Image: Lutz Werner
Even before the official start of the festival week on Friday next week at Greinburg Castle, the Danube Festival Weeks in Strudengau set innovative accents with local artists as a prelude, so to speak.
This includes this year’s inclusion project at the Festwochen. The music and movement teacher Elisabeth Riegler, who grew up in Grein and now lives in Vorarlberg, is taught under the motto “It’s that simple!” Read out episodes from the life of “Greti” and her journey through life: “… and then Greti decided to beat life with its own weapons. Hers were too good for her, she saved them for very special occasions.” As a result, Greti and the audience find themselves in hearty and touching situations, encounter strange characters and perhaps a piece of themselves. The illustrations for these language images are provided – pointedly and tenderly at the same time – by Helmut Haider, artist of the “Atelier am Ufer” of Lebenshilfe Grein.
For Riegler, who has been working with people with disabilities for many years, the reading is in many respects a return to the scene of her youth: “The Donaufestwochen accompanied me personally for several years: for a few years as a girl for everything, I was allowed to look behind the scenes of the cultural scene, which I partly pushed myself. In doing so, I gained valuable experience in dealing with people.”
The collaboration between Elisabeth Riegler and Helmut Haider has recently been published as a book and will be presented for the first time at the reading today at 7 p.m. in the “20er Hof” on Greiner Hauptstrasse.
But not only Grein is already under the spell of the Danube Festival. In the Mühlviertel Nature Park, the sculptor Willibald Katteneder dedicates his art in public space to the field of tension “Human – Nature”: “inbetween” can be seen for three weeks, from July 25th to August 15th, at the Großdöllnerhof in Rechberg and is freely accessible.
Source: Nachrichten
