RODEO
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For the first and only time, two biennial independent scene festivals combined to form a major double festival from 7 October to 15 October 2022: Freischwimmen meets Rodeo. Over nine days, local and international dance, theatre and performance artists came together in Munich. Freischwimmen meets Rodeo was the first festival to be organised by HochX - winner of the 2021 Federal Theatre Prize - on its own initiative. With this double festival, they showed how colourful and lively the independent performing arts are - even and especially in times of crisis. We invite you to come together, discover new things, discuss and celebrate.

Art as such must and must continue to address contemporary issues in order to be truly relevant. For the organisers of RODEO 2020, diversity, cultural participation, social justice and confronting right-wing extremism and racism were the top priorities.

Dance, theatre and (music-)performance from Munich, national guest performances, excursions into the urban space, exhibition and networking formats, WIPs, readings and discussions will be presented over four days. With partially free admission, the public is invited to watch and interact, to discuss and, of course, to celebrate. The selected productions range from dance performances and posthuman theatre installations to an evening of theatre about desire. The programme also includes a hip-hop radio play, a bus ride through urban space and yodelled art manifestos. RODEO will be asking how and whether a city inscribes itself into the work of artists in a lecture followed by a discussion.

Over four days, the festival presents selected dance, theatre and performance productions from Munich, national collaborations and networks, excursions into the urban space as well as other discursive formats and, of course, parties. For the first time, the ‘Bloom Up’ scholarship programme will also take place in co-production with the Goethe-Institut and showcase the work of international collaborations.

RODEO 2014 presents twelve productions over five days, including five world premieres. In both dance and theatre, each production bears witness to its very own, possibly specifically Munich aesthetic signature, which distinguishes the quality of the selected works. This year's concept also includes artistic forays and interventions in the urban space as well as discursive platforms, concerts and parties. RODEO thus fills a theatrical space that stretches across the city to create new contexts and open the view to unusual dance and theatre experiences.

Rodeo 2012 will provide a platform for artists from the local scene who deliberately do not show their productions in permanent venues, but regularly in public spaces, in ‘non-places’ or in places not designated as art spaces. Artists will be travelling through the city and will bring themselves into urban life as a ‘reflective membrane’ of social processes.

The dance and theatre festival of the independent Munich scene was taking place for the first time that year. RODEO MÜNCHEN was a festival where you had the opportunity to get to know the diversity and strength of Munich's unconventional heroes and heroines. Over the five days of the festival, they would climb into the arena and present themselves to the public in a risk-taking manner. The wild south is calling!