Who is Hildegard von Bingen, the figure whom dancer and performer Nils Amadeus Lange has long revered?
Hildegard von Bingen was many things: a composer, an abbess, a healer, and a botanist. She lived in the 12th century and, according to her avant-garde research, she was a remarkable visionary.
Nils Amadeus Lange is fascinated both by her revolutionary discoveries in the field of plant studies and their healing powers, and by her self-taught compositions in liturgical music (music for worship), as well as her texts on the female orgasm.
Her writings, texts and scores, which remain accessible to this day, provide a wealth of material for the performer, in which queer characters and modes of action clearly emerge.
From this, Nils Amadeus Lange probes the performative nature of these tools, testing them, staging them like plant rituals, or using incense as a tool to disrupt senses and perceptions; all of which is set to a background of ancient music.

Nils Amadeus Lange (* 1989 Cologne, Germany) works as an artist, performer and lecturer in Zurich. After studying theatre at the Bern University of the Arts he has expanded his practice to various media, while still keeping a focus on dance and performance, and developing numerous international projects. At the centre of his practice is the body, which functions as a means of deconstructing social conventions and gender stereotypes.
For the past seven years he has been teaching and developing curricula in various universities, within departments varying between fashion, acting, fine arts, photography and performance; implementing alternative forms of learning and experimental approaches. He has been awarded with several art prizes of which the Swiss Art Award in 2023 and the Art Award of Canton Zurich 2022 stand out.
His works have been shown at various institutions such as Kunsthalle Basel, Kunsthalle Zürich, Manifesta Zürich, Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art Warsaw, Istituto Svizzero Rome, Belvedere 21 Vienna, Centre d‘Art Contemporain Genève, Swiss Dance Days, Zürich moves!, Gessnerallee, Frascati Amsterdam, ZÜRICH TANZT, Berliner Festspiele, Kunsthalle Bern, Les Urbaines Lausanne, Südpol Luzern, Tanzhaus Zürich und CounterPulse San Francisco, Cabaret Voltaire Zürich.