noBody, the last performance in a triptyque that Sasha Waltz began with Körper, and continued with S, brings to a close a cycle of observation of the human body and being. Waltz, a German choreographer - who is co-director of the Schaubühne Theatre in Berlin, with Thomas Ostermeier - seeks, in this performance, to harmonise the dance with the space where its is being performed, la Cour d'Honneur. The very size of the space, its opening on infinity, its scope have all contributed to Sasha Waltz' own contemplation and work. Consequently, the thrust of noBody, its breadth and whole dimension come from within this outsized architecture, which has so often, and so well lent a home to dance. The piece plays on the height, verticality and the distances in this space. It is as if she was bringing together the cosmos and the dancer's body, stretching an invisible thread between the two of them, in the same the way the string of a puppet is linked to the hand that makes it move. There' s a purposely sought-after state of weightlessness that follows the traces left by an absent body and that life has deserted. What is flesh without a soul ? What is the humain being outside of its body ? What is a body without life ? The choreographer raises questions about death using the paradox of the dancer, mobile, physical and energetic, evoking what is inert. It is a metaphysical questioning that has to be translated by gesture, produced with sweat. At the heart of this ambivalence, that' s where Sasha Waltz pitches her dance and shows what is invisible though what is visible. On the stage, pulsating with electronic music which runs deep through everyone, twenty-six dancers attempt to transcend the material in order to touch the irrational. The individual dissolved into the mass reveals another organism, with broader, different horizons that absorb each one in the immensity of the group and sketches another contour. From an intermingling of individual bodies springs a movement of an ensemble, all-encompassing, whole. Sasha Waltz expects the impossible from her dancers, demanding that they go through the loss of what they are made of, of what makes them living beings. They have to renounce certain things in the course of this work which bring to mind other things they have accepted, inevitable things that allow death to be a source of renaissance. Reminiscences of Pompei, devastated and frozen under its ashes, have been inspiration for this piece. It starts in a sombre and sober atmosphere, refuting pathos or sentimentality. On the stage, the incorporated movements increase, bodies moving into each other, swallowing each other up, rejecting each other only to take each other in even more entirely. A group forms and breaks up, the outlook becomes unclear. Contrary energies are catapulted around, speed, passivity, fleeing. These continuous movements suggest a material that is perpetually animated by internal ups and downs, tangible yet intangible, shapeless yet undeniably dense. The performance moves into a new light. Everything speeds up, becomes more oppressive, deteriorates. Sasha Waltz comes full circle and ends nobody in incandescence. The spiral has an end.
Distribution
choreography Sasha Waltz
cast : Mikel Aristegui, Rita Aozane Bilibio, Hsuan Cheng, Clémentine Deluy, Lisa Densem, Juan Kruz Diaz de Garaio Esnaola, Luc Dunberry, Andreas Ebbert, Su-Mi Jang, Hans-Werner Klohe, Nicola Mascia, Thusnelda Mercy, Grayson Millwood, Michal Mualem, Joakim NaBi Olsson, Sasa Queliz Aquino, Claudia de Serpa Soares, Xuan Shi, Laura Siegmund, Norbert Steinwarz, Takako Suzuki, Mohan Thomas, Junko Wada, Laurie Young, Matan Zamir
music :Hans Peter Kuhn
stage design :Thomas Schenk, Sasha Waltz
costumes: Bernd skodzig
lighting :Martin Hauk
dramaturgy :Jochen Sandig
assistant director : Karsten Liske
Production
Production : Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, Berlin
En coproduction avec :le Festival d'Avignon
Avec le soutien :du ministère des Affaires étrangères d'Allemagne
Avec l'aide : du Goethe-Institut