Joshua Monten

«How to Do Things with Words» is a pas de deux between bodies and graphic text, between language and movement. How can you dance with text? What new meanings emerge when dancers put labelled objects into motion? The results range from the literal to the poetic, from the meaningful to the absurd.

Printed signs may be somewhat shallow, but they still manage to add a surprising depth to a dance performance. Exuberant physicality with its detailed movement language colours a black and white landscape of printed text fragments. The dancers play hide and seek in the cloudy complexity of meanings, inviting the audience to actively participate in the search for their interpretation.

The Swiss-American choreographer Joshua Monten was born near New York City. He studied literature and cultural anthropology at Duke University before discovering dance at the relatively late age of 20. As a dancer Joshua has performed with Bern Ballett and Stadttheater Heidelberg and worked with an array of choreographers, including Stijn Celis, Hofesh Shechter, Irina Pauls and Tino Sehgal. In 2012, he founded his own dance company which has subsequently toured the world. Joshua has been a lecturer for dance at the Hochschule der Künste Bern since 2021.

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