SunBengSitting

Simon Mayer/Kopf Hoch

Austria

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In Upper Austrian dialect, a ‘Sunbeng’ is a sunny bench in front of the house. In this performance, differences in life between town and countryside, home and abroad, oppression and freedom are examined. SunBengSitting seeks to liberate a genre that is suspected of being even more narrow-minded than ballet: folk dance. With a whip and a chainsaw, Simon Mayer sets out to dust off this popular tradition and free it of ideological weight and outdated images of masculinity. This sometimes archaic and brutal, sometimes heartwarming and comic performance stretches back from the present to the time when naked fauns were believed to roam the forests.

Simon Mayer studied at the Vienna State Opera Ballet Academy and the Performing Arts Research and Training Studios (P.A.R.T.S.) in Brussels; he is also a former member of the Vienna State Ballet. As a dancer, choreographer and musician, he has appeared in productions by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker/Rosas (The Song), Wim Vandekeybus (Frisking) and Zita Swoon, among others. In 2017, he received the Outstanding Artist Award from the Federal Chancellery of Austria. He founded Kopf Hoch as an association of artists and technicians who have worked regularly with him in recent years.