A scene like in a TV crime show: It is dark and the music pounds ominously as Daniel Ernesto Mueller discovers misshapen dents under the dance carpet. Dents large enough to hide a child's corpse beneath. Carefully, the performer pulls the tape from the floor and reaches underneath. He pulls out balloons. Nothing but colorful balloons. Typical Hartmannmueller: In their absurd universe between horror cabinet and illusion theater, they play their twisted game with the audience, as here in "You Are Not Alone."
Since 2011, the performance duo has been making strikingly beautiful accents in the NRW dance scene. In 2015, they received the sponsorship award from the city of Düsseldorf in the field of performing arts. From 2021 to 2023, they are now receiving the top funding from the state for the first time. Well deserved – as their works impress with excellent craftsmanship, overflowing playfulness, and current questions.
The autonomous cosmos of the duo always invites balance acts, as Simon Hartmann and Daniel Ernesto Mueller always operate at the borders. Whether suggestive horror and violence scenarios that dissolve into harmony, shrill nonsense with a literary framework, or music that can physically affect the audience – it is only a step to raw brutality, to discomfort, or to silliness. However, Hartmannmueller always offers excellent entertainment, mostly styled in the pop culture of the 70s/80s.
The two are children of that time. They met in 2006 at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. Since then, they have been an inseparable artist couple. Anyone who wanted one of them for a piece would ask for both. They came to Essen through winding paths and quite late for a dance career. Born in 1980 in Hesse to a Mexican mother and a German father, Mueller studied mathematics, sports, and German for teaching in Frankfurt am Main before starting his dance training at the age of 26. He is the extroverted doer of the duo. "I like to feel strong, I like to smell strong, I like to hear strong," he says about himself. He is also the one who brings in the extreme ideas. After training as a death companion, the theme of death suddenly became present in their pieces. After he and his life partner, choreographer Ben J. Riepe, adopted a foster child together for two years, the trained elementary school teacher Mueller was seen wearing a cardboard crown and a garbage bag around his hips as a train. During a nonsensical word barrage, he develops a magnificent mama number from the syllable "ma." In all tones and rhythms, he calls for the imaginary mother and simultaneously develops into a child seeking attention.
Simon Hartmann, on the other hand, born in 1984 in Pforzheim as the youngest of six children, has learned to hold back. His path to dance was paved by a mime teacher in the Waldorf school. He recommended Hartmann to the Desmond Jones School of Mime; Physical Theatre in London. There, the young talent first came into contact with dance and performance, fascinated by shaping and manipulating movement. There he realized that he wanted to be on stage as a dancer. And it was also there that a large part of the artistic means of Hartmannmueller was established. Anyone who has seen the younger part of the duo in "My Saturday Went Pretty Well Until I Realized It Was Monday" was amazed by his mime artistry. As a sleazy entertainer, he sits at the keyboard and grimaces to the beat of the rhythm machine – until he pauses and looks seriously into the audience. The audience, in general, is an independent being for the two that they want to take on their journey. This sometimes happens with the help of raspberry scent or glacier ice candies.
https://www.hartmannmueller.de">https://www.hartmannmueller.de</a></p><div><br><br></div>
