... is a piece of experimental autobiographical text.By recalling early aesthetic experiences of performing as a child and adolescent and by treating them as choreographic material, I play with the rewriting of my own biography as fictional- fantastic. At the same time this practice explores alternative, distorted approaches to canonical operatic works and their embodied narratives from within.What forms of presence does a past evoke? Curious about the connection between dance and voice, musicality and communication, I work with a practice that includes the dancer's voice as a way of poetic moving - in order to let emerge layers of imagination, feeling, narrative, expressivity and the fantastic.The fantastic idea of a biography that transcends time, gender, place and suggests a multiplicity of selves as proposed in Virginia Woolfs Novel Orlando has become and continues to be a companion, a place to lean towards, draw from, think and move with.The text appears in the performance Mist and Magic – the unfolding of a biographic fantasy in more than one act (presented in the frame of the NPP Presentations 2023)

Voice and edit: Eva Schaller
Composition: Manuel Riegler

Eva-Maria Schaller is a dancer, teacher and choreographer from Vienna where she began her dance training at the Vienna Opera Ballet School, continued her studies at Codarts Rotterdam and currently completes a Master's degree in New Performative Practices at Stockhom University of the Arts. Her choreographic work and practice are based on thourough engagement and experience within the field of dance-heritage and -history, (un-) archiving and the transmission of experiential knowledge in dance. Such include the Solo Vestris 4.0 (2018) in collaboration with composer Matthias Kranebitter/cellist Maiken Beer, and Recalling Her Dance - a choreographic encounter with Hanna Berger (2021), which was shown a.o. at Tanzquartier Wien and the Impulstanz festival; as well as the group piece FEMENINE (2022) in collaboration with the music ensemble Studio Dan. Next to performing and making dances, ways of sharing dance include teaching Countertechnique as well as other open practice-based workshops, as a regular guest at the MUK Music and Arts University Vienna and in dance institutions across Europe. In her ongoing dance practice, she explores the connection between dance and voice as a way of poetic moving - a way to challenge notions of musicality, language and expressivity.