The second version of the work The dernier cri leaves the stage and moves into the spaces of visual arts. This continuing second edition of The dernier cri is also dedicated to the thresholds between body and sculpture, space and movement, dance, music and visual arts, though the force of sculptural and pictorial arrangement of bodies in this new surrounding can now unfold in a different way. At the center of the work are again the ambiguous interpretations of the proverbial saying “The dernier cri“ which in its first interpretation promises the fancy life and living in the moment. The literal translation turns the saying into the complete opposite: the last outcry before the silence in which the body reveals, to a certain extent, the secret of its twofold nature between presence and ephemerality, between life and death. To explore this secret, the audience is invited to roam around three specific rooms of the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, either accompanied by the dancers or finding ways of their own. In constant search for the memory of beauty and artificiality, of prime and decay. This is the artistic hypothesis for the cyclical work The dernier cri, whose second edition bears the subtitle “artists are alive”.

Direction, Choreography: Ben J. Riepe
With: Flora Ersig, Lenah Flaig, Simon Hartmann, Jbid Hatschaduryan, Rosabel Huguet, Sudeep Kumar Puthiyaparambath, Daniel Ernesto Müller Torres, Kathrina Wilke, Danilo Tesi, Ophelia Young, Blanca Noguerol Ramírez, Carla Gisela Pöpping, Kyungwoo Kwon, Anne-Hélène Kotoujansky
Composition: Timo Kreuser
Costume: Anna Kleihues
Stage: Mithu Sen
Musical advice/assistant: Carolin Schweitzer
Technical direction: Arne Schmitt
Administration: Izaskun Abrego
Production management: Sabina Stücker
Photos: Ursula Kaufmann, Roger Rossell

The dernier cri is a production of Ben J. Riepe on the occasion of the 25 year anniversary of Kunststiftung NRW, co-produced by PACT Zollverein Essen, in cooperation with Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus. Funded by Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, Kunststiftung NRW, Kulturamt der Landeshaupstadt Düsseldorf and Kunst- und Kulturstiftung der Sparkasse Düsseldorf. Supported by Goethe-Institute/Max Mueller Bhavan.