Ticket’s on sale: Flying Pictures | Flying Steps & OSGEMEOS stage Mussorgsky’s “Bilder einer Ausstellung” | Hamburger Bahnhof | 05.04.-02.06.2019

After the successful productions “Flying Bach” and “Flying Illusion” the Berliner Flying Steps invite you to their new production, which celebrates its premiere in Berlin. In cooperation with the Nationalgalerie, which invited the Flying Steps to the Neue Nationalgalerie in 2010, “Flying Pictures” will be created in April 2019 at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin. Staged by the Flying Steps and the Brazilian artist duo OSGEMEOS, “Flying Pictures” combines elements of art, music and dance performance. The ticket sale has already begun.

Image above: Flying Steps, © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Koone

What would pictures sound like if they were music? What would they look like if they were brought to life by dancers? And what happens when the artists of their time inspire each other across genre boundaries and merge their art with each other?

“Flying Pictures” continues the idea of mutual inspiration and the interaction of different art fields. At the centre of Modest Mussorgski’s famous piano piece of 1874 is a first-person narrator who strolls through the gallery rooms. The ten images he looks at as he walks through the exhibition embody different musical languages, each influenced by different styles and countries. The Flying Steps put this narrative into a visual movement for the first time in over 150 years: Instead of Mussorgski’s first-person narrator, dancers appear on a multidimensional stage, which can be viewed from several sides, in a choreography of elements of urban and contemporary dance.

The Flying Steps, one of the most successful urban dance groups in the world, has thrilled over a million spectators over the past 10 years and is constantly facing new challenges to create unforgettable productions… “We take the audience through the exhibition in a dance-like manner and bring Mussorgski’s work to life,” says Vartan Bassil, Creative Director of the Flying Steps.

The composer-brothers Vivian and Ketan Bhatti, who have collaborated with the Flying Steps since 2009 and were awarded the Echo Classic Special Prize for “Flying Bach”, adapt Mussorgski’s classical composition to a contemporary interpretation that corresponds to the beats and rhythms of the dancers. The piece will be performed live by an acoustic ensemble together with the German-Argentinean beatboxer Mando during the evening performances at the Hamburger Bahnhof.

The stage design also refers to the narrative of the “Pictures at an Exhibition”. It consists of fantastic figures and expansive elements that the Brazilian artist duo OSGEMEOS designed especially for the project. Victor Hartmann’s works were the starting point for their artistic reinterpretation. The fact that the paintings on which they are based are largely regarded as lost results in an additional imaginative, artistic field. During the day, the works of OSGEMEOS will be accessible to museum visitors in the form of an exhibition.

With “Flying Pictures”, the Hamburger Bahnhof not only opens its doors in the evening, but also, according to Udo Kittelmann, Director of the Nationalgalerie, “underscores its interdisciplinary understanding of a contemporary museum.

WHEN?

April 5th to June 2nd 2019, every Friday to Sunday & every second Wednesday

WO?

Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin
Invalidenstraße 50-51
10557 Berlin-Tiergarten

Tickets for the performances can be purchased in advance via Eventim (www.eventim.de)  and at the box office.