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Flash Review 1, 2-5:
Orbiting Pina's World
....And Waltzing With the Astronauts
By Christine Chen
Copyright 2001 Christine Chen
BERKELEY, California
-- In her 1996 "Allee de Kosmonauten" (Avenue of the Astronauts),
presented by Cal Performances at Zellerbach Hall this weekend, choreographer/director
Sasha Waltz glimpses the tensions and dynamics between three generations
of a family living together within the confines of a single home.
In this work based on interviews Waltz conducted with the inhabitants
of an East German housing project, she offers us a steadily flowing
series of essays about relationships, families, work, dreams, reality
and existence.
In the spirit of German
Tanztheater (though Waltz denies her Bauschian ties), the energy
in "Allee" is aggressive, feverish, and unrelenting; the characters
exaggerated, neurotic, and two-dimensional; the performers passionate,
committed, and bold; the movement vocabulary idiosyncratic, virtuosic
and inventive; and the tone tragic, humorous, and grotesque. Waltz's
theater is more accessible and less stirring than Bausch's, however.
While Bausch exaggerates familiar and everyday conditions to the
point of humor, then goes further to the point of utter disintegration,
Waltz stops at the slapstick. In pushing further, Bausch infuses
her work with political and social content and forces her audience
to mobilize and respond. Waltz offers no viewpoint, but articulates
the conditions and spirit of each situation. She shows us the quirky
relationships between the different people in the household, and
the frustration stemming from the rift between the dreams and reality
for each individual.
In the tight quarters
the performers bang and walk on walls, hurl their bodies around
and generally go about their daily existence with a cartoon-like
energy and absurdity. Relationships explode, implode, converge and
digress because of the passions which can find no space to vent.
The characters are archetypal,
and are drawn with broad strokes and little subtlety. There are
the older parental figures -- the narcoleptic, bulky (rendered with
full body padding) mom and the nerdy, accordion-playing dad; the
angst-ridden younger couple -- the sexy but tortured woman and the
abusive, lusty man; and the kids -- the bright-eyed girl in knee
highs, Mary Janes and a sailor dress, and the dorky, knicker-wearing
boy. Though they are caricatures, they do illuminate some universals,
and they represent some of the extreme impulses we all have.
The set consists of a
single sofa, the back wall, and a series of television screens (arranged
with four in a square stage right, four lined up horizontally high
above center stage, and eight stacked in a high rectangle stage
left). These screens display the minimal and elegant work of filmmaker
Elliot Caplan. Exhibiting richly-hued everyday objects (a lamp,
wineglasses, a dog, etc.) as fractured and whole images, Caplan's
work unfolds organically and provides a balancing backdrop to the
frenetic activity of the live action. The program notes explained
that these videos are supposed to represent a dream world, but,
for me, their presence was significant on a more subconscious level
-- complementing the action without distracting from it (no easy
feat for multi-media installations). The richly layered music collage
of Classical, German pop, and ambient sound composed by Lars Rudolph
and Hanno Leichtmann, along with the accordion composition created
and played onstage by consummate performer Juan Kruz Diaz de Garaio
Esnaola, supported and drove the action, as well.
Some of the vignettes
in "Allee," though aptly performed by the Dance Ensemble of the
Schaubuhne Theatre, felt largely derivative and predictable: How
many times do I have to watch a woman running around in her underwear
being beat up and thrown around by a man? Or a young woman thrashing
around in angst and frustration? The more interesting material came
with the dynamics of the group interacting together. The men, in
a commentary on the tedium of work, deftly partnered each other
and a plank of wood, seamlessly and flippantly tumbling, lifting
and riding on bodies and the board with a mechanical yet human precision.
Towards the end, chaos erupts with each individual attempting to
"do their own thing" within the limited quarters. They then freeze
in a series of hilarious tableaus before stumbling into action again.
Because the driving pace
was constant, and because the material simply bumped along, never
reaching a significant climax or crisis, the piece felt just slightly
too long. The pure physicality and the amazing prowess of all the
performers was riveting, but only for so long, before I was left
wanting more.
I applaud Waltz for attempting
to infuse the German dance theater genre with a more kinetic, contact-inspired
vocabulary and sensibility, and hope she continues to evolve and
depart from Bausch's divine but dated formula as the new, young
co-director of the prestigious Berlin Schaubuhne Theatre. Cal Performances
also deserves credit for presenting Waltz amidst an otherwise safe
season (Ailey, Nederlands Dans Theater, Mark Morris, etc.). Another
added treat provided by Cal Performances (originally produced by
the Goethe Institut in 1998) was the pictorial documentary "Dance
Theatre Today: 30 Years of German Dance History" displayed in the
mezzanine of Zellerbach Hall. The exhibition contains 62 stunning
black and white photographs of the works of Pina Bausch, Johann
Kresnik, William Forsythe, Susanne Linke, Henrietta Horn, Sasha
Waltz and others -- though emphasis was, understandably, focused
on Bausch.
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