Subtle Technologies, 10th Annual Festival Innis Town Hall, University of Toronto. May 25, 2007, 8pm. Dance, Robotics & Butoh Bubble Claudia Wittmann choreography and performance Paul Couillard source coach This work puts the human body in the center and lets it speak of its relationship with words and mortality. Words and mortality are central in medicine. Medical scientists and doctors write scientific papers, books, diagnosis, prognosis, reports and prescriptions, all of these in one way or another related to our mortality. When we become medical patients, we float in between diagnosis and death and both of these feel as if they were outside of us. I want to see what happens when i listen to how words and mortality relate in my own body. Biography Claudia Wittmann has studied biology in Switzerland (PhD, 1997) and the philosophy of science in Toronto (MA, 2000). She shifted her focus to dance performance in 1999 when she started to learn butoh with Paul Ibey (UK). She subsequently trained in butoh, mainly with SU-EN for whom she performed in 2002, 2003 and 2005 in Stockholm. Claudia also has basic experience in movement improvisation which she owes especially to Susanna Hood, Rebecca Todd and Dawne Carleton (Toronto). She started to show her own work which deals with body memory in 2003. Her recent pieces have been coached by artist Paul Couillard (Toronto) who contributes his experience with the curricula of experimental theatre researcher Jerzy Grotowski to her process. Photography: Miklos Legrady