Premiere: Showcase IX – Sugar Pill
September 17th | 8:30 pm - 9:10 PM
What is reality, what is suggestion? Our mind is constantly constructing, juggling with experiences, perceptions, influences. Sugar Pill accelerates this process. Inspired by the placebo effect, the psychological impact of dummy medications and the phenomenon
of the Uncanny Valley (Unheimliches Tal), the discomfort toward artificial figures that are all too similar to real persons, bodies are caught in a play between the human and the almost-human. What seems real tips over into the artificial. And truth is what the brain makes of it.
With her intense dance piece, the production award winner of the renowned Hanover Choreography Competition continues the Showcase series, utilizing the immediate proximity between the audience and the ensemble for a multifaceted journey into our perception. In doing so, she combines her classical roots with contemporary practices and subtle observation.
The Irishwoman Zoë Ashe-Browne graduated from the English National Ballet School in London in 2009. She danced
at the English National Ballet, the National Ballet of Ireland in Dublin, at the Ballett Vorpommern and is
member of the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen in Antwerp since the 2018/19 season. In 2013 and 2018 she received
for her first choreographic works the Dance Bursary Award from the Arts Council Ireland. It
Commissions followed from the National Ballet of Ireland and in 2020 for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. In 2021 she was
Recipient of the Arts Council Ireland’s Markievicz Award. She also won two production awards in 2026 and placed second at the Hannover Choreography Competition.
Choreography and staging: Zoë Ashe-Browne
Costumes: Isabella Heymann
Composition: David Anthony Curley
Dancing: Ellis Campbell, Isabel Druenne, Miguel Eugênio, Alexander Gore, Dávid Janik, Andrea
Johnson, Kirill Kornilov, Ilya Manaenkov, Ella Puurtinen, Hanna Szychowicz, Koh Yoshitake
Duration: 40 min.
Photo: © Nasser Hashemi
Funded by TANZPAKT Stadt-Land-Bund with the support of the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
This measure is co-financed by tax funds based on the budget adopted by the Saxon State Parliament.
Funded by the Saxon State Ministry for Science, Culture and Tourism. This institution is co-financed by tax revenues based on the budget approved by the Saxon State Parliament.
Supported by NATIONALE PERFORMANCE NETZ Guest Performance Fund for Dance, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and the Ministries of Culture and Arts of the German States.
Funded by the Chemnitz City Cultural Space. This measure is co-financed with tax funds based on the budget approved by the members of the Saxon State Parliament.
