the guts company “UNIT II” // Público Festival

There is no doubt that the Corona pandemic has confirmed a viability of virtual, social and cultural relationships. The debate about whether dance and theater have a future rise of online culture has become more virulent than ever. Thus, the guts company and creative agency intolight have placed their focus on thinking about forms of virtual communication and creativity since the beginning of the pandemic, creating a new way to perform, communicate and reflect on dance through extraordinary formats.

With UNIT II - a virtual interactive dance experience space in 8 languages (German, English, Spanish, French, Russian, Polish, Czech, Slovenian) - the audience is invited to playfully and intuitively experience movement and dance in a new way. Equipped with VR headsets and sensors that register every physical movement, the audience enters a box, the UNIT. Guided by text modules, visitors are sensually immersed in new experiential worlds within various scenarios.

Together with intolight, the guts company provides a space that functions almost independently of origin, travel restrictions and maximum audience numbers. The UNIT is a unique idea that has not only an artistic value: Already in the word UNIT are hidden the ideas of "cohesion", "together", "united". Thanks to the different languages, barriers are broken down and all people are welcome to live this special aesthetic experience.

idea & concept the guts company realisation intolight Artistic direction Johanna Roggan Project management intolight Conrad Schneider Artistic production management Lukas Pohlmann, Nicole Meier, Ariane Thalheim

funded by Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien within the initiative NEUSTART KULTUR

In 2013, Johanna Roggan, together with Josefine Wosahlo, founded the dance company the guts company. Based in Dresden, the group conceives, realizes and develops classical stage productions, open presentation formats, installations, site-specific works, discourse formats and public laboratory situations using means of the performing arts. Their working practice of co-authorship, also with other arts as well as the sciences, makes genre boundaries obsolete again and again. In addition to a constant examination of social themes, dislikes and motivations, utopias and visions of possible togetherness or the human urge to survive, the group wants to address the physical as well as the emotional center of the audience. Since spring 2021, thinking about forms of virtual communication and creativity are placed at the center of its work, developing new ways of performing, communicating and reflecting on dance through extraordinary formats.