BONES
Claude Jansen & Fabrice Mazliah
dance, performance
FRI 14.11.2025
6:30pm — 8:00pm
Frankfurt LAB, Halle 1, Schmidtstr. 12, 60326 Frankfurt am Main
Notes on sensory stimuli: Use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). During the performance, audience members wear headsets twice for approximately 5 minutes. The use of VR headsets may cause discomfort.
Content notes: Occasional references to German colonial history and allusions to the genocide committed in Namibia.
Ticket needed
A shirtless person kneels on a dimly lit stage, surrounded by scattered bones and a skull. Several ribs extend from their mouth, and a sternum with ribs rests on one hand. In the blurry background, members of the audience are visible wearing VR goggles.
Information on accessibility
Wheelchair-accessible event room? (No steps or thresholds higher than 5 cm, doors at least 90 cm wide, wheelchair-accessible toilet, etc.)
Yes
Is spoken language used in the performance? If so, which one?
English, German, Oshiwambo
„Bones“ is an immersive performance by the choreographer Fabrice Mazliah and the curator Claude Jansen. Together with a team of Namibian and German artists, they weave analogue, spiritual and digital media together to form a multisensory experience. Based on research into an ngoma drum looted from Namibia and the 8,000-year-old bones of a shaman kept in Germany, „Bones“ draws attention to the knowledge inherent in bones and how people are connected to their surroundings and their ancestors.
Supported by AR (Augmented Reality) goggles and digital sound modulation, the performers create liminal spaces between science and speculation, performance and ritual, mankind and matter. A landscape of bodies and sounds is generated in which the rhythms of heartbeats, drums, birds and trees merge.
„Bones“ invites the audience to embark on a sensory journey and opens a space in which past and present, spirituality and technology relate to each other in visible and invisible ways.
With: Claude Jansen, Fabrice Mazliah, I-Fang Lin, Tuli Mekondjo, Norbert Pape, Johannes Hellberger
A production by Work of Act and COME IN TENT, supported by the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics as part of the INHABIT // Artist-in-Residence programme, BKM Hamburg and the Hamburg Cultural Foundation. (Curator Inhabit Artist-In-Residence: Eike Walkenhorst, Curator Dancing Instruments: Claude Jansen)
The performances at Frankfurt LAB are made possible by the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics as part of the INHABIT // Artist-in-Residence programme in cooperation with the Rhein-Main Dance Festival 2025.
Tanzfestival Rhein-Main, a project of Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm and Hessisches Staatsballett, is made possible by the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain and is funded by the Department of Culture and Science of the City of Frankfurt am Main, the Hessian Ministry of Science and Research, Art and Culture, Aventis Foundation and Dr. Marschner Foundation. Sponsered by Energieversorgung Offenbach AG (EVO).
Further dates:
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SAT 15.11. | 7:30pm
Frankfurt LAB, Halle 1, Schmidtstr. 12, 60326 Frankfurt am Main
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SUN 16.11. | 6:00pm
Frankfurt LAB, Halle 1, Schmidtstr. 12, 60326 Frankfurt am Main