Lisa Densem, Berlin, Germany
Lisa Densem. Photo: Vlad Dinu
When I came to Berlin in 1999 to work with the dance company Sasha Waltz and Guests, I never imagined I would still be here twenty years later. Originally I thought one or two years at the most, but here I am. These days I work as a freelancer and breathwork teacher, and continue to tour, occasionally, with the piece I created with Sasha in 1999. Körper, or Bodies in English, became a well-known piece within the contemporary dance world and has never stopped touring (mostly with its original cast). It’s a strange experience, but also a privilege, to continue inhabiting a role twenty years after it was made.
Looking back, it’s not surprising that I should have come to Berlin when I did. What felt like a private, individual decision at the time looks almost inevitable in hindsight. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the landscape of empty buildings (which could be squatted in or rented for very little money) that this opened up, combined with Germany’s generous art subsidies, created unprecedented possibilities in Berlin.
As a result, the 1990s saw a huge surge of young people moving to the city. For dance in particular, the opening up of so much free space was significant, and choreographers like Sasha were able to develop their work in a way that was not possible anywhere else at the time. Sasha’s first projects were made in beautiful, crumbling squatted buildings, and the Sophiensaele – the theatre that she and her husband Jochen founded in an old banquet hall – was virtually rent-free in the mid-nineties.
Berlin is a very different city in 2019. The number of start-ups moving here is definitely putting pressure on the old slogan ‘broke but sexy’, made famous by Berlin’s (and Germany’s) first openly gay mayor, Klaus Wowereit. That ‘Berlin is over’ is a weary refrain, both true and untrue. But for dance and performance, it’s still an incredibly exciting city, especially for someone like me who wants to think about dance differently and inhabit the fine line between dance and not-dance.
So much of what is possible here in Berlin is difficult to do in New Zealand, which is due to a combination of New Zealand’s small audiences and its lack of access to European-like funding and performing opportunities. For example, in September, over the space of a few weeks, I was involved in the filming of a new project by the artist Julian Rosefeldt; toured to Romania with ‘Extinction Room’; was involved in an installation project by the choreographer Sergiu Matis; went back in Berlin to teach for a week; and then travelled again to a festival in Portland with Sasha. It’s the residencies, festivals, performance circuits and numerous venues that keep the artform here in Berlin so alive.
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I live in Montreal. Before this, I lived in Malta, in Copenhagen, in Ottawa and in Wellington. Such is the reality of establishing roots as an expat scholar with a PhD: we move around a lot, unless we have a damn good reason not to.
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Bonjour from Montréal! As I write this, we’re sliding into summer like a squirt of Palmolive down a Slip’n’Slide. The sun is blazing down, the vines are snaking around the lacy iron staircases outside, and everyone and their grandma seems to be sitting out on a terrasse with a cold beer. It’s a relief after almost six months of snow and -20°C temperatures.
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My main base is in Vienna although I’ve lived a reasonably nomadic life for quite some time now. The last time that I lived in New Zealand was back in 2011, and I left just a few days after the earthquake to start a PhD in Sydney. After four years in Australia I did a couple of residencies in Paris and Italy before moving to Vienna.
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I moved to Paris in December to join my French partner and pursue my art history research and writing. We live in Rueil-Malmaison, west of central Paris, where there is an abundance of boulangeries and patisseries (many of which were even open on Christmas Day!), fruit and vegetable markets, cheese shops, and parks including the Parc de Bois-Préau and the lovely Parc des Impressionnistes which is situated beside the Seine. However, the area is most famous for the Château de Malmaison, the former private residence of Napoleon Bonaparte and Empress Joséphine. The château dates from the seventeenth century and displays Jacques-Louis David’s masterpiece, Napoleon Crossing the Alps.
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Kia ora Ōtautahi
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From a European perspective, Berlin is a young city. Indeed, as a nation state, Germany itself only dates back pretty much as far as New Zealand does. In terms of history, age is of course no measure of weight or substance... no one would ever argue Berlin in any way lacks historical clout. It’s one of the things that drew me here and remains one of the aspects of the city I draw so much enrichment from. There’s a permanent awareness of the past here, living on as a daily reality in ways I’ve never encountered elsewhere; a melding of past and present which at times, and especially recently, seems particularly relevant and impacts inevitably on how you see the world around you.
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Dear Christchurch,
I hope you are doing better and healing, slowly but surely. It has been four years since I moved to Maastricht and life here is pretty good. I am now director of the Master Arts and Heritage at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands (an exciting international and interdisciplinary programme).
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I learnt a while ago that, at any one time, as many as one in five New Zealanders are overseas – that’s one million of us trying to navigate work and life while holding familial and cultural bonds to this island nation. I’ve been living here in Houston, Texas for the last six months; it will be home for the foreseeable future and, almost inadvertently, I’ve joined the ranks of New Zealand artists who, after establishing themselves in their home country, have moved overseas, if only for a time.
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Malmö is a good place to disappear. I came here in 2010 to attend the Art Academy. I remember watching the Academy’s director on YouTube describe how professors were not allowed to enter a student’s studio unless invited to do so. I would say that this is intimately tied to the ideological legacy Sweden is known for. I bring it up because it is something that still resonates with my life in Malmö, along with why I live here.
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I live in Vienna; what’s it good for? The general humour of the place starts with Schmäh (pronounced schmee), a happily nihilistic response to problems. For a long time, people here have been thinking about meaninglessness and the indifference of reality. An American professor who taught linguistics at the University wrote a paper on the topic. One nice thought related to Marie Antoinette, who the French think of as naïve and decadent—‘let them eat cake’. However, she was raised in Vienna and by most accounts was much more politically aware than her peers in Paris. When the pitchforks came the statement was not a naïve one, but a knowing resignation to the guillotine; perhaps the first historically recorded incidence of Schmäh.
