Max Levy

What are you to do?
What are you not to do?

What is prized and what is despised
may be referred to as alternating
developments of each other.

Embosom all the myriad things,
taking each one under your protective wings,
there being no prized or despised among them.

The years cannot be advanced,
nor can time be stayed. Dissolution and
generation, fullness and emptiness -
Whatever ends has a beginning.

What are you to do?
What are you not to do?

Just let things evolve by themselves.

-Zhuangzi, excerpts from Autumn Floods

Sleepdancing II: The Open Palm is the second chapter of an ongoing series of collaborative performance projects between Max Levy Choreographic Works and digital art duo Cosa Mentale building an atmospheric experience where performers, motion-capture, and music coalesce in an unique environment between meditation, relaxation and sleep. While the first chapter Are e Luar brought dance through film into the privacy of the bedroom, blurring the lines between reality and the dream world as much as those between dance and film, this second installment takes a different approach.

In The Open Palm, the concept is brought into a public frame, where sleep becomes a collective act, and the performance facilitates sharing of space and time through rest. In the unique installation space of saasfee*pavillon, The Open Palm not only builds on the unique aesthetics of the original, but expands the concept into an atmospheric experience where performers, motion capture and music create a unique environment of relaxation over hours, culminating in the audience spending the night in the pavillon.

Concept, Direction: Max Levy
Choreography: Max Levy with performers
Production Assistance, Artistic Assistance: Patscharaporn Distakul
Performers: Stella Covi, Noemi De Rosa, Jerneja Fekonja
Digital Artwork: Cosa Mentale (Celia Bétourné & Louis Cortes)
Composition: Max Levy
Photography: Meilyn Kennedy, Celia Bétourné, Jubal Battisti
Videography: Jubal Battisti
Technical Director: Sebastian Schackert
Production Manager, PR: Verena Strasser

Premier: 02.12.2022

Sleepdancing II: The Open Palm is supported by the NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETWORK - STEPPING OUT, funded by the Minister of State for Culture and Media within the framework of the initiative NEUSTART KULTUR. Assistance Program for Dance. Funded by the Hessian Ministry of Higher Education, Research, Science and the Arts. Rehearsed at Z-Zentrum for Rehearsal and Research Frankfurt.