On the first day, the audience is immediately immersed into the realm of shadows. The festival is opened by the premiere of a new piece of the Verein’s resident multidisciplinary ensemble Synesthetic Project.

Zef is the newest music theatre piece of the ensemble and it’s artistic director Nika Bauman. At the core of the project lies the ancient story of Persephone—traditionally one of abduction, rape, a grieving mother, and the cyclical return of the seasons. In Zef, these mythic structures are reframed as reflections of today’s female experience. Drawing from mythology, dreams, feminist theory, and autobiographical fragments, the piece intertwines music, movement, and text and portrays a hybrid, old yet new, figure of Persephone. The four performers on stage invite the audience into an underground club and onto a psychedelic, ridiculous and slightly triggering journey through death and back. 

Brian Lawlor, the multi-instrumentalist and member of the Synesthetic Project ensemble slips into the role of a DJ, combining beats with live instruments, electronic with the traditional and the classical with the unorthodox, ensuring a festive opening of TAKT’s second festival edition.

We must learn how to live with our shadows. The Open Discussion this year centers around the dark parts of artistic life and expression: shadows of fatigue, burnout, self-doubt, of the clashes of emotional and personal with the professional, of illness and fear, of worry for the safety of our loved ones. Grappling with pain is one of the socially most accepted themes when it comes to describing an artist, but do we manage pain successfully? And how? What shadows does art and culture cast on our lives, and what shadows do our lives cast on our art and work? Can we learn how to be more gentle to ourselves and each other, and create a network of support which would make these shadows bearable?

Coming together in the format of MUSICAL BODIES for the first time at TAKT Festival, musician/ composer Golnar Shahyar and dancer/ choreographer Naïma Mazic are questioning dualities and life cycles. Reflections on topics such as contradictions of choice and ambivalence of feelings will find their way into the performance that mainly revolves around improvisation with pre-composed elements, such as music written by female composers and choreography. 

In MUSICAL BODIES dance and music emerge as distinct yet intertwined voices and equal partners—comparable to a polyphony in which the lead and accompaniment constantly alternate. In a non-hierarchical dialogue between the visual and the auditory, a shared pulse is felt at least once, only to dissolve again afterward and explore new forms of communication.

In the last part of the evening, the format “Reimagined Fashion Show” comes back to this year’s festival edition. The creations of the designer Amanda Wisselgren are worn and explored through improvisation by local contemporary dancers Chiara Aprea and Helena Vancura, accompanied by the music of Rojin Sharafi on live electronics.