Defending freedom

Political dance theatre is not dead. It is not even threatened by extinction – even if the orgies of self-reference that dominated the stage during the 90ies and continue to have an effect today have fed this fear. Interventionist dance of German origin, the critical, abstracting social analysis by successors of Kurt Jooss, Hans Kresnik, Gerhard Bohner and Pina Bausch has recently gained a new lease of life in manifold forms: sarcasm in Jochen Roller, challenge in Constanza Macras, humour in Marguerite Donlon, sensitivity in Christian Spuck, roughness in Sasha Waltz – the greatest controversy, however, in Helena Waldmann. The most recent pieces by the Berlin choreographer let us hope that dance will continue to be able to interfere in the way of the world, without descending into agitprop, and that abstraction does not necessarily equal escapism. Under the title ’Letters from Tentland’ Waldmann researched the concept of freedom together with a group of Iranian women, and created the ingenious metaphor of dancing tents to illustrate both the infinite possibilities and the limited space of our freedom. The fact that the work could be made in Iran, where theatre dance has been a taboo for more than 20 years, yet again proved the power of aesthetic means to transcend borders. The ensemble produced 43 brilliant performances in 17 countries, until the Iranian government intervened eventually, suggesting to the dancers that it would really be in their own interest to forego dancing. As a result, Helena Waldmann cast six exiled Iranian women for a reprise. ’Return to sender’ is the title of this further attempt to break up boundaries, which has its German premiere in September: an intervention against the limitations of our current migration debates and the apocalyptic rhetoric of the prophets proclaiming the clash of cultures. ’My tents are like envelopes, and the people contained within are messages worth the effort of reading’, Waldmann says. What did we know about Iranian women? And what did our oft-praised freedom really consist of, if not the chance to discover the worlds outside of our familiar world? ’Hopefully not the terror of consumer society, or walking around in mini skirts.’ Helena Waldmann’s method is the enlightenment of enlightenment, i.e. a radical questioning, also of ourselves. The tough refugee piece ’Crash’ which she staged together with Marguerite Donlon in spring 2006 is about all those tragic figures who keep storming the fortified external borders of Europe in vain. Waldmann’s theatre shatters our composure and bears the moral contradictions of the present. It does not make for comfort about the shortcomings of our species, but it criticises us with spectacular images and in an intellectually advanced style.

Evelyn Finger, Jahrbuch ballettanz 2006

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