LUNA PARK / Kosmas Kosmopoulos
Dance Performance “Crossing the Freeway“

The Western prosperity community has toad tunnels (green bridges) built under its highways, bridges above them for wild animals on their way from A to B: "Crossing the Freeway," as the last way out for animals to avoid the murderous structures of highly industrialized civilization. The many thousands of people fleeing from wars and misery in the periphery to the few centres of relative prosperity, however, have their last paths blocked. In an existential, reduced dance language, the Greek-born choreographer and school-pedagogue Kosmas Kosmopoulos attempts the impossible: "Crossing the Freeway". Freedom is always the freedom of others - those who have no obstacles in their way?

CROSSING THE FREEWAY is the fourth piece created as part of the Greek-German production collaboration LUNA PARK. As for "Lessen to the Fourth" (2016), "CAPTURE & discard" (2017) and "Mountains of Desire" (2018), rehearsals will take place in roughly equal parts in Athens and Berlin, thus creating a link between the dancers of the two scenes. The Berlin rehearsals will take place in the rooms of the Gesundbrunnen Elementary School in the Wedding district and will be coupled with workshops with the students. Kosmas Kosmopoulos, a choreographer and educator of schools in hot spots, tries to open up schools as places of culture and encounter and to integrate them into everyday artistic life. CROSSING THE FREEWAY, like its predecessors, was created against the background of this experience. The music is again by Antonios Palaskas, Greek electro pioneer and co-founder of the bands Stereo Nova and Supermarket. This time, the basis of his narrative, atmospheric beat is one of the first computer games, Pac-Man. But while Beckett's "Try again. Fail again. Fail better." may sound like a digital game manual, the dancers in CROSSING THE FREEWAY ask themselves: what if there is only one (last) try? The days of failure seem numbered.

Cast & Crew
Angeliki Anargyrou, Lea Hoffmann, Maria Kandylaki, Nikoleta Koutitsa, Heun Min Kim, Nikos Evangelos Nikolaou, Elton Petri |
Artistic direction, concept and choreography: Kosmas Kosmopoulos |
Music and composition: Anthony Palaskas |
Set design: Michael Graessner |
Technical direction and lighting design: Andreas Harder and Dimitrios Stamatis |
Text and dramaturgical advice: Kai Pichmann |
Production management and communication: Michael Ludwig Tsouloukidse |
Photography, video and documentation: Giovanni Lo Curto |
Documentation: Gm Touliatou

Production
Initiative LUNA PARK and Kosmas Kosmopoulos in collaboration with Gesundbrunnen Elementary School, supported within the project "ANPASSUNGEN" by funding from the project fund of QM Badstraße as part of the federal program "Soziale Stadt."