You know a work of art is successful when it manages to change the way you see things, even so slightly. It is a process that cannot be undone, and that is precisely what happened to me during Next Generation at the Tischlerei of the Deutsche Oper, watching nine choreographic works by the Staatsballett dancers. Formerly a workshop for the opera, the Tischlerei is now a black box for performative experiments and installations. Bound by the format and equity, my writing focuses mainly on the choreographic ‘merits’, so the performers’ skills, effort and engagement are only mentioned as a group.
The first half of the programme started with Ständchen, or a short song dedicated to one’s beloved, by Aurora Dickie on Schubert, brilliantly played live by Wolf Hoeyberghs on the piano. In terms of form, the movement material is slightly in the style of John Cranko, with hasty traditional (cis-)duets and solo parts, it left me with a “why?” in search of meaning or emotion.
Instead, ecological awareness flowed into Tabatha Rumeur's and Théo Just's waving movements in H2O by Just. Fluid and quicksilver, the dancers morphed, from substance to eels to humans. The voices in Olov Yacob’s potent soundscape made the message clear: the function of water to sustain all life should be preserved. Would the dance stand without soundscape?
For Vivian Assal Koohnavard’s unsettling Parvaneh, I wished for programme notes. Two dancers in skin-coloured bodysuits morphed and distorted their bodies in front of three tableaux of changing colours. Sometimes they were the mirror, the partner, and sometimes the enemy. The impression it gave me was of Dante's Inferno and the clumps of the damned, trapped there.
Sleekly goofy, Dinner for Two sat between Man in Black and Pulp Fiction’s dance scene. In the comic relief by Pauline Voisard and Alexander Abdukarimov a dysfunctional alpha-couple ran and hid to eat a banana and an apple. A lot of fuss that ended with a kiss mediated by an apple. Overall: great attention to the details in movement and setting.
The last piece, Different Kinds of Love by Gustavo Chalub, impressed me with the immersive space created by the simple use of smoke and a disco ball with the dancers partially visible through the fog and reflected light. The anchoring element, the gramophone added a retro touch transporting us from home listening into a dance hall with couples dancing.
For the second part, two tattoo chairs were on stage for LITTI by Shaked Heller. The dancers’ backs were completely visible. The minimal dance of their distorted torsos was tied to the chair: the eyes were allowed to rest on their ribcages, registering the small changes in movement quality between floating and spasm. Distracted by my concerns about the chairs collapsing, I focused on different kinds of relationships with gravity they could offer.
My favourite of the evening was The Frequency, a solo by Ross Martinson in which he danced and acted. The jerky quality interspersed with fluid movements reminded me of Goecke’s tick-infused language, though Martison has added an inorganic, sometimes robotic twist. With the relation between movement and language similar to Pite’s The Statement, Martison’s associative dialogue is inventive and powerfully unsettling, questioning if he's performing for us or if we are the voyeurs.
Clotilde Tran's atmospheric Fragments was set in a simple but effective way using three large balloons covered in a thin plastic veil — two floating forming cabins one lying on the floor. The dancers moved individually in the structures and then as a group in unison in front of them. As there was no specific theme and as the title seems to indicate, it will be interesting to see how the work develops after its strong first impression.
Another favourite was Phoenicopterus by Dominik White Slavkovsky. Clearly along the lines of Ekman’s humour, treatment of themes and movement material, the piece substituted flamingos for swans — and here I had my epiphany: what would happen if we went beyond the swans of ballet and had ‘swan lakes’ with different birds? In Phoenicopterus: a boy in black (a toxic macho) fancies the white flamingo, the leader of the group; he manages to seduce her and destroy her.
The whole evening felt like a starter for what is to come and it should be noted that the works presented were created and rehearsed in the dancers' free time. The format is essential in nurturing a new generation of choreographers. It is the best training ground to jump-start a career. Many now world-famous names started this way before moving on to bigger productions.
Who knows if, in a few years, we will recognise a name on a billboard?
