Rosentraum | Dream of a Rose

The project “Rosentraum“ or in English “Dream of a Rose“ is a collaborative project between two female artists. It is initiated by Hannah Schillinger, a Berlin based contemporary dance artist and realized together with Myscha Oréo, an Amsterdam based photography artist, within three encounters. The photo series is connected to a dance Solo with the same title.

"Rosentraum" invites you to let yourself dive into an ocean full of dreams. To leave our binary world of rationality and thought behind for a moment, to become vulnerable and to listen to your inner universe. In the dance piece, I embody the seed of a rose and accompany it during its process of growth. I witness how the young rose discovers and perceives the world and share this process with the audience. Roses, while being fully aware of their own transience, naturally develop into the most beautiful flower they can possibly be within the time and the resources they have. Isn’t that an astonishing thing to learn from?

Suddenly, I remember sitting in the pubic library in Amsterdam, I got the idea of adding a series of photos to the dance piece. I strongly felt that this creative process was at the same time a big transformative process for me. I wanted to capture this moment by capturing the essence of the piece through some other medium. A medium, which would last longer than just the duration of the performance. Later the same day, I stumbled across the art of Myscha. Instantly, I felt a deep connection to her photography. The pure, true aesthetics of her images, the intimacy she creates, the non existence of time, the sensitivity to the sacred space of the female body. I wanted her perception to meet my artistic ideas. Even though I barely had the right words to express my feelings, she intuitively understood what I was searching for when we talked about the collaboration in our first meeting.

The second time we met, was the day of the photoshoot. I brought the 36 square meter big fabric, which I am working with in the dance piece. Myscha brought one analogue camera to shoot on 120mm film and a digital one. It was a fresh day in a movielike, but rough scenery at the Dutch coast. The wind was blowing strongly, making the sand fly and shaping the dunes into soft, round roads.

It feels like the wind is talking to us through the fabric, guiding us through this magnificent landscape and transforming the blue cloth into an ocean full of waves. This time, we are diving together into this ocean full of dreams. We are leaving the binary world of rationality and thought behind and are listening to our inner universes. We become witnesses of a dialogue between the earth, the wind and the water. It feels like all the elements are melting together and become one. In the midst of this unifying encounter, the eyes of Myscha’s heart are embracing the vulnerable, sacred space of my soul…

The third time we met, we spent one day drinking tea, eating bread with hummus, crying out of laughter together and looking at the images we created. In the end, we decided for these 11 photographs as the final selection of our series “Rosentraum“.

These photos are of incredibly high value to me. Myscha managed to not only capture the essence of the dance piece, but also the state of my soul at that time. The roses taught me that our purpose, too, is to become the most beautiful souls we can possibly be. On the time scale, “Rosentraum” marks the end of my bachelor studies of “Modern Theatre Dance“ at the University of the Arts in Amsterdam and the beginning of my master studies in “Choreography“ at the Ernst Busch University in Berlin. In connection to that, I would like this project also to be a call for female empowerment in the contemporary dance and theatre scene, where patriarchic and hierarchic structures are still very present. But most of all, it supports every human in following the path of their heart.