SYM-PHONIE MMXX - Unusual, unrelenting, unavoidable

SYM-PHONIE MMXX. Foto: Bernd Uhlig.

Author Lucie Dercsényi

Sasha Waltz's work is barely known to the general public in our country, none of the local dance companies has included her piece in their repertoire yet, and the Czech premiere was made by Jiří Bartovanec (a permanent member of Sasha Waltz & Guests since 2007), who staged her Kreatur in 2020 with students of the 5th and 6th year of the Duncan Centre Conservatory. In 2012, the Czech cinemas presented a performance of Romeo and Juliet specially created for Aurélie Dupont, the then étoile of the Paris Opera, for which ballet company Waltz staged Shakespeare's drama on the basis of Hector Berlioz's dramatic symphony of the same name (premiere 2007).

Influence of expressionist dance and American Postmodernism

Sasha Waltz's choreographic style is unmistakable, infused with the experience she gained during her dance training. In her hometown of Karlsruhe, she attended the classes of Waltraud Kornass, a pupil of Mary Wigman. In these classes, she was exposed to important essentials that had a profound influence on her, as she says: "Modernism, or rather expressionist dance as developed by Mary Wigman, Gret Palucca or Rudolf von Laban, played a decisive role in my development. But equally important for me was American postmodernism, in other words, everything after Cunningham." (available on the website of the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe).

While she later gained experience at the School For New Dance Development in Amsterdam and in various dance companies in New York, her work remains strongly connected to the theory and practice of the artists who established and developed the Modernist movement in Germany in the 1920s and became role models for the next generation that fully developed the then emerging genre of dance theatre. Among its prominent representatives is Pina Bausch (1940-2009), although one generation younger than Sasha Waltz (born 1963) and rawer in the spontaneity of her statements (for example, Café Müller or Le Sacre du Printemps, which I consider the best version yet performed), both choreographers are characterized by a hierarchical unification of dance, scenography and music, to which they give equal attention, meaning and function.

Sasha Waltz chooses musical compositions ranging from baroque operas, and romantic period pieces to free jazz and electronic music by contemporary composers. Her first use of classical music was in Impromptus (premiere 2004), when she drew on piano and vocal compositions by Franz Schubert. For SYM-PHONIE MMXX she approached Georg Friedrich Haas, who wrote the piece for the Staatskapelle Berlin orchestra. In the score, he then specified in the comments the extent to which the lights would grow louder, and dimmer, as Waltz testified in a meeting with the audience after the performance. The composition was composed on commission for two years, and the choreographer was able to determine the length of even the silent passages, which she likes to work with quite extensively.

However, the performance planned three years ago at the Staatsoper Under den Linden could not take place during the coronavirus pandemic and the premiere last March took place in an unexpected political and social context, a few weeks after the beginning of the war in Ukraine. The hour-and-a-half-long production thus takes on new meanings, rearrangements and evokes new associations, which fulfils the artist's statement "In SYM-PHONIE MMXX I want to shape an extreme experience of our reality and create a contemporary genre image."

Scenic landscape

As I mentioned before, Sasha Waltz enjoys choreographing in silence, not only of listening but also of dancing. The designs tend to be landscapes modelled by large panels, as in Romeo and Juliet and Impromptus. In SYM-PHONIE MMXX, the dancers' bodies also respond to the large-scale scenic objects that highlight the choreographic lines and define the space.

Silence is exploited right from the start when the lying figures begin to rise after a few minutes and slowly make their way onto the stage, the edges of which are defined by the golden wall at the back. The bodies of the performers, who are clad in flesh-coloured panties, shine through under a sheer tulle top. The mass rises and falls, gaining strength and confidence, humanity and emotion breaking through to the surface, energy rising. Nothing is constant, the movement patterns and their combinations are always changing and the twists and turns come at the right moment when silence or unmelodious harmonies would be too much.

Waltz composes the choreography as a sophisticated architecture created by objects in dialogue with female and male bodies that respect the precise movement trajectories and each other. All of the performers change clothes several times: some dancers are in long flowing dresses, others wear black skirts and bare chests, and others dance in black robes with sheer tops. The different skin colours are united not only by the synchronisation of movement but also by the gold and black costumes.

Silence versus loud unmelodiousness

At first, from the hardly identifiable cluster, singled-out individuals run around the scene, taking on different postures and statuesque poses. In silence, they then slowly advance in a single line, lying down on the ground, only to repeat the whole image backwards, with only their breathing setting the rhythm of their actions.

The peaceful group of people becomes a group of men running with their female partners above their heads, flying through the space like birds set free. At other times they all stand together in a single formation, and from their midst shoot up "leaders" as if on barricades. The physical lamentation accelerates in unison with the musical dissonances, when you'd rather cover your ears and run away from the sometimes frenzied uproar. Haas and Waltz don't really caress your senses, instead, they tease you, provoking you with musical/sound and dance chaos. But it has its own order, to which the "story of our time" obeys. Haas's microtonal piece, with its unevenly tempered tuning, is in itself extraordinary, it does not evoke paradise experiences, and beyond that Waltz sharply cuts the choreographic edge into the sore spots of the reality of life...

The horizon grows darker throughout the production, clouding over with a black cloth. Touching embraces appear briefly, nervous hand movements, head shaking alternating with slow arm circles. Sasha Waltz's choreography is crammed with hundreds of variations of contrasting movement in juxtaposition with time, weight, flow and space. The arm work is striking, aiming precisely and mostly directly at a certain point. There are no leaps or pirouettes in the choreography, "just" organic, purposefully arranged movement, which incorporates not only the DNA of the performers but also Laban's legacy in terms of defining dynamic and spatial pathways and geometric shapes that are carefully incorporated into the theatrical entity.

The final scene sees another large panel descend from above, and reach the ground, the ensemble gradually fades away and a single dancer remains lying in the front. Perhaps as a new beginning or the inevitability of the end... Sasha Waltz's SYM-PHONIE MMXX is a relentless testimony to the birth, death, volatility and turmoil of human society, both knitted together and divided, with all the dancers fully committed and listening to the choreographer's vision - intellectual, emotional and physical.

Written from a performance on 21 May 2023, Janáček Theatre, Brno.

SYM-PHONIE MMXX
Concept and choreography: Sasha Waltz
Music: Georg Friedrich Haas
Scenic design: Pia Maier Schriever
Costumes: Bernd Skodzig
Lighting design: David Finn
Staatsballett Berlin, co-produced by Sasha Waltz & Guests
Premiere 13 March 2022