Total Romance: Partial Repair

The visual artist, choreographer and dancer Isabel Lewis employs an expanded choreographic practice that centres on producing affective experiences of the body, activating all the senses. In her opinion, every format allows us to give order to the sensual and she sees it as a deeply political question whether we engage with a format or not, and how we engage.

“Total Romance, Partial Repair” reflects the origins of European humanism and researches alternative concepts of being human. To this end, Lewis examines the aesthetic techniques of Baroque, deconstructing, exaggerating and exploring its subversive potentials and limits. Lewis is particularly interested in the forms of ornamentation which she explores in her choreography through the interaction of movement, sound, lighting and scenography. “Total Romance, Partial Repair” plays with strategies of presentation and representation, proposing alternative forms of engaging with the location, the architecture, the self and society.

Isabel Lewis comes from the Dominican Republic and lives in Berlin. Previously, she worked in New York for several years as a dancer, performer and choreographer. Over the past years, she increasingly opened up the limitations of distinct modes of presentation, which led to the emergence of mixed forms with elements of lecture performance, dance pieces, music, food, smell and other forms.