TANZ IM AUGUST
21-23 AUGUST

After arriving, I found my way to UferHallen, a rehearsal studio north of the city.  The U-Bahn is fairly decipherable, even for a non-German speaker, and I had good directions and a Google map.  A pair of U.S. artists, Mark Coniglio and Dawn Stoppielo, was working on their new creation, Loop Diver, a piece that would open in October at the University of Nebraska’s Lied Center.  Since Mark has moved to Berlin, they were finding it more efficient and less expensive to work in Europe.  As Mark’s contribution of media and sets was not yet in place, it was a good challenge to imagine those visual elements behind the looping choreographic material.

From there we went, in a smashing thunderstorm, to the HAU (an amalgamation of several theaters on the banks of the River Ufer, anchored by the Hebbel am Ufer) to see Parades & Changes, Replays, a re-interpretation of Anna Halprin’s pioneering 1965 work, Parades & Changes.  Directed by French choreographer Anne Collod, the work features an international cast.  Although not an exact imitation of the original work, the cast traveled to Halprin’s northern California studio (designed by her husband, Lawrence Halprin, the renowned landscape architect who died on 25 October), for her approval of the props and the working concepts.  Comparing this version to an archival film I’ve seen, the 21st century performance is much more polished and presentational but retains a fundamental honesty that was greatly appreciated by the audience.

David Zambrano’s Shock* was presented at Radialsystem V, a space that is the home of Sasha Waltz & Guests but, as a privately funded space, is also regularly rented out for meetings and conferences.  Set on the River Spree, the building was one of the old water pumping stations of Berlin.

While similar in vocabulary to Soul Project (seen at DDF 09), Shock takes place onstage, on a white floor, and is set to Requiems by Mozart and Vivaldi as well as Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender”.  This piece, for an all male cast, is structured into duets which appear highly competitive and somewhat aggressive.  Even from the more standard point of view of a seated audience, in contrast to walking among the dancers as we did for Soul Project, their energy is palpable.

*Shock was not a Tanz im August presentation.

Sunday was a beautiful sunny day and I couldn’t resist taking a boat ride on the River Spree.  Undeniably for the tourist, it nonetheless offered a new perspective on the city.

A somewhat different view of the Bode Museum.

The Akademie der Kunste is semi-hidden in the Tiergarten, a large and lush garden in the middle of the city.  Accords, a piece by Thomas Hauert, a Swiss choreographer based in Brussels, was presented in the Akademie’s theatre.  In this work, set to a wide-ranging musical collage, the highly skilled cast of seven dancers follows a score of improvisational tasks, primarily focused on following the leader.  In duets and with the full cast, the dancers try to keep up with whomever leads for a particular period of time.  The results are often comical, occasionally inspired and wholly delightful.

There was much more work to be seen in the following days, including The Song by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and this summer’s festival favourite, the Spanish flamenco dancer Israel Galvan.   But Dublin, and other festivals beyond, called.  Hopefully, I’ll be back in Berlin before another ten years go by.