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The Editta Braun Company is an award-winning dance company founded in Salzburg, Austria in 1989 by the Austrian choreographer, dancer and dance instructor Editta Braun. Members of the multi-national team include dancers, composers, dramatic advisors and light designers. The Editta Braun Company’s work pursues political themes, including intercultural communication and feminist questions. The company is particularly known for the body theatre performance pieces Lufus, Luvos, vol. 2, and planet LUVOS. The Editta Braun Company has toured in Europe, Asia, Africa and performs at both large and specialty festivals.
Contents
History
Braun was one of a group of students who formed the dance collective Vorgänge 1982. She founded her own company shortly before the group broke up in 1989. In 1996, French composer and musician Thierry Zaboitzeff began creating sound tracks to accompany the group's productions; most have been released as albums. Thomas Hinterberger and Peter Thalhamer have designed the lighting for many pieces.
The company collaborated with Egyptian director Mahmoud Aboudoma and his drama ensemble to create Coppercity 2001, based on one of the tales from 1001 Nights.
In 2002, the company began to incorporate texts into their productions, for example, Manfred Wöhlcke’s sociological essay Soziale Entropie and literary variations of the Arthur myth. In 2004, Austrian author Barbara Neuwirth wrote the text for Zurydike, a piece which was commissioned for the Brucknerfest in Linz, and included a chamber orchestra, drama and dance ensemble.
In 2004 the company increased its staff of artistic directors and choreographers to include Arturas Valudskis, Rebecca Murgi, Shlomo Bitton, Teresa Ranieri, Mahmoud Aboudoma, and Robert Pienz.
Over the years, outstanding artists from various disciplines (besides dance: drama, composition, direction, writing, dramaturgy, video, light design) have contributed their creative potential to the company. In the beginning, the company’s dance style was especially influenced by Céline Guillaume and Georg Blaschke, the work together with dance legend Jean Babilée, for whom Jean Cocteau and Roland Petit created Le jeune homme et la mort, was particularly sensational, immensely furthering the company’s international acclaim. Composer Peter Valentin contributed his work during this time.
For ten years, dancer Barbara Motschiunik played a main role in each production; in 2006, Anna Maria Müller and Tomaz Simatovic joined the group, joining with Juan Dante and Murillo Bobadilla.
Since 2010, several younger performers have joined the company, including Spela Vodeb, and the many performances have been developed with dramaticist Gerda Poschmann-Reichenau.
Luvos
Luvos is a series of body theater performances. The series premiered in 1985 as "Kollektiv Vorgänge’s Lufus".
Between 2001 and 2012, Luvos, vol.2 was performed worldwide before audiences totalling about 15,000 people, in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Thessaloniki, Novosibirsk and Moscow, Marseille, Limassol and Nicosia, Brussels, Tallinn, Kaunas, Riga, Vienna, Salzburg and Linz. In 2012 the piece was performed at the Manipulate Visual Theatre festival in Edinburgh
planet LUVOS was performed in 2012 during the Brucknerfest in Linz and at Manipulate in 2014.
The Etta Braun Company has mounted more than 100 performances or Luvos, and has been reviewed positively in Neue Westfälische, Neue Kronenzeitung, and TV Bomb
Publication
In 2009, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the founding of the editta braun company, the volume Tanz Kunst Leben. 20 Jahre editta braun company, edited by Gerda Poschmann-Reichenau and designed by Bettina Frenzel, was published. It contains reminiscences from people who have accompanied the company on its journey, descriptions and pictures from the dance-theater productions presented in the past 20 years in chronological order, as well as interviews with founder Editta Braun and participating artists.