'adam-mah'
Concept/Directing/Choreography/Scene Design/Music by Karola Luettringhaus
Dance/movement creation/improvisation by Naomi Greenberg/Rachael Crawford Goolsby and Karola Luettringhaus/Bonnie Dixon
Music: Karola Luettringhaus, with Inge Luettringhaus (voice) und Konstantin Luettringhaus (poetry)
'adam-mah' is an intimate, viscerally physical, and interactive performance experience, engaging audiences in personal, spontaneous and multi-sensory ways. The piece touches on topics of balance, development and perspective. It is simultaneously a poetic rendering of our life on earth as well as a snapshot of our current human, social and ecological struggles.

Length: 60-70 minutes
Further description:
'adam-mah' is fiercely physical dance theatre that you can see, hear, touch and smell. 

 'adam-mah' is an unusual and up-close sensory experience that blurs the lines between performers and audiences, both becoming articulate subjects. 'adam-mah' explores the symbiosis of human and nature, our creative and destructive capacities through the lense of development of personal identity, territoriality and the shrinking of habitat.
​Choreographer's quote:
'With 'adam-mah', I go beyond the traditional roles of performer and spectator,” said Karola Luettringhaus, choreographer. “ I invite audiences to allow this performance to become something real, to accept it not as an imagined, hypothetical presentation, something to consume, but rather as a jointly created and experienced reality that exists in and between physical and intellectual realms. This process is an integral part of what it means to be human. Over time the viewer becomes a participant, an owner, and together we contemplate our relationship to each other and our planet on a personal level. None of us are only spectators; we are all players in the game.  'adam-mah' is ever evolving, each group of audiences uniquely shapes it.'
​
Set-up:
The set-up is intimate, the audiences are standing and sitting around the 20' x 8' large performance area, forming a barrier, a membrane around it, thereby becoming an integral part of the visual landscape, and subsequently the performance and storyline.
The technical set-up is self-sufficient. We only need power access and a reasonably  dark environment.
More background and process: ​
'adam-mah' has been performed at several very different stages.. It started out in December of 2014 as a 12 minute improvisational duet, as part of the Movement Research project at Salem College. It was a movement study about the traces we lea ve behind, inevitably and intentionally. Then I developed it into a work for 6 dancers which was performed at Auburn University in March of 2015. I began to condense all the many sub storylines back down into a duet and performed it at the Moving Poets 6/15 Showcase in Charlotte, NC in April 2015. The video you can view here shows clips from that performance. Perry Tannenbaum from the Creative Loafing newspaper in Charlotte, NC calls it an 'immersive piece', elemental art you could see, hear, touch and smell'.

This immersiveness is important to me; offering a comprehensive, three-dimensional, experience for the audience is a key element.

The experience is intimate. Throughout the piece we involve audience members in our actions, experimenting with their willingness to follow or oppose our instructions. We are inviting them to bring themselves into the course of events and we open the door to chance. 

'adam-mah' is an opportunity for people to become aware of and bridge internal and external barriers. It encourages us to contemplate and discuss the physical and metaphysical reality of life and our relationship to our internal and external environment. 

Fine-tuning our sensitivity to space, time and other individuals in the room, we become more acutely aware of the three-dimensionality of the living body, the creativity within us and the two-way sharing that takes place.   
Length:
60-70 minutes
Supported by:
Picture
Arts Council of Winston-Salem/Forsyth County, NC
Picture
Hannah Block USA and Community Arts Center of Wilmington, NC
Picture
Wells Fargo, John Wesley and Anna Hodgin Hanes Foundation
Picture
Auburn University Department of Theatre & Dance
Picture
Salem College/Salem College Department of Dance
And private donors.
(video 5) adam-mah performance footage and interview (October 2015)
(video 1) adam-mah timelapse whole piece in 11 seconds, (August 2015) at SARUS Festival
(video 6) Talkback session/discussion with High school students after performance of 'adam-mah', March 11, 2016
(video 7) comments after the performance at a high school, march 2016
(video 2) CLT (April 2015)
work-in-progress
(video 3) very short excerpt of work in progress performance January 2015 @ Salem College, NC 
(video 4) fun: this is what we look like after Karola's piece...(April 2015)
The evolution of adam-mah:

Awareness
Separation
Collaboration
Friction
Curiosity
Conflict
Narrowing of Focus
Protection
Immersion
Creativity
Self-Centeredness
Expansion
hardening
Dependance
Disruption
Elevation

Detour:
Perspective
​Interaction
COnstellation
Perception
Translation
Communication
--
Dominance/Domination
Submission
Acceptance
--
Transformation
participation

back on track:
Depencence
Disruption
Elevation
Hardening
Hostility
Dominance
Resistance
Submission
Acceptance
COnfusion
Crisis
Dissociation
Reduction
Adaptation
Survival (trenches)
Stillness
Hibernation
(Birth/Breath)
Desperation (breathing)
Dislocation/Dislodging/bulbs/homelessness
Comprehension
Strategy (sweeping)
Selection
Rationing
Exodus
Expression/feeling
Abandoning/Abandonment
Expulsion
Colonization
Society
Countries
Overpopulation/Imbalance
rationing
Share a Memory



on the side:
Love
Togetherness
Cooperation
Empathy
Connection
Creativity
Foresight
​Emotion