Composed stage reviews for Berlin's largest English-language magazine, at venues including the Sophiensäle and the Volksbühne, one of Berlin's five state-funded theatres.
Dancing About
Gob Squad in the Volksbühne Roter Salon
An improv dance extravaganza, a series of confessionals, and an homage to a praying mantis, Gob Squad’s DANCING ABOUT is a dance roulette: five Gob Squad members perform a simple, repetitive dance together, while individual members step forward to make confessions to the audience, and to the praying mantis they’ve brought on stage as a symbol of their unity with nature. “I was bullied in school,” “I would kill my uncle if I could.” If the other members don’t identify with the confession, they stop dancing, leaving the confessor to share his or her story alone. When the story’s done, the dance begins anew.
It isn’t easy to tell which parts of DANCING ABOUT are improvised and which are fully scripted, but the structure of the show makes the storytelling more than intermittently reluctant. The evening I saw the show, one performer confessed his frequent visits to the gym, and seemed surprised when all the other dancers walked off stage, leaving him to fill out his bodybuilding backstory, which wasn’t dull but wasn’t quite the stuff of Shakespeare either.
Part of the point of DANCING ABOUT seems to be that sharing our humanity is fruitful, even when we don’t have a thrilling tale to tell. But hearing nearly two hours of motley stories that people seem ill-at-ease recounting, rather than set aflame to share, makes for uncomfortable rather than illuminating viewing.
This being Gob Squad, there are plenty of engaging moments. Each act ends with one actor lying on the floor, filling out the details of their confessions as their fellow members place evocative props like foam fingers and plastic lobsters around them to help them tell their tale. Filmed from above, and projected on the stage's back wall, these moments elevate the material from cleverness to something dream-like and surreal. And the piece’s opening, where the group enters dressed as insects and gyrates to the Chromatics’ "Tick of the Clock", proves a mysterious way to show off the cast’s unpolished but weirdly transfixing dance skills.
But the dancing gets less disciplined, and a bit less interesting, as the show proceeds. Throughout DANCING ABOUT, the group gestures towards Big Questions – grandiosely declaring ‘I am human!’ as they remove their insectoid masks, for example. But it’s never clear whether they’re parodying their concept, or mean us to take them seriously.
When all’s said and done, DANCING ABOUT is a night of personal sharing and cutting loose on the dance floor. That’s great, of course, but you can see something pretty similar at any number of Berlin clubs, and there you could join in.
CHANGING LOT
Various Choreographers at Dock 11
CHANGING LOT, an evening of three solo dance performances at Dock 11, begins with its weakest link, Isak Immanuel’s deliberately-paced “A Day Without Images”. Images opens with Immanuel pacing slowly in front of a projected visage of a foggy landscape, on a stage occupied by a simple mock-up of a living room (paper floor; nine plywood beams). The projection eventually disappears, leaving Immanuel to explore his onstage structure, a task he completes with no particular flair. Immanuel’s dance has striking moments, but much of his action feels ad hoc and under-realized. He moves neither in sync with his projection, nor in counterpoint to it; though he dances next to the furniture he’s assembled, he rarely engages with it. Immanuel’s assembled a large bag of tricks onstage, but it seems he hasn’t quite figured out how best to use them.
Mari Osanai’s “dance b-1” proves an altogether more affecting piece, a lesson in the simplicity that Images lacks. According to the program, Osanai was heavily affected by the earthquake and tsunamis that hit her native Japan in 2011; her piece reads as a reflection and mourning for the victims. Isolated in a spotlight, Osanai undulates to the oppressive sound of rushing water. At first her body takes on severe, almost marionette-like angles, but then begins to dissolve into softer shapes, bending and contorting as she moves out of her spotlight and begins to inhabit the entire stage. Osanai, who appears to be middle-aged, brings both maturity and a wildly impressive physicality to her dance; she knows when subtler movements are called for.
The evening closes with “Nine Steps to Dust,” choreographer-dancer Yuko Kaseki’s nod to the “kusozu,” Japanese depictions of corpses in various stages of decay. The piece’s theme hints of dire things to come, but “Dust” actually proves by far the most upbeat of the evening’s offerings. The rail-thin Kaseki begins her piece by opening a suitcase to reveal a human skeleton. She then fiddles with the skeleton – sometimes draping its arm over her shoulder like a buddy, sometimes crawling alongside it in an attempt to mimic its jerky movements. Aided by a soundscape that ranges from jungle noises to something vaguely Enya, Kaseki conveys a sense of playfulness and awe at the odd ways the human skeleton – both her own and her companion’s – can move. The piece is buoyant and, when Kaseki strikes a distorted pose, unsettling. The tone feels just right for the theme.
CHANGING LOT may drag in moments, but the evening provides a compelling view of three distinctive solo performance approaches – wisely arranged with the most engaging material saved for last.
(Click here for original review)
Things That Surround Us
Choreographed by Clément Layes at the Sophiensäle
Choreographer Clément Layes’ THINGS THAT SURROUND US begins with three men marching in circles on a blank stage, naming objects (“Stuhl”, “glass”, “bouteille”) and retrieving them from offstage. After tinkering with these props – which mostly means destroying them – the three begin their major project, pouring multicolored sand on stage and using brooms to forge it into patterns.
Things has an agreeable, somnolent quality. As the men circle the stage, you’re lulled into a pleasant meditation on nothing in particular, punctuated by the gratification of seeing patterns emerge when colors join the swept-up potpourri. Half an hour in, though, it starts to feel a great deal like a tie-dye party thrown by your grandmother on New Year’s Eve: nice enough to look at, but you’d rather be somewhere else.
Based on the program, Layes and his team are heavily concerned with the concept of “the object” – with what happens if the everyday objects around us start to lose their meaning and take on new life.
In its final moments the piece builds to something resembling a weighty contemplation of this theme. Layes’s performers add objects to their sand patterns, the music mounts, the lights dim, and the whole endeavor takes on a sinister feel as the tasks performed start to look truly taxing. Mostly, though, the stage is fairly bare, and the action less than enthralling. The performers’ somber tone alerts us that the whole thing’s very serious, but it’s hard to pinpoint why.
(Click here for original review)
Choreographer Clément Layes’ THINGS THAT SURROUND US begins with three men marching in circles on a blank stage, naming objects (“Stuhl”, “glass”, “bouteille”) and retrieving them from offstage. After tinkering with these props – which mostly means destroying them – the three begin their major project, pouring multicolored sand on stage and using brooms to forge it into patterns.
Things has an agreeable, somnolent quality. As the men circle the stage, you’re lulled into a pleasant meditation on nothing in particular, punctuated by the gratification of seeing patterns emerge when colors join the swept-up potpourri. Half an hour in, though, it starts to feel a great deal like a tie-dye party thrown by your grandmother on New Year’s Eve: nice enough to look at, but you’d rather be somewhere else.
Based on the program, Layes and his team are heavily concerned with the concept of “the object” – with what happens if the everyday objects around us start to lose their meaning and take on new life.
In its final moments the piece builds to something resembling a weighty contemplation of this theme. Layes’s performers add objects to their sand patterns, the music mounts, the lights dim, and the whole endeavor takes on a sinister feel as the tasks performed start to look truly taxing. Mostly, though, the stage is fairly bare, and the action less than enthralling. The performers’ somber tone alerts us that the whole thing’s very serious, but it’s hard to pinpoint why.
(Click here for original review)
