Meet Mr. R

In the myth of the founding of Rome, Romulus kills his brother Remus. This work suggests that Romulus must kill the Remus in himself if he is to take on the role of founder/leader. He would rather stay wild and with the wolves, but without destroying the wildness and freedom of nature, without caging the she-wolf who nursed him, he cannot live in the modern world. Meet Mr. R (1995) explores the binaires of wild and civilized, free and regulated. It asks the question of what price one is willing to pay to choose one side or the other.

Hellmut Gottschild is a noted figure in Philadelphia dance. He cofounded Group Motion in Berlin in 1962 and, in 1968, relocated to Philadelphia, where he continued to work with Group Motion and received critical recognition by performing works such as Countdown for Orpheus at Judson Church in New York in 1968, performing at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in 1969, and joining the National Endowment for the Arts touring program in the 1970s. Gottschild then founded Zero Moving Dance Company in 1972, a leading modern dance company that performed throughout the Philadelphia region and toured in Europe. From 1968–96 he served on the dance faculty at Temple University. Currently, Gottschild performs with his wife, dancer/scholar/writer Dr. Brenda Dixon Gottschild, in a form of somatic and research-based collaboration for which they coined the term, "movement theater discourse."