Mirror Neurons

A documentary dance production with audiences

By Stefan Kaegi / Sasha Waltz & Guests

This piece is an experiment, conducted anew in every performance. It revolves around the human brain and its relationship with the body. The audience is an essential part of the experiment, because its members are invited not only to watch the dancers but also to find their own groove, to participate from their seats as an active part of a collective system, and to feel the sensation of belonging to a vast hive brain.

Spiegelneuronen (Mirror Neurons) marks the first joint project with Sasha Waltz & Guests. Following on from Andrew Schneider’s remains in 2020, this project continues the dance company’s openness to new styles as well as its commitment to broaden its repertory through artistic exploration and interdisciplinary cooperation with international artists. The collectives come from markedly different artistic directions, but are equally interested in the unconventional use of space and in interdisciplinary work. In this first collaboration, Stefan Kaegi will join forces with both the dancers from Sasha Waltz & Guests and the audience for an exploration of the relationship between the individual and society, conducted through the medium of dance in front of a large mirror.

Mirrors have a long tradition in ballet rehearsal rooms. Historically, their function was mainly prescriptive, serving to perfect the corps de ballet: a synchronized throng of dancers disciplined and drilled into one big organism. It’s no wonder that the mirror experienced a loss of status amid the growing focus on the individual and the rise of subjective freedom in modern and contemporary dance. This documentary dance performance now turns the mirror onto the members of the audience and includes them in the experiment as a subject of observation.

For the purposes of this performance, a mirror will be installed where the stage usually is. It will not only reflect the dancers but also the entire seating area and the audience, like a giant selfie. The auditorium is therefore where the action happens, recalling the acts of performance art created by Dan Graham in the 1970s. Through its interaction with the dancers, the audience itself is brought to the forefront of the choreographed movement and caught up in the process of ‘embodying’ complex images.

Neuroscientists believe that our nervous system is not centrally controlled but that different areas of the brain are in constant communication with each other, comparable to the non-linear and decentralized algorithms operating within a computer system, which respond to changing context while collecting and processing information. How exactly this happens remains a matter of speculation, even for science. New mechanisms are constantly being discovered, such as mirror neurons in the early 1990s. These neurons cause a similar pattern of brain stimulation regardless of whether we perform an action ourselves or observe the same action done by another person. Although difficult to identify in humans, mirror neurons could be a key to explaining empathy and mutual understanding.

The documentary research for this dance performance draws on concepts from the fields of neuroscience, biology, sociology and artificial intelligence. These will not only be heard and reflected upon, but also experienced and related to. Perhaps the audience will even anticipate or try to evade them. All this takes place as a tangible feeling coursing through one’s own body, bringing audience members together as one big community. The spectators will observe the experiment from a central vantage point, as they watch themselves and the performers via the mirror.

By channelling pulses of movement, a large group of people sat together can become networked in a model-like approximation of the brain. This dynamic tableau is accompanied by a specially composed musical arrangement featuring audio recordings of cognitive researchers. The audience will per-ceive the scenery becoming intertwined with their thoughts, illustrating or counteracting them, completing or refuting them. With varying reactions each night, no two performances are the same.

Concept and direction: Stefan Kaegi

Music: Tobias Koch

Stage: Dominic Huber

Video: Mikko Gaestel

Dramaturgy: Silke Bake

Dancers: Melissa Kieffer, Dominique McDougal, Francisco Martínez Miranda, Orlando Rodriguez, László Sandig, Wibke Storkan

With the voices of:
Christina von Braun, professor emeritus, author, filmmaker, initiator of the Gender Studies programme at the Humboldt University of Berlin, co-founder of the Selma Stern Centre for Jewish Studies.
John Dylan-Haynes, Professor of Theory and Analysis of Long-Range Brain Signalling at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience and Berlin Center for Advanced Neuroimaging Charité / Humboldt University.
Sarah Karim, Research Associate at the Institute of Rehabilitation Sciences.
Tim Landgraf, Professor at the Institute of Computer Science at Freie Universität Berlin and founder and head of the Biorobotics Lab at the Dahlem Center for Machine Learning and Robotics. Nora Schultz, Scientific Advisor to the German Ethics Council, freelance science journalist.Prof. Dr Tania Singer, Scientific Director of the Social Neuroscience Lab of the Max Planck Society in Berlin. Founder and head of the ReSource project.

A production by Sasha Waltz & Guests in co-production with Rimini Protokoll.
A co-production with Salzburger Festspielen and Tanz Köln, Kampnagel - Internationales Zentrum für Schönere Künste