Self-optimization is on everyone’s tongue. So, how much does the prevailing requirement to always be happy influence our behaviour and our subjectivity? In her first HAU co-production, Dragana Bulut and her team examine the promises and paradoxes of positive psychology. To this end, life coaching plays a big role in increasing physical and mental well-being. Through the playful appropriation and deconstruction of different coaching methods, the choreographer places individual desires in contrast with the commercialization and instrumentalisation of happiness and paints an uncanny picture of the individual torn by sadness-burning life strategies. With this work, Dragana Bulut continues her staging of social choreographies, in continual pursuit of the question of how our feelings , desires and fears are commodified.

Concept, artistic direction and choreography Dragana Bulut
By and with Andrew Hardwidge, Kareth Schaffer
Dramaturgy Ana Vujanović
Lighting design Joseph Wegmann
Sound design Neda Sanai
Artistic assistance Helen Schröder
Press and production björn & björn

Production: Dragana Bulut. Co-production: HAU Hebbel am Ufer. Funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe. Supported by PACT Zollverein Essen and Station Service for Contemporary Dance Belgrade. Thanks to: Chris Scherer, Alex Baczynski-Jenkins, Zeina Hanna, Ksenija Djurović, Janja Valjarevic