If This Is The Man

A mixture of dance, fashion, music and lights swept through Athens Concert Hall, wreaking havoc among a very divided audience with Sasha Waltz & Guests’ second part in the trilogy of the Body: Kreatur, a primordial narration of human kind’s rise and fall.

 

 

In the beginning was the body. On a bare stage with only a thin line of pure white light, spermatozoa-like performers literally wear the scenography, turning their own arms and legs in fine-tuned brushes that follow a rather cryptic outline devised by the even more cryptic storytelling of German choreographer Sasha Waltz, who still leaves behind her virtuous and decelerated dance a trail of breadcrumbs for all those who are hungry for meaning.

Featuring Iris van Herpen’s 3D visions on flesh and blood, Kreatur follows the life, suffering, pleasure and destruction of a society all too similar to our own. Either scattered on the floor or cramped up on a small stair stage right, 14 performers wear the mask of humanity and slowly evolve, increasing the quality and quantity of their interactions, movements and synchronicity until the final ecstasy of love.

This hymn to the body, however, is not a flattering one. The stage is flooded with violence, oppression, abuse of power and punishment, even a human-size porcupine that could represent Justice as much as Illness or Death, creating a general atmosphere of distress and foreboding which echoes in the clicking sounds of New York-based Soundwalk Collective.

Objects do play a major role in our lives, and Waltz & Guests could not miss out on this. Few plays have ever been so bare and yet so dense in both meaning and imagination. The use of a simple translucent paper quickly explains our slavery to black mirrors, appearances and conformity, while the ominous use of a wooden beam connects various scenes as an idol, a philosopher’s stone, a weapon, a totem and ultimately a plain ol’ penis.

Perhaps setting the bar way too high, Kreatur is one of those performances that remind us how dance has long stopped being a necessity (either ritualistic, magical or mythopoetic) to become a mere show.


The show was played at
Athens Concert Hall
Petrou Kokkali & Leof. Vasilissis Sofias – Athens
23 and 24 March 2018
Friday and Saturday
20.00

Sasha Waltz & Guests present
Kreatur

direction, choreography Sasha Waltz
costumes Iris van Herpen
music Soundwalk Collective
lighting Urs Schönebaum
scenes Sasha Waltz, Thomas Schenk
performers Sasha Waltz & Guests Liza Alpízar Aguilar, Aladino Rivera Blanca, Davide Camplani, Clémentine Deluy, Claudia de Serpa Soares, Peggy Grelat-Dupont, Hwanhee Hwang, Annapaola Leso, Nicola Mascia, Thusnelda Mercy, Virgis Puodziunas, Zaratiana Randrianantenaina, Corey Scott-Gilbert, Yael Schnell
rehersal director Davide Di Pretoro
assistant director Steffen Döring
lighting technician Martin Hauk
lighting assistant Olaf Danilsen
sound technician Lutz Nerger
props Brad Hwang
assistant to the technical director Leonardo Bucalossi
make-up artist Stefanie Kinzel
tour manager Karsten Liske
technical director Reinhard Wizisla
general director Sasha Waltz & Guests Jochen Sandig
production Sasha Waltz & Guests
co-production Festspielhaus St. Pölten, Les Théatres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Opéra de Dijon Made in Radialsystem