Works
The ‘Station to Station” project sponsored by the Deutsche Bahn began in early autumn 2022 in Dresden with the aim of opening up poetic spaces in everyday station life and commences in the Fall of 2024 in the Berlin Philharmonie. The long journey around Gustav Mahler’s ‘Song of the Earth’ is intended to become a guide to the human journey itself. The “Station to Station” project is a plea for an expansion of the basis for humanity – where our everyday life seems the most mundane. In the train station it becomes an event.
Last year (Fall 2023) the Lausitz Festival presented its first dance project, »Gletscher» (Glacier), directed by Haggai Cohen-Milo and choreographer Margaux Marielle-Tréhoüart. This year, the two will continue their music/dance/theater partnership in Cottbus’s Hangar 1, creating a new work in collaboration with members of the local dance scene and confirming the importance of dance in the festival’s program.
A central focus of Cohen-Milo’s and Marielle-Trèhoüart’s work together is the attempt to combine music and dance by inventing a common grammar, as it were. Shared playing rules make it possible to interact with the Other in a meaningful way. Large parts of the »Glacier« project were created in this manner.
Now the two artists will expand this principle in a collaborative music and dance project with dancers and choreographers from the Lausitz region. Everyone will use the rules of the familiar game »Telephone» to generate movements and musical gestures that will be woven together to create a fascinating encounter with the Other: at the beginning, a dance sequence is shown and then a commentator describes it to a second choreographer who attempts to recreate it – as if one were to attempt to recreate a football game simply by listening to a reporter’s live commentary on the radio. The music will also be based on such a process. The commentators will be Lausitz people from all walks of life. In this way, the music and choreography will be taken on a journey through the region and its dance scene. Miscommunication will create variety and become the source of something new and unique.
The festival’s growing dance division will once again present an original Lausitz production that raises an important question, not only for this region: under what conditions can encounters between very different people occur that allow them to retain their differences while setting a process of change in motion? In this production, the answer is both complicated and simple: by agreeing to certain playing rules, all of the players allow each other to retain the integrity of their artistic expression, which, however, can only fully realized by communicating with the others. This gives rise to something new, something »different«. The performance imagines a new game in which the beauty of music, dance, and theater offers the possibility of positive and constructive social interactions.
“Shall I compare you to a summer’s day?” At the Deutsches SchauSpielHaus in Hamburg, the Martha Argerich Festival 2024 paves the way for a ménage à trois between poetry, chamber music and jazz. The title, taken from Sonnet No. 18, gives it away: the focus of this theatrical concert evening with Martha Argerich and guests is sonnets by William Shakespeare – and other reflections on love. It will be a wild and tender collage on the most moving topic in the world: Shakespeare meets Chopin and Liszt, the strictest literary form of the 16th century meets contemporary free jazz. For this journey of discovery, the “pianist of the century” has invited the actors Alexander Scheer and Pauline Rénevier, the pianist Mauricio Vallina and the bass virtuoso and composer Haggai Cohen-Milo. A musical and literary summit in Germany’s largest spoken theater.
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With the flamenco and jazz pianist Alex Conde, the dancer Nino de los Reyes and the singer Rafita de Madrid, outstanding artists from the scene interpret this art form between music, song and dance, which is able to express a wide variety of feelings directly like hardly any other. Haggai Cohen-Milo on double bass teases a little more jazz out of this varied evening, which promises discoveries and encounters between expression and improvisation at a world-class level.
“In the beginning was the end moraine. And God came in the form of a massive glacier, folding the Earth and revealing the resources under the ground. And then he withdrew, leaving this landscape in the middle of the world to spirits and heroes…”
For their Music Dance Theater piece, Israeli composer Haggai Cohen-Milo and French choreographer Margaux Marielle-Tréhoüart will bring musicians, singers, and dancers from around the world to the Lausitz. In the vast, empty spaces of the Danner-Halle on the grounds of the former Telux glassworks in Weißwasser, these young artists will unleash the energy that once produced glass for the world. Their performance is a powerful engine transforming raw materials, elements, and energies – a “WE” of possibilities. Cohen-Milo, Marielle-Tréhoüart, and their ensemble will develop the piece onsite, taking the pulse of the region in their work. Electric guitar, drums, bass, synthesizer, and singing will create intensely rhythmic, enchantingly melodic music that merges with the physicality of the dancers, the mesmerizing light, and the perceptions of the audience.
Spirits and heroes will appear along with their myths, legends, half-truths, lies, and swindles. The performance will become a map of devouring and devouring landscapes, unfinished history, longed-for homelands, and abandoned dreams. At the same time, the performers will gradually feel their way towards new values. Freedom from change will become the freedom to change.
The Lausitz has long been familiar with periods of disruption and transformation. »Gletscher« is a loud, extravagant, and colorful celebration of change. And although the ground beneath our feet may be different, perhaps the heavens above us are always the same.
FRAMED e.V is a non-profit organization located in Berlin. Framed supports artists and musicians by hosting events that combine quality live-music and top-notch art. Framed’s mission is to create a stimulating and empowering social environment that will bring together like-minded culture enthusiasts from diverse backgrounds and walks of life.
A new dance theater creation by choreographer and director Saar Magal, produced by the Bayerische Staatsoper, premiered at the Munich Opernfestspiele in July 2015. As musical director and composer Haggai also participated on stage as part of the musical ensemble.
In their creation process of Jephta’s Daughter choreographer Saar Magal and Haggai Cohen-Milo took bold step towards the interdisciplinary performance world. Together they embarked into a tightly woven collaboration of movement, sound and visual art. Creating the freedom for each medium to be interdependent not only for the end result but throughout the entire process of creation. The three disciplines showcased in the performance informed each other and fundamentally changed the way sound, movement and visual art is conceived.
Haggai composed an original score for the piece together with his ensemble of Mateo Lugo and James Shipp.
