Tanz

There is so much dance at German theatres. Its forms, styles and themes are as various as the places where it appears.




Do we have a dance paradise thanks to this abundance and the federally sponsored Dance Plan Germany? Yes and no, for in the concert of the arts, dance continues to have the softest voice alongside the swelling fanfares of the museums and the powerful entries of film, literature, drama, opera and of course music. Yet has not the constant fight for survival made dance sharper than its colleagues? The most sensitive and most contemporary player when it comes to the dialogue with the world, in which each individual may or must put one foot before the other in the absence of any guiding choreography?

Independent scene

This description particularly applies to the so-called independent scene, those groups and lone wolves that romp beyond the precincts of the municipal theatres. Few choreographs and ensembles have their own stage: Meg Stuart at the Volksbühne, Sasha Waltz at the Radialsystem and Toula Limnaios at the Halle (all in Berlin), VA Wölfl at the Marstall Schloss Benrath, and William Forsythe who has been commuting since 2004 with his scaled-down company from Frankfurt to Dresden and Zürich. Most choreographers cannot afford to work continuously with one group and instead engage in various projects, often solo, appearing at several stages or festivals, or finding at most temporary shelter at venues for guest productions such as the Sophiensaelen and the HAU in Berlin, Kampnagel in Hamburg, Tanzhaus NRW in Düsseldorf, PACT Zollverein in Essen, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt a.M., Schwankhalle in Bremen, artblau Tanzwerkstatt in Hannover and Joint Adventures in Munich. Even this success is granted only a few productions, and the super-flexible (also recently called "precarious") existence of professional dancers, who come to Germany from all over the world, is reflected in the themes of their performances.

Why dance?

Nothing is certain any longer, everything should and can be put in question, and dance in any case. Identity and presentation: searching for the "I" between reality and fiction. To be visible or disappear? Dancers make themselves audible on stage and speak; some narrate entire stories; for instance, Jochen Roller and Martin Nachbar who explain the crazy life of an "independent dancer" and reflect on the purchasability of movement. Constanza Macras's exuberant group pieces concern themselves with the rubbish left over from the market and advertising. Film and pop music often serve for placing scraps of biography within a contemporary context. Karaoke-reproduced voices and the citing of gestures pose the question as to what extent the body and its expressions are "authentic" or genuine. Constantly improving sound and film projection techniques contribute to jarring the spectator's perception, as in Eszter Salamon's biographical album And then. She weaves into mementoes the fact that one's personal destiny is set within a politically conditioned horizon, a theme which is also impossible to overlook in Helena Waldmann's project Letters from Tentland.

Many choreographers experiment not only with spaces in or outside the theatre, but also reconstruct the boundary with the spectator, in installations, for example, or dismantle it, as in some of Felix Ruckert's performances or Waldmann's Feierabend (2008). Some dance presents the spectacle of movement to the point of visible exhaustion; some seeks drive and fluency; some the raddled and lurching. Whoever cannot find his way in this turmoil just doesn't budge. The de-accelerators, Raimund Hoghe, VA Wölfl, Morgan Nardi, Christine Brunel and others, each in his or her own way, make even a tiny movement into a sensation.

Dance theatre

Delving into everyday subjects of nearness and distance, control and freedom, and having the dancers actively participate in shaping the choreography, is normal procedure particularly for the choreographers of smaller groups. This method once made dance theatre strong. The impact that which made its social criticism the object of hostility, and then of admiration, has largely faded away on municipal stages. Yet the dance theatre of cities like Münster, Gelsenkirchen and Darmstadt continues to exhilarate its public. In Wuppertal, Pina Bausch imported impressions of India in a piece from 2007, and her Vollmond (i.e., Full Moon) in 2006 had about it, with its moats, something of a nocturnal longing for an unbridled life. In Bonn, that always rebellious other icon of dance theatre, Johann Kresnik, created a distinguished piece about Hannelore Kohl; now, however, in 2008, the entire dance branch of the former capital is soon to be sawn off, while the same fate awaits Bremen's dance theatre tradition through the fusion with Oldenburg's company.

Ballet

Ballet, in its more or less classical and neo-classical forms, still has its place at big municipally and state financed theatres from Hamburg to Munich. Lacking a big corps de ballet, some choreographers with companies of up to twenty members have developed new forms, whose vocabulary of movement is more flexible, where body lines are frequently broken and dancers move more quickly and nearer the ground. Elements of modern dance and contemporary loose-jointed techniques have become a matter-of-course, as with Margaret Donlon in Saarbrücken, Amanda Miller in Cologne, Stephan Thoss in Wiesbaden, each in his or her own style, and also for Romeo and Juliet or Giselle. Martin Schläpfer in Mainz (who will be moving to the ballet in Düsseldorf/Duisburg in 2009) meets the general volatility with reduction and a prismatic vision, with dance that has become a corporeal figment of imagination from a waking dream.

So much dance in Germany: so many forms of movement to see.