Gimme Shelter

Performance Installation by Tanzinitiative Hamburg with Isa Melsheimer und Frank Willens, Ulrike Bodammer and Elijas
Photographed at Kampnagel, Hamburg 2010

In this project visual artist Isa Melsheimer together with the dancer/choreographer couple Frank Willens and Ulrike Bodammer and their son Elijas are staging the „shelter space“ together with the audience. In the installation GIMME SHELTER a classical nuclear family welcomes the audience as their guests, allows an unknown visitor into their private “utopia”. Father, mother and son, in biblical history this constellation of people even carries the image and idea of redemption. However, looking at ancient mythology, the family is often synonymous with violence and pain. And in precarious times like ours it means a challenge, in particular within the dancer’s profession. Openness is a central issue, open for the unexpected. In a sense as French philosopher Jaques Derrida has stated hospitality as an ethic principle “without condition” the installation creates openness for common experience, common time, in which we might spend the evening together singing a child to sleep.