george tabori award 2014

<h2>First Prize</h2>

The First Prize, endowed with 20,000 Euro, goes to the Berlin opera company NOVOFLOT, founded in 2002, around Sven Holm, Vicente Larrañaga, Malte Ubenauf and Dörte Wolter. The ever-changing ensemble of excellent singers, musicians and actors surprises with unique experimental project formats, world premieres and rediscoveries of forgotten works. At the center of these interdisciplinary productions stand an aesthetic experimental design and confrontation with counterintuitive music and complex materials – with the central aim of imaginative appropriation of contemporary opera and deriving pleasure from hysteria, paranoia and irrational chaos. The interaction between singing, music and acting, as well as the interplay of theatrical spaces, specific locations and the ego-motion of the audience provoke disconcertion, curiosity and reevaluation of conventions.
www.novoflot.de

<h2>Advancement Prize</h2>

The Advancement Prize of 10,000 Euro, associated with a residence of several weeks at Ostseebad Kühlungsborn valued at 10,000 Euro, donated by the cultural society “Mecklenburg inspiriert”, goes to the Berlin Theater o.N. In its current constellation the children and youth theater – once emerged from the free DDR dance group Zinnober – continues the tradition of material-oriented and body conscious aesthetics. With its experimental and at the same time interdisciplinary exploration of the world of children from the age of two, the ensemble sets trends and standards both in nationally and internationally for this form of theater. They established the international theater festival FRATZ as a platform for producers and organizers of projects for the young audience. Furthermore Theater o.N. raises national questions about cultural education through their approach to biographical theater and their participative projects with people of all ages and from all social or cultural backgrounds.
www.theater-on.com

<h2>First Honorary Award</h2>

The 15 member associations of the Performing Arts Fund decided at their annual meeting to award a “george tabori honorary award” for the first time this year. This honorary award goes to Compagnie Sasha Waltz & Guests for their extraordinary artistic achievements since its founding 20 years ago.
Their dance and musical theater projects have made the Berlin-based company into an internationally recognized ensemble for performing arts. Since 1993 Sasha Waltz & Guests has travelled to over 50 countries on all five continents and reached more than 800,000 people with their 1,850 performances.
The Performing Arts Fund first funded the company in 1993 and is happy to announce the performance of an excerpt from the dance production “Travelogue I – Twenty to eight” - developed 20 years ago – at the awarding of the “george tabori award” on May 22, 2014 in the Haus der Berliner Festspiele.
“Starting with the production of contemporary dance the company impressively grapples with the modern and the inheritance of dance and with international ballet artists, visual arts, opera, contemporary and classical music, film, and architecture develops new formats such as ‘Choreographic Opera’, the ‘Choreographic Concert’, ‘Scenic Installations’ and the interdisciplinary exploration ‘Dialogues’, explains the Chairperson of the Fund, Ilka Schmalbauch.
Furthermore the committee emphasizes that under the artistic direction of Sasha Waltz, the company has become a prime example for the participation of broad social strata of all generations in dance, classical and contemporary music, in addition to their involvement in diverse transfer and educations projects and developing a national and international network to that purpose.
www.sashawaltz.de