, where the radical change happened from collectivism to the individualism. Repeatedly fall the performers in the intoxication of the power of the collective, which 
releases the choreography through movement (whether in fight scene, or the euphoric-joyous togetherness of rebellion). The boundaries between brutality, exhaustion and tenderness become invisible here. The perception of the individual stretches and overlaps with the perceptions of the others. Vibrating body scenes transforms here from the mechanical movement configurations into chaotical happening. A seemingly alien power seizes the collective body.  In this work I used different Medial providers. Beside the physicality of human body and 
different Medial providers, the voice as a main media representor, we created an atmosphere, which is supported and intensified by Video and sound installation. This Performance is the critical reflection on new era of the Totalitaism and pseudo patriotism in Post-Soviet Russia. This performance makes a link to both periods in Russia; the Soviet and the Post-Soviet and rise the debate.
BETWEEN THE WALLS 
BETWEEN THE WALLS
Hildesheim 2019
Dramaturgy Insa Griesing
 
Current refugee movements draw human conflicts into the global political and social situation of today's world. The ongoing situation in the Middle East, in Syria, is unavoidably unacceptable. Interferences with the sovereignty of the state and the rights of one-sided postcolonialist doctrine through personal and violent ones include that the population is robbed of their most basic rights and their livelihoods. Fleeing wars are millions of people who leave their families and homes to bring life and limb to safety. However, many of them will never have personal port access, never set foot on reasonable ground.
Deeply moved by human tragedies, their pursuit of a better life never became, this dance performance BETWEEN THE WALLS is dedicated to the missing. All these people, their hopes and dreams, they lost out in the world. Stranded in the nowhere - no longer there and not here either. BETWEEN THE WALLS plays with the limits of the encounter of an installation spatial concept in which performers and the audience see themselves. The only thing that belongs to it is a thin membrane that is gilded to breakthrough. But who dares to break them open? And what if all dams break and the viewer becomes a viewer?
Behind BETWEEN THE WALLS is the desire for freedom of action, based on the passivity of the consideration of current tragedies. How can we act as well? Together, with mutual means, pressure on political rights to stop aggression, political and political violence against nations, religions, and against people?

IMPO(R)TENT

Impo®tent Solo/Dance/Performance

23.06.2021 Hessische Theatertage 2022. Theaterpreis.


„Es ist eine Studie politischen Versagens. Traurig, kraftvoll und extrem eigensinnig“.

                                                                                Shirin Sojitrawalla


The dance performance is a critical reflection on the current political situation in Russia and Belarus, where abuse of power and ongoing oppression have become the main tool and strategy for the unbearable desire for power. "Change", this word from a famous Russian song from the late 1980s, has become a keyword in the protest movements in Russia and Belarus. Millions of people use it to express their protest and their desire to live in a free country without constant lies, violence, and aggression, to live without militarism and corruption.

Shocking videos of violence and brutal repression of peaceful protests by security forces, seen around the world, have revealed the true colors of "democracy" in both countries.

The piece was created after protests in Belarus before the war. This is an act of solidarity with all who fought and gave their lives for a free future.

UNDER THE LINE
UNDER THE LINE. 
North Macedonia. Skopje Dance Theater 2017
The collaboration with SDT dancers during DANCE LAB

We merge with the masses in the constant desire for satisfaction and self-fulfillment; live by external standards, driven by fear of failure and not accepted. Is there still a place within this mechanism of illusion for individuals who view this illusion from a different perspective? 
VASA
VASA
Portland, US. 2016

“Society's Mechanisms of Control” as the Main Idea of this Piece. A society functions on its members cooperating and putting the good of society above selfish best interest. A society's ideas, its principles, its morals, ethics, values, traditions, conventions, laws, and religions are its mechanisms of control. These are the ideas that tell a society's members how to behave and function. How does society rely on individuals and other ways around?
DER ABEND
DER ABEND
Staatstheater Wiesbaden 2013

Schweigt der Menschen laute Lust:
Rauscht die Erde wie in Träumen
wunderbar mit allen Bäumen,
was dem Herzen kaum bewußt,
alte Zeiten, linde Trauer,
und es schweifen leise Schauer
wetterleuchtend durch die Brust.
                Joseph von Eichendorff
SQUASH
SCUASH
State Theatre Wiesbaden 2012

Four classical pieces of music drive five dancers. The Don Giovanni overture begins in the impending D minor of the stone guest, not to mouth in its Allegro section, but in Edvard Grieg music from Perr Gynt, whose insane crescendo compels the five dancers to grotesque. There is only a short break before the baroque Dido and Aeneas overture begins with a very fast second part. And in the end, ballet music comes close to the caricature: Aram Chatschaturjan Saber dance. The dancers are exposed to this breathless change of style and tempo, react to it, and keep up, increasingly under pressure. Everyone dances for themselves and in latent competition with the others, even if everyone seems to be facing the same fate that leaves them little breathing space.
The show must go on!
IF I WERE THE MOON
IF I WERE THE MOON
Skopje Dance Theatre 2015 (Golden Butterfly Prize ).

The Solo "If I Were the Moon" on the song "If" by Pink Floyd, first was presented at the “Skopje Dancelab 2015". The creation portrays a dreamer living in his small but amazing world. Here is a conflict of the inner and outer world of the rational and non-rational. Reality and fantasy. The pendant on the Romantic era, 
where dreams collapse with pragmatism and predominant rationality. Is there a place for the failure at all? 
                                                                                                  VIDEO ART
 MEETING WITH MONSTERS
Enschede. Niederlanden 2020

Die Symbolfigur des Monsters impliziert in vielerlei Hinsicht Auswüchse und Dynamiken unserer Zivilisation. In Zeiten von Globalisierung und Supermächten etabliert sich der traditionelle Diskurs um Monstrosität neu. Er schafft Superlative und stützt wirtschaftliche und idiologische Interessen. Außerdem wird der Diskurs benutzt, um das religiöse, rassische Andere einzufangen. Fantasien und Stigmatisierungen erwecken den Anschein, dass dieses andere, Fremde uns holt – der Anfang einer Kriegsrhetorik, die anderen das Menschsein abspricht indem sie sie monsterifiziert? Ist es die Sehnsucht nach Verbotenem, oder ein Virus (wie Covid19) der den einzelnen zum Monster werden lässt? Sind es die Augen der anderen, die hinter jeder Ecke Monster fürchten, oder nährt vielmehr eine mediale Blase unser aller Monster? Es ist existentiell zu erforschen, was hinter dieser monströsen Omnipräsents steckt.
DER UNSICHTBARE BEGLEITER
Hamburg 2017

Die Atomkatastrophen von Tschernobyl und Fukushima dauern bis heute an. Ein Ende ist nicht abzusehen. Die beim Super-GAU freigesetzte Radioaktivität ist selbst Jahrzehnte später noch nicht aus der Welt. Jede kleine Strahlendosis das Erkrankungsrisiko erhöht. Wer Atomkraft nutzt, nimmt regelmäßig Atomunfälle bis hin zum Super-GAU in Kauf. 
In dieser Arbeit werde Ich ein Phänomen von unsichtbarer Radioaktivität untersuchen. 

L´après midi d'un faune


Choreographic sketch with mandolin

Camera and Concept:

Alexander Szivkov/Anton Rudakov

Neuer Text

MITTSOMMERNACHTSTRAUM


The infinite vastness, the infinite beauty of nature. I did not want to forget what it was like to belong back then. I want to merge in it and stay there forever. Would it still be possible to find my way back? The choice has been made. The flattered, destructive power of reality leaves me no chance and brings me back to order. An illusion of what it was, a beautiful dream. I will wait and come back sometime.

Now the ruling world is recovering from its deep sleep and getting everything that was missed twice as fast. Let me still be with the night and tell me my dream.

Fascinated by nature and music, this type of video was created.

  • PARADISE LOST

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  • WIEDERKEHR

    Credit Rebekka Waitz

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  • MEETING WITH MONSTERS

    Credit Till Christmann

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  • ICH (A.T) Work in Progress

    Credit Berfin Cenan

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  • IMPO(R)TENT

    Credit Oliver Röckle

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  • MADE FESTIVAL 24 WIEDERKEHR

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  • BETWEEN THE WALLS

    International Art festival "The Walls we Built". Hildesheim 2019

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  • BETWEEN THE WALLS

    International Art festival "The Walls we Built". Hildesheim 2019

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  • BETWEEN THE WALLS

    International Art festival "The Walls we Built". Hildesheim 2019

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  • UNDER THE LINE

    SKOPJE DANCE THEATRE 2017

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                                            CONTACT
E-Mail: rudant@web.de
Tel: +4915776074135

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