Theater Review
The Review for...
040506
Welcome to Heaven
04 05 06 (Tanz Theater.) by Heidrun Stahl
Theater Lüneburg, 04.05.06
Well, I have the privilege right now of being the VERY FIRST person on earth to write a review about this piece. (Although it's unlikely that this will be the first review about it to be read by anyone. In 36 hours a tenth of the residents of the city will have read about it in the newspaper.) But I'm still the first one to Write about it.
So, it's a Tanz theater piece. In English, that would mean... that it's modern dance. Modern to the point of having speaking, walking, bare feet, impractical clothing, and so on in it. And all put onto a small stage, with a low ceiling, (so that the arms can't be up when you jump.) Oh, and the music was perhaps so: One third silence, (that is to say, no music. Some of it was with speaking, some with humming, some with reciting, and some in true silence,) One third Janis Joplin songs, and the last third music from a couple of operas by Verdi.
But what did I actually think of the whole piece? It was good. Better than I would have thought that I would have thought it was. (Better than I expected.) Not that I expected it not to be good. I just didn't think that I would enjoy it very much, or get anything out of it. I did enjoy it though. Many of it's facets. There were a good number of little, subtle details that I caught, and found wonderful. Some examples:
Yarica, (one of the dancers in the piece. There are only three of them, which is for the best, considering the size of the stage.) Yarica is making funny faces at her self, while looking at her reflection in the water. There was also the wiggling of the toes, in one of the first movements the girls have. There was the purposeful putting the water into the bucket, even when there was not a bit of water left in the hands. There were the sugar cubes in Yarica's mouth, during their "meal time." -She was wearing a wig, and a somewhat dated costume, and the effect of a little white cube between her lips was shocking. I never would have thought it would be so effective. I never would have even considered at all how a person looks, while holding a sugar cube between the teeth. (If it was a sugar cube. I only know that it was the right shape and colour to be one.)
One other delightful thing... will take more explaining: The piece in general is about a normal, unexamplery day, a day in the life of these three characters. At one point of the day, Some time after the meal, they play a game of "twenty Questions" together. (For those strange people who don't know what that game is: It's a guessing game. One person thinks of an object, and the others must find out what that object is, using only yes or no questions.) Anyhow, in the theater piece, the one who's thought of the object, is doing a long solo dance, while the others, (who are sitting,) ask him questions. I took this to mean, that his dancing was meant to represent what he was thinking of. Anyhow, he tells them, at length, that he was "The Moon." OK. And the whole piece goes on. Now then, some ten or fifteen minutes later, the time of day is "Evening" and they are washing themselves and getting ready for bed. It's repeating many of the steps that they had in the "Morning," when they washed themselves then. But, in the background, while they were doing this, the man was repeating a sequence of his own steps. Specifically, the steps he did while he was being "The moon." And I immediately got this lovely picture of the two women washing themselves up, with moonlight shining through the windows.
I felt ever so clever for having noticed this too. It was a bit disappointing then, after the performance, when I found out that the Question game was Improvised. That was the first, and only time, that the man was being the Moon. So this clever insight I had was not. -Not an insight. Just a creative imagination and interpretation of the chance situation.
So... what else? There was humour. There was not too much serious about it. (Although I thought the moment where Yarica went "against the rules" and dumped the water wherever she felt like it... only to be full of guilt and fear lest anyone should catch her. -That this touched on a somewhat deeper human... trait. She was fed up with her situation, and couldn't stand it any longer. But once she'd done something about that, she was embarrassed about the fact.
Anyhow, it's worth watching, if one happens to be in the city.
Welcome to Heaven (Tanz Theater.) by Heidrun Stahl
Tanz Festival Giessen, 27.05.07
The background for this piece: (It's a bit complicated.)
