(Dance) performance extinguishes itself and leaves nothing but a trace; (dance) performance is an art form of the present.
Performative activity sets signs that disorientate, sensitize perception and evoke the ability to differentiate. Is the impetus to set art against mental impoverishment and conservatism, presumptuous?
How does reception become participation in performance and live art?
How does post-dramatic, performative acting articulate?
(Sabine Sonnenschein, 2002)

Post-dramatic theatre is theatre of the present. (The) present is necessarily erosion and slipping away of presence.
It signifies an event which empties the Now, and in this void itself lets memory and anticipation flare up. Present is not something which can be grasped conceptually, but a process of permanent self-division of the Now into ever new splinters of 'just now' and 'now soon'. It has more to do with the death of the theatre than its much-invoked 'life'.
Heiner Müller: 'The specific thing about theatre is not the presence of the living onlooker, but the presence of the transient, the potentially dying.'(...)
Present in the sense of a buoyant, dwindling attendance, which at the same time is experienced as "away", not-there, as going away already, in post-dramatic theatre crosses out dramatic representation."1
(Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatisches Theater, 1999)

"Theatre, dance should disrupt the time of the economy of the spectacular, break down the violence of the law of debt, the circular coming back to the house (of the Father)...
It will be in this new past that dance always creates whilst vanishing in our presence, where we must seek future revolutions that will inhabit our bodies, reformulate the timings for new identities, and open up spaces in which the Otherness can gesture." 2
(André Lepecki, 1996)

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1) Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatisches Theater; Verlag der Autoren, 1999, p .259-260
2) André Lepecki, Embracing the Stain: Notes on the Time of Dance, in: Performance Research; Routledge, 1996, p.107

"Dancer-choreographer Sabine Sonnenschein also throws accepted gender representation into question with her emphatically androgynous stage persona. For years she's been working on the development of a dance language compiled from an elemental, archaic movement vocabulary. In her new solo production ,EXEO' she throws out provocations to dance as an artform with a radically-applied reductive concept and a self-sufficient, self-interlocking language. Sonnenschein works in spaces within the body, with those defined by its extremities and those which comprise its immediate surroundings. ,Exeo' pits atmospheric concentration against the fragmentary diffusion of the body as social construct, showing action and reaction, pain and pleasure of the human creature which when confined to precisely-measured-out space pushes itself to its own borders."

Ballett International/Tanz aktuell 5/97

[ad EXEO:] ""The topic are spaces forming between the parts of the body, the space contained by my body and the space I define with my body when dancing. And again the space the audience occupies." - Sonnenschein shows how these spaces are related to each other, and where an individual is sheltered or endangered in them, when it feels free and when imprisoned: "Is isolation a shelter that kills?" In the performance, the dancer collides with her borders, and she tries to accept. A slow, reductive process within a hermetic, hard soundscape defined by the ambient and industrial music of Stefan Rossow."

Falter 8/97

"The festival's axis ["4+4 Days in Motion", Prague] were the solo performances, and the climax thereof were the solos by Nigel Charnock, Sabine Sonnenschein and the Portuguese performer Joao Fiadeiro. All of them presented highly stylised, formally polished creations transcending the frame of subjective confessions through their reflection of the emotional state of contemporary society. Sonnenschein showed the fragility, the vulnerability and the sad beauty of the naked body, imprisoned in a magical, impenetrable square, isolated from its surroundings."

MF DNES, Prague, 11-23-1999

[ad EXEO:] ""Body" - and everything connected to it: Enjoyment of corporeality, the search for and refusal of gender identity, beauty cult, body ideal and "anorexia nervosa" are no longer explosive issues only for today's women. Topics which affect you and get under your skin. A very candid and clear piece by Sabine Sonnenschein."

tanzAffiche 4/97

"One of the most impressing performances was Sabine Sonnenschein's solo 'Exeo'. She dances behind a transparent plastic wall to the hard noise music of Stefan Rossow, and uses her body as a malleable, 'sexless' object in space. The half-naked, androgynous dancer resembles a walking, finely chiselled sculpture. Beginning like an abstract anatomical study, the dance develops into an event of intense images and unsparing moments. Starting from simple movements, Sabine Sonnenschein's dance intensifies bordering on the ecstatic; still, she never loses control even when finally she throws herself against the plastic wall."

Der Standard, 7-28-1997

"On the same evening, the Viennese Sabine Sonnenschein in 'Exeo' showed a breathtaking excursion into a new body experience. As if the amniotic sac in Stanley Kubrick's film 'Space Odyssey' had broken, disgorging this strange being, Sonnenschein stretches her overly slender limbs and entwines them to fascinating sculptures which one will not quickly forget."

Stuttgarter Zeitung, 184, 1997

"The festival 'imagetanz 97' in dietheater Künstlerhaus this year has started with the newcomer series 'bravehearts'. Sabine Sonnenschein is not actually a new appearance but the most experimental choreographer Vienna has to offer at the moment. Her solo 'Transform', intended as preparatory work for a full-length duet, in which through her body movement she transforms the strictly geometrical order of a Malevitch square-in-a-square made of loam into a chaotic drawing, was a strong statement for the opening of 'image'. And the climax of bravehearts."

Falter, 39/97

"Sabine Sonnenschein, born in 1970, has been drawing attention for years. She does not compromise. The dancer trained in Vienna and Amsterdam has followed her career ambitiously. This year, Sabine Sonnenschein delights us with 'Transform', her tenth production by now, defined as body installation and dance performance. Her partner in the duet is Loulou Omer."

Der Standard, 7-14-1998

"Together with Loulou Omer, Sabine Sonnenschein in 'Transform' has created a dance and body installation for two performers which convinces by its ingenious lighting as well as the aesthetic co-operation of dance performance and stage design. For some time now, Sabine Sonnenschein has been working on a new, specific movement vocabulary. In 'Transform' she opposes two nearly naked women who move strictly separated in their spaces … Communication between them only occurs outside the delimited zones."

Wiener Zeitung, 7-28-1998

"With Sabine Sonnenschein, one of the most consequent local performers presented the most interesting piece of the evening during the festival "PANDORA 2000" in dietheater Konzerthaus. "form ance" she calls her short solo dance piece treating perception in space with a very subtle play of light and shadow and minimalist movement sequences. Every movement seems to be engendered from inner necessity, breathes controlled energy within an austere form."

Neue Zeit, 13. 2. 2000