 |
DANZ QUARTERLY Issue 18
January, February, March 2010
Dance in Berlin and Dance in NZ
By Alexa Wilson
It is difficult to generalise or even distinguish what constitutes 'Berlin' dance, as European dance in general is very intercultural and international, the result of close borders and increasing globalisation of the arts market. This breaks down boundaries between cultures and nations.
Berlin is a very poor but creative city, recovering from the cultural and financial integration of East and West Germany 20 years ago when the wall came down. Dancers and choreographers need to travel outside Berlin to survive. To get into the dance scene is difficult; it is not very open to people beyond Europe.
Much like NZ, dance in Europe is governed by festivals, funding, and work tours across Europe. There is a divide between the local scene, which is poorer, and the international touring scene.
I have been to two festivals in Berlin, In Transit in July and Tanz im August, and one in Vienna, Impuls Tanz. I have also attended independent shows, largely governed by venues around Berlin - Hau, Sophiensaele, Radial System, Podewil, Doc 11, Tanz Fabrik.
The most noticeable difference between dance in Europe and in NZ is that the attachment to the modernist dance form in Europe is long gone. Progressiveness, experimentation, deconstruction, theatricality, irony, interdisciplinary, performance, concept - these are being explored across all levels, from canon choreographers, Meg Stuart and Sasha Waltz, to independent emerging choreographers in Berlin’s experimental venues.
From the simplistic, but ironic and dismissive, older female deconstruction of 'womanness' in Mathilde Monnier and La Ribot's Gustavia, to the lively, culturally and theatrically overabundant collaboration with Turkish youths of Neukölln in the work of Constanza Macras' Hell on Earth, the traditional dance form is in the dust.
Compare this with NZ dance. While Michael Parmenter and Black Grace have made attempts to move in conceptual and cross-disciplinary directions in the last year, their work is still form based. Anyone who has worked for them and is making work still tends to explore technique and traditional contemporary dance form choreographically. Even Douglas Wright's work, which is more conceptually and emotionally adjacent to work in Europe, is very virtuosic compared with most work here.
However, the fringe work being explored in NZ is very like the work in Europe. Everyone in Europe is trying something different, looking to find the next new thing. They're gnawing at the confines of dance to discover new ways of expressing, exploring and communicating via the moving body, interdisciplinary performance, somatic investigation and improvisation. There is also a lot of derivative passé work, too.
There are many things at play and that conflict in both dance cultures. I have seen works of scale here, especially at Impuls Tanz; Wim Vanderkybus's electric and athletically organic recent work where the dancers almost broke their bones to achieve virtuosic beauty - mostly naked; Jan Fabre's provocative and theatrical Orgy of Intolerance (where a man put a rifle up his anus and people masturbated on stage). I have not seen this edge in NZ works. There is open-mindedness in European dance, a sense of 'anything goes', 'we will do and try anything', but it is often detached, cold.
In NZ there is a sense of open heartedness, with choreographers exploring the depth of their own interests because they want to, scrutinising their own identity and personal politics within the wider world. This takes more risk, is more connected to or grounded in a purpose beyond dance, either as an entertainment form or platform to present 'avant garde art'.
Conversely, while NZ dance has the liberty to explore its own curiosities far from the pressure to be ‘the next best thing’; it suffers from having little input form-wise. Ideas explored in works in Berlin and Europe may not be original - and deconstruction and irony is really old news - but this has forced them to investigate the truth of the body, and deconstruct what movement and presence really is. Hence there is a lot of ‘state-based’ work.
Benoit Lacambre, a leader in somatic improvisation, creates an electric and alive performance from his investigations, a dynamic exploration of dance which is totally embodied and very intense, if not violent. I did a workshop with him. In Berlin I attended a free work-in-progress by Ezster Salaman, working on a solo with Christina Rizzo, which explored liminal spaces in text - that is, halfway language - grunting, half singing, hysterical, throwaway, and gesture inside a range of constantly shifting states. This work had no dance in it; the most surprising thing I have seen yet.
I saw another performance art