Programme 2010

Dear friends of the Ruhrtriennale,

Welcome to the Ruhrtriennale 2010, my second season as artistic director of this wonderful festival.

Following last year’s programme, which marked a successful start to our three year cycle dedicated to a search for primal moments in art and spirituality, we would like to continue this exciting investigative journey by focussing this year on Islamic culture.  We hope that we can entice you to join us and accompany us on our artistic and spiritual travels.  Making the most of the absolutely boundless potential of the industrial spaces in the Ruhrgebiet and the infinite possibilities they offer for artistic exploration and inspiration remains the central motivation and passion of our work.  In the most varied ways, with unconventional new creations, music theatre and drama, dance and concert productions, readings, symposia, films and special programmes for children and young people, we wish to reanimate the halls of the Ruhrtriennale and in return to let the work of our artists be charged with the power of these spaces.

In this year the world looks to the Ruhrgebiet as the Cultural Capital of Europe and the Ruhrtriennale programme offers the most compelling testimony to the vitality, ambition, diversity and strength of artistic excellence in the region.   This also includes you, our audience, because without you watching and listening every piece of theatre or concert or evening of dance, all our fleeting art works are simply self-indulgence.  However, if we embark on a journey into the unknown together and are prepared each evening for a new, spontaneous and surprising encounter with human and artistic primal moments, only then will our art be what it ought to be, a powerful collective and individual experience, transforming us all and opening new avenues for our thinking and feeling.

Let our programme inspire you to undertake your own “migration”.  With best wishes in anticipation of a summer together at the Ruhrtriennale.