Heidrun choreographs Tanz Theater ("Dance Art"?) Pieces. She has done two for the little black-box theater here in Lüneburg. In the town of Giessen, (Mid to South central Germany,) the theater has been creating the Dance Festival "Tanz Ost-West" which is meant to bring together contemporary dancers from the East and the West, Germany and beyond, into one... Dance Festival, which this year lasted a whole week. And Heidrun was asked to partake for the second time, this year. Last year, she could simply take a few sections out of her Black-Box piece, and perform the resulting 15 to 20 minutes in Giessen. But this year the Black-Box piece was not realised, (for various reasons,) so when she decided that she might like to anyhow do the Giessen Festival, she had to choreograph something entirely new. And THAT, was Welcome to Heaven.
It was performed by myself, and two other dancers. Heidrun is planning it to be a small piece of the Black-Box for next year. The concept is a bit interesting: We, and the entire audience, are at the Gates of Heaven. Waiting to get our paper-work done, and, well, just waiting. To amuse ourselves, we dance, (Surprise surprise!) and then tell our stories: The stories of how we died.
For Giessen, there were two stories told. First was Yarica's. It tells of the quiet woman, who sits in the center, being agricultural, quiet, and peaceful. -And of the two macho men, one on each side of her, who are proud, arrogant, suspicious, and territorial. -And the two men come to war. There are a number of skirmishes, and then My Character gets fed up, takes a rock, and throws it at the other, -just as Yarica stands up. So she gets hit, and dies. (Does that sound... eerily familiar and realistic in our present world?)
The Second story is mine; I dance about (instead of tell about,) My life in a box. Closed in, disappointed in my boundaries. And wishing the whole time... for the Sea. I become more and more brave, stepping beyond my limits, enjoying all the possibilities of space, and "playing in the Sea," -Until I find myself caught in a whirl-pool. -And then I drown. (I'm not so sure what the moral of that death is. -If there is one at all.) It's such a dramatic moment, and the Music is so over the top, that Heidrun decided she wanted to lighten it up, to remind the audience that I'm already dead, and am just telling a story of something that once happened to me, SO... I tell a joke, (In German!) I'm so pleased with it, that I will repeat it now:
A Busdriver and a Preacher come to the Pearly Gates of Heaven at the same time. St. Peter is there, and says to the Busdriver, "Oh Great! Come in, oh DO come in!" making a big ceremony out of it. The Preacher has to wait for hours in front of the gates then, until St. Peter comes back and says, "Oh right. You. C'mon." Well... The Preacher asks what is going on! "That other guy was just a busdriver!" "True," says Peter, "But back on the Earth, when ever you would be preaching, everyone would sleep. But when that other guy drove his bus... Everybody was praying."
-And that was the end of the piece.
The festival it's self is a good idea. I don't know where they get the money from, (The theater, private sponsors, corporate sponsors, the city, or the country government,) but they put it to good use. The Gala-evening which I was in had two other German groups, a trio from England, a pair from the Netherlands, and I think one group from the East, (Czech or Poland I think, but can't truly recall.) Every group had it's own style, and I think the combination of them produced a good effect for the audience. (It was surprising for me, but good for Giessen, that I later found out that each piece that I found most boring was best liked by my colleague, as well as the reverse.)
The only thing that didn't work, (for that final Gala concert at least,) was the net-working, and enriching of the Dance Culture. What I mean, is that the dancers and choreographers had little to no time to talk with or watch the other dance groups that came. We each had our hour for setting our piece to the stage, and then it was out to eat, and go get the makeup, and then perform. And that was a bit of a pity. (But I can imagine that it was a much more social atmosphere for the groups that were there for two days or more.)
Now, Heidrun's actual piece... has some nice moments in it, but just isn't... that challenging. There's not much of anything for me to sink my technical teeth into. (Not my literary teeth or intellectual teeth; my Dance Technique teeth.) It was just too often soft legs, sort-of-there arms, and partly stretched feet. (That's the Simple explanation I have for it.) I know I'm a ballet snob, but that means that I truly do enjoy something that I have to really work at before I can look half decent in. Enough on this theme though. The Audience seemed to like it well and fine. So that's that. And it was fun enough to dance, (Where as I find it lacking in Technical challenge, the Characterisation demands are great enough to make the Playing of the roll interesting.)