For minutes, the naked performers – five women and one man – crawl on all fours across the floor of St. Elisabeth Church. A female voice from the tape explains that the healing process has already begun. The lecture with which the audience is sprinkled here is lulling.
Daina Ashbee begins the first group piece “J’ai pleuré avec les chiens – Time, Reaction, Destruction” like a therapy session, which was shown as part of “Tanz im August”. The Canadian with Dutch and indigenous roots has made a name for herself with hard-hitting pieces. This time she demanded a lot from her performers.
They mount each other, which is not so easy – in the high summer temperatures, the bodies are sweaty. They growl and bark like a pack of aggressive dogs. One is beginning to wonder about the therapeutic benefits of excessive barking. But obviously Daina Ashbee is on the yoga trip.
And so the creatures splay and bend in challenging yoga poses, balancing on their partners’ backs. Or they can be lifted up on the feet of their lying companions. That sounds less like a ritual and more like a performance show. The piece ends with a circle chorgy. Shout it all out seems to be the motto. But there is little sign of a cathartic experience. All that remains for the audience is to take a close look at the anatomies of the dancers in the fading daylight.
Floor-length pleated skirts, blouses and conservative bonnets – the nine dancers of the Catalan company La Veronal are modestly veiled at first. But the piece “Sonoma” unfolds a much greater radicalism than Daina Ashbee’s nude gymnastics. The choreographer Marcos Morau is internationally celebrated as the creator of surrealistic imagery; his enigmatic stage plays are characterized by an extravagant imagination. “Sonoma” is again inspired by Luis Buñuel.
But Morau was also inspired by the religious rites and processions of his homeland. The nine dancers first surround a large wooden cross lying on the floor and slowly loosen the ropes that are wrapped around the beams. Later they stretch ropes and run in circles – they seem like goddesses of fate spinning the thread of life.
The beatitudes the women sing are at first based on the gospel, but it becomes an all-encompassing prayer that includes the many that have otherwise been forgotten. With black robes and veiled faces, the dancers seem like a crowd of penitents. But the constricted women begin to rebel against the patriarchal constraints.
Marcos Morau designed a choreography with complex movement patterns. At first you see abrupt gestures that have something unruly about them. Lightning-fast arm movements, spread and prickly. Bodies tipping over, collapsing and bouncing up again. Then the nine merge into a multifaceted collective body and undergo numerous transformations.
This is extremely vividly choreographed and precisely danced. The great music collage combines female choirs from all over the world with pop and classical sounds. Two figures with oversized heads of old women are then locked in a box.
Exuberant as children, the dancers in snow-white dresses romp across the stage, play with flares and catapult themselves into a whirl. Later they parade across the stage with opulent wreaths of flowers – a cult of femininity. “Sonoma” is an exuberant piece, rich in movements, images, sounds and thoughts. The fabulous dancers free their bodies and their voices and unleash furious energy. They end up banging their drums angrily and proclaiming, “We’re the last chance. The revolution.” Deep black and dreamy light – a brilliant spectacle.
