“Now more than ever, all of us are pondering what communities and new alliances we want and must create in the light of this crisis, between the arts and sciences, among researchers, not least between humans and nature. Thus, the question of how to become a community also serves as the starting point for the exploration in CREATURE, a search we would like to embark on together with the audience. I utilise the term audience responsibility here, a concept that transcends participation in the sense of an accountability that we all embrace for each other, for the community, and the shared project.” – Ben J. Riepe

“CREATURE” is an immersive parkour that combines the experience of performances, installations, sculptures and choreographed atmospheres. It reacts to particular conditions and potentials, originating anew at each venue, occupying and modifying them. In each space, the person is located differently: as a creature connected to nature via breath, as a dystopian man-machine hybrid who asserts his own creatureliness only as a medial memory, and as a cognitive, (self-)reflected, and social being who can connect with others through the community-building power of a ritual. The audience will be guided through the rooms in small groups. Every five minutes a group will enter the parkour.

Ben J. Riepe, born in 1979, is a choreographer, artist and initiator of FREIRAUM, an interdisciplinary, collaborative conceptual and working space for the arts and sciences that tests a collaborative, uncurated way of working. After studying stage dance and choreography at the Folkwang Hochschule, Riepe was engaged as a dancer with Pina Bausch and V.A. Wölfl, among others, and since 2008 has been creating his own works that bring dance into multi-layered connections with other disciplines. His award-winning performances, videos and digital productions are shown worldwide, often in collaboration with the Goethe Institute or at the invitation of other companies.

CREATURE is supported by the Ministry for Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Cultural Department of the City of Düsseldorf, the Kunststiftung NRW, Fonds Darstellende Künste, BTHVN 2020 with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media, the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the RhineSieg District and the City of Bonn. Ben J. Riepe is represented by Kunst & Denker Contemporary. The performances in Tallinn are supported by the Goethe-Institut Estland, the German Federal Foreign Office and the Ministry for Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.