"I already had to improvise a lot at the Wigman School, and I kept asking myself: Why am I doing this? Where do the movements lead? It shouldn’t be overly sentimental. You can drivel around with movements just as you can with words. They hammered the unacceptability of that into me there at the Wigman.
In the end, there has to be a clear statement and a clear feeling.
The quality of a piece always also has something to do with the quantity of what has been thrown out. You just leave what is really necessary. It’s a long process – in all the arts. It’s cutting a diamond. What I have learned in my career is that too many movements weaken a choreography. I work with various partners in very different set-ups, from commissioned choreographies for independent companies to established municipal theatres.
My own productions were produced mainly in the Hebbel-Theater, Berlin, and the Choreographisches Zentrum PACT Zollverein Essen."
In the end, there has to be a clear statement and a clear feeling.
The quality of a piece always also has something to do with the quantity of what has been thrown out. You just leave what is really necessary. It’s a long process – in all the arts. It’s cutting a diamond. What I have learned in my career is that too many movements weaken a choreography. I work with various partners in very different set-ups, from commissioned choreographies for independent companies to established municipal theatres.
My own productions were produced mainly in the Hebbel-Theater, Berlin, and the Choreographisches Zentrum PACT Zollverein Essen."
Susanne Linke
Susanne Linke is a special case among the most influential choreographers of German Tanztheater. She studied at the dance department of the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen just like Pina Bausch, Reinhild Hoffmann and some other younger dancers. But her formal aesthetic influences come more from the prior period, which she spent in Mary Wigman’s studio in Berlin. This is where she also met Dore Hoyer: her great idol. That has almost automatically brought her closer to the Ausdruckstanz of the twenties, than all of her colleagues combined (with the exception of the quite a bit younger Henrietta Horn) and has let her ripen into the greatest solo dancer, the German dance scene has produced since that time.
Of course, she possesses the choreographic skills of Tanztheater, the collage and montage of disparate material into an enlightening whole, and her best ensemble pieces, from “Frauenballett“ and “Ruhr-Ort“ to “Märkische Landschaft“, are among the most important large productions within the history of Tanztheater. But her real speciality has always been solo work, from small-format pieces in the beginning (such as “Wandlung“ or “Im Bade Wannen“) to the full-length “Schritte verfolgen“, culminating in that program, which forged a massive link between history and the present with its extension of the “Affectos humanos“, inherited from Dore Hoyer. Her newest piece also belongs in this category. Maybe she has surrendered herself a bit too much to video in “Akut“. But still her dance resists the sands of time, resists aging. “Akut“ is an equal demonstration of high art: it is, so to speak, a triumph of will over the fleeting nature of time.
Of course, she possesses the choreographic skills of Tanztheater, the collage and montage of disparate material into an enlightening whole, and her best ensemble pieces, from “Frauenballett“ and “Ruhr-Ort“ to “Märkische Landschaft“, are among the most important large productions within the history of Tanztheater. But her real speciality has always been solo work, from small-format pieces in the beginning (such as “Wandlung“ or “Im Bade Wannen“) to the full-length “Schritte verfolgen“, culminating in that program, which forged a massive link between history and the present with its extension of the “Affectos humanos“, inherited from Dore Hoyer. Her newest piece also belongs in this category. Maybe she has surrendered herself a bit too much to video in “Akut“. But still her dance resists the sands of time, resists aging. “Akut“ is an equal demonstration of high art: it is, so to speak, a triumph of will over the fleeting nature of time.
Jochen Schmidt
