frankfurter allgemeine zeitung, 5. april 2001 nr. 81

Almost a Dream-Pair

A New Choreographic Work by Christina Ciupke

Christina Ciupke’s newest work ‘Riss Umriss’ belongs to this rare category of dance in which the odd member of the dancer’s guild still manages to track down new aspects of the craft and to shake the observant audience out of its trance. In short-sharp doses, she playfully moves around the viewing eye with paradox light effects. In the completely darkened hall of the Theater am Halleschen Ufer, slide projectors cast three narrow beams of light – after one another laterally/vertically, frontal and diagonally/horizontally.

In machine-like slow-motion, the dancer enters the fragmentary contour of her body into these hair-thin fissures in the darkness. The surface of her skin and muscles is caressed with shadows and vividly distorted - and nonetheless, it is withdrawn from gaze. The contradiction of showing and hiding emphasises the volume of the body and emphasises its pictorial surface – swimming in current of light into which everything sinks.

Franz Anton Cramer

 

berliner morgenpost, saturday 31. march 2001

Christina Ciupke dances out of the shadows and into the light

All earthly trifles she has discarded. No material scenery, no costume, no music distracts from the conceived idea. In ‘Riss Umriss’ premiered at Theater am Halleschen Ufer, bared skin is put into use from head to foot for an original aesthetic- experiment without comparison; it is as well-balanced as it is atmospheric.

A strip of light glimmers into the darkness, clambering up the wall from the floor. In fragments, dismantled into strips – the figure dances in oriental slowness through space as though on air. Variously arranged sources of radiance make possible every kind of different light-shadow-composition, as no Rembrandt could have better conjured. Every danced contortion creates effects that enable a new view of the body. After a good three-quarters of an hour, before the effects have overrun their course, the cunning and refined light-effects conjured up in co-operation with the photographer Gisela Dilchert, come to an end, outdoing every other metropolitan-made production.                 

Volkmar Draeger

 

 

dance europe

august / september 2 / 3

.... another woman, german christina ciupke, naked, moves in more mysterious ways. the stage is totally dark save for either horizontal, vertical or diagonal strips of light in the air. the optical effects expose her sliced body as bigger or smaller than she is or voyeuristically as through a door ajar. rissumriss is a beautiful exercise in slow-motion body control that goes on for well nigh an hour. talk about a woman on the razor«s edge and some of the audience on the brink of a nervous breakdown. (presented at rencontres choregraphiques internationales de seinesaint-denis, 2002 )