un-emotional #1 – all about nothing

Great emotions reduced to a minimum:
In her solo ALL ABOUT NOTHING, Zufit Simon choreographs emotional gestures as pure movement. She thus enables a distance to meaning and emotional level that can only be complemented by the viewer.
The viewer himself is asked to fill the collage of images with very personal, emotional references and memories.

The piece is the second part of a trilogy based on Simon's two-year research into body language in connection with emotional expressions.
After the duet NEVER THE LESS (2013), in which she concentrated on facial expressions and vocalization, ALL ABOUT NOTHING focuses on the body and movement. NEVER THE LESS (2013), in dem sie sich auf Mimik und Stimmlichkeit konzentrierte, steht in ALL ABOUT NOTHING der Körper und die Bewegung im Fokus.

Full-length video: https://vimeo.com/1070338105
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Zufit Simon. A name to remember. She moves onto the dance floor with short, dry, arm-flinging jumps – and you know immediately: „all about nothing“ will be good. (...) Finally, the climax. To Merdzo’s drum-like rhythms, which remain constant throughout, Simon makes her torso pulsate: lying down, on her knees, bent forward, standing, sitting, sometimes propping herself up with one arm, sometimes covering her face with her hands. Here Simon achieves what she boldly strives for: “evoking emotions in the audience without displaying any expression of feeling.” Images of turmoil, resistance, pain and dying emerge in this seemingly endless pulsation. Although nothing about the pulsations is spectacular, they become spectacular through their intensity, the sharp contours of each individual gesture and the heartbeat timing of their sequence. Most amazingly, everything seems totally fresh.

Malve Gradinger, Münchner Merkur, 2014