The Generations Season

The Generations Season is a durational dance performance, exploring the notions of change and age(ing).The meeting of performers from different generations lies at the heart of the fifth season taking place at Der Betrieb.

In the course of The Generations Season, seven performers aged 23 to 70 engage in movement and dialogue, reflecting (abstract) concepts such as future, loss, heritage, hope, time or FOGO (Fear of Growing Old). In this process-oriented work the site of thinking meanders between the language and the body, weaving associative highways of empathy and connection.

During The Generations Season, Der Betrieb becomes a space for embodied reflection. During every performance day the dancers dive into a choreographic “perpetuum mobile”.

The team at Der Betrieb engages with the idea of simultaneity as a way of “tuning in” with another body. The synchronised dance becomes an affirmation of the performers’ individuality, it becomes a metaphor: “having a body” as a human condition.

The Generation Season introduces the idea of a tender dialogue, the audience being invited to direct the course of the “conversation”… a tender dialogue would be about something you care about, or it would be about skin, it happens when you really want to hear about the other person, also accepting someone else’s borders, you are asking only so many questions… you also feel what the other one wants to tell, showing curiosity but not pushing, open for any kind of response, not having any expectations, and what do you do when the tender dialogue starts to get boring? You are just bigger than that…


Concept and Artistic Direction: Anna Maria Nowak

Performance and Choreography: Alexander Gottfarb, Stéphanie Evrard, Valeria Chavez Chong, Frans Poelstra, Esther Balfe, Anna Maria Nowak

Music Composition and Live Performance: Zosia Hołubowska

Dramaturgical Advice: Anna Mendelssohn

Costumes: Karin Pauer

Graphic Design: Katarina Schildgen

Photos: Victoria Nazarova

Video and Prototyping: Jakob Hütter (hand mit auge)

Production, Management and Outreach mollusca productions



Produced by Archipelago, Co-produced by brut. With kind support from the Municipal Department of Cultural Affairs, Vienna, the Austrian Federal Ministry of the Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sports, and Arbeitsplatz Wien