bodytalk creates dance-theater which is deeply rooted in the community in which it is produced. Yoshiko Waki and Rolf Baumgart founded bodytalk in 2008. Lauded by the press as “radically local” their work has garnered natonal acclaim.

 

Well known critic Melanie Suchy writes: One rarely sees such intelligent rambunctousness in independent dance... standing apart from the cultlike Berlin dance scene which playacts as adults, bodytalk displays a sincere but knowing forthrightness. Their earthy sensibility is precisely crafed with an exuberant love for showmanship. Artstc directors of state and city theaters, please take care!

 

bodytalk has for example collaborated with working laundresses of retirement age, prison inmates, a snake philosopher and employees of an employment center. Their Tanz im Arbeitsamt (Dance The Employment Center) was twice voted as Best Video of the Month by balletanz, the leading German/European dance magazine

 

The Kölner Tanztheaterpreis was awarded twice to Yoshiko Waki. The Juries described bodytalk’s work as: Brutally funny... saucily irreverent ... ruthlessly bold, bodytalk takes on Bremen to provoke the city into remembering itself; making the city dance; making it create its own history. Bremen has never been more seriously considered and engaged than by this artwork. - The choreographer and six dancers of bodytalk weave their work into the locaton in which the performance takes place. Nothing is held aloof. Yoshiko Waki swifly dissolves the borders that separate genres. The result is a terrifcally dynamic performance that is cantankerous, absurdist, and forcefully radical. Without moralizing, our vicious inner animal is revealed. Uncontrollable drives fnd their moment to be displayed full force.

 

Zig Leiber / Oi Division deals with New-Nazis in the allegedly Nazi-free zone of Leipzig, Kölnstantinopel poses the question, why a new mosque when currently under construction in Cologne was vilifed as the 'Super-Mosque', Bonnkrott shows why splinter groups are often able to correct in city centres, that with which they are not happy on the outskirts, Ich bin ein Antfant, Madame questons the comfortable left self-image of Bremen. Isn’t dance by defniton politcal?! bodytalk is not afraid of politcal topics, nor are they concerned that the uncomfortable feelings and actons triggered by their work will merely produce politcal clichés.

Their dance-theater piece Untertanhäuser was described by Gerald Siegmund in the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung:

 

Yoshiko Waki presents fragments of debris from a constantly shifing feld of social and politcal interacton as it decomposes over time. It is exhilarating to watch how she shreds the collective discourse... she nails the exact moment when pretentous statements about social issues become an entertaining theatrical show.

 

From the honorific speech for the Cologne Dance-Theatre Prize: "Watching this multi-media Performance-Spectacle is always breathtaking, especially when the ensemble confronts us with reality, with that that is not able to be expressed in words, and that is above all the body (...) Bodytalk demonstrates a specifc quality in the art of dance, which consists of unmasking our rhetoric."