The virtuoso concert pianist AyseDeniz performs hers and Thierry Zaboitzeffs compositions at the grand piano in in her peculiar, idiosyncratic way, inspired by Chopin and Rachmaninoff. Four dancers - bodies in concert - enter the stage, creating a physical dialogue with AyseDeniz's performance, thus embodying and externalising the interior sounds and texture of the music.

Lemures-like creatures, distorted, constricted and oppressed, invade the concert pianist’s perfectly harmonic world. As if even the artificially encapsulated high culture, where the pursuit of perfection often doesn’t leave any room for doubts, could not escape from human thoughts and every day’s worries. Nightmarish realities and fears, but also a foreshadow of the desire for free moving appear as incarnated thoughts and feelings.

Fantastical lemur-like creatures - distorted, constricted and oppressed - invade the concert pianist’s perfect harmonic world, so that even the artificially encapsulated world of high culture, where the pursuit of perfection doesn’t leave any room for doubts, cannot escape from the tension of everyday cares and worries. Nightmarish realities and fears, but also a shadow of the desire for freedom, appear as incarnated thoughts and feelings. The five dancers’ moving bodies - sometimes individually, sometimes in pairs, sometimes a seemingly inextricable agglomeration of extremities - constitute and articulate the physicality and motivations of strange, otherwordly creatures. Are they the pianist’s alter egos or dark suppressed aspects of her soul? While she is playing, these beings become her fellow antagonists and collaborators. They are suffused by the dense, mighty live music and then are driven or tortured, hunted or released, by the sounds around them. They resist – and they react.

Since beginning work as a choreographer, Editta Braun, along with her company, has in the series of “LUVOS” productions (1985, 2001, 2012) again and again generated fascination and irritation in the perception of human bodies in movement. Unconventionally used in surprising constellations, images and perspectives, torsos and limbs in movement metamorphose into unexpected pictures of life, never seen before, which, in a certain sense, appear to be wholly abstract from human beings. The scenic invention CLOSE UP develops those well-proven dancing means of the editta braun dance company, putting them into a new context.

Visually, the effect of limiting the movement to hide parts of the dancers' bodies is both absorbing and unnerving. The richness of the imagery brings to mind Hieronymus Bosch's human limbs, that protrude angularly from eggs and other creatures: Braun has most viscerally brought to life the deformed and fragmented leftovers of a psyche. [ ... ]

The final encounter and touch (between dancer and musician) is satisfying, and clearly points towards a less constrained future. A gloriously tongue-in-cheek (or butt cheek on keys) piece of surreal dance invention. (TV Bomb 01.02.2016)

The body shapes created over 70 minutes by these four dancers – with lighting designer Peter Thalhamer – are extraordinary; Thierry Zaboitzeff's music is as thrilling as Gokcim's performance. And like all the best work at Manipulate, Close Up raises profound questions about the familiar shapes around us and how easily those perceptions can be disrupted, even as it also leads the pianist into an unsettling encounter with forces in her music of which she is barely aware, until they literally come to nudge her in the back.” (The Scotsman, 06.02.2016)

Across an hour, the initial impact dwindles, but the sheer stamina of the performers – and

the spurt of ensemble bopping when Michael Jackson's Billie Jean hits the keys – remains

strangely fascinating.“ (Herald Scotland 02.02.2106)

Thoughts of one of the dancers of CLOSE UP:

„When I watched the piece on the video, from outside, I was tracing a particular feeling which I had when I saw the first rehearsal without me. This feeling is somehow of being straightforward, undressed not just from clothes but from defence mechanisms, from pretending to be strong, balanced and unhurt. Like an allowance to expose the fragile and hidden inner insanity, let it surface and carry through. It makes me think of the way women sacrifice their pride, ambitions, feelings in order to bring agreement or peace. The sacrifice that women are capable of, although they are hurt and mistreated.“

Editta Braun about the feminist aspect of CLOSE UP:

„I think that nowadays women’s rights are more and more in danger, even in our European societies. Many different, global crises overlap each other, we are the middle of epochal changes and challenges. And, very frighting, I observe a lash back to conservative, pre-democratic values, even in Europe. We women have to talk about that, we have to fight. And as I am artist, my only weapons are my artistic works. The manipulate festival gives me the opportunity to talk through my work to the audience. Theatre and performance is my Agora, my speakers’desk, my arena. I am a feminist. So it is clear that in my work I talk about feminist topics. In my way, with my means. CLOSE UP brings 4 female dancers and 1 pianist on stage - they fight, struggle, suffer, are light and heavy, happy and sad. Woven to each other by a deep complicity“.

PUBLIC REACTIONS on CLOSE UP:

How does a dance performance and a piano concert find common ground? A pianist and a choreographer are looking for ways...(and) Surrealist Salvador Dali would have really enjoyed the result (....) The star of the evening is 27 year old pianist AyseDeniz Gockin who has gained international recognition with her inventive interpretations which link wildly different music styles. (....) a most harmonious and technically successful performance. An essential part (of the production) is provided by the outstanding lighting design of Thomas Hinterberger. (Verena Schweiger, Salzburger Nachrichten, 17.10.2015)

A temperamental pianist, faceless creatures from the shadows, and the sounds which bring them to life: The impressive interaction between sound and movement fascinates the audience from the very beginning. Turkish pianist AyseDeniz and the dancers of the editta braun company tell a story with gestures, movements and dance, which becomes even more compelling because not a single word is spoken (...) Among other things the fascination of this piece arises from the space it creates and the questions it poses, questions which only can be answered in the individual imaginations of each audience member (...) Editta Braun's latest work creates a lot of space for an audience's fantasy to run riot. Most definitely it leaves a powerful impression. (Claudia Maria Kraml, DrehPunktKultur, 16.10.2015)

The piece's intention - that through her playing the tragic situation of the protagonist enters the hearts of a carefully listening audience – is, without a doubt, fulfilled. You would need to have a heart of stone not to be touched.

(Josef Irgmaier, pianist and composer, 16.10.2015)

While musician and music ensnare each other, vexing cratures emerge. They are genderless, as their touching nudeness suggests. They slink, they crawl, they slide around the piano. They seem to adore the unsuspecting pianist, to want to be close to her. Puffing, snuffling and snorting, they nestle and roll around and up to the piano (…) The arc of suspense linking the musician's structured creativity and the seeming random movements of the teeming creatures around her challenges audiences to respond emotionally to this contradictory and indivisible interaction.

(Barbara Neuwirth, writer)

An alien landscape, a grand piano, a pianist. The musician concentrates, She plays. She moves herself and her audience. The landscape starts to move. It glides, it is alive. Body parts are exposed, a knee, or is it a little face? Life is awakened by the music, with the music. Mysterious creatures, monsters or aliens emerge. They shake, they flounder, they stick close to each other, seemingly astonished to be alive. They start to explore their world and each other. Staying close to the grand piano they become stronger and more confident as the music ebbs and flows around silence. The way that life outlives even the greatest silence we will all come to face. (Barbara Klein, stage director/theatre director)

(Josef Irgmaier, pianist and composer, 16.10.2015)

Pianist Aysedeniz wanders through Thierry Zabitzeff’s universe of sound. The physicality of the headless female creatures, are the visualisation of the musical tones. Both musician and creatures are totally lonely.

(Sonja Browne, choreographer)

(Barbara Neuwirth, writer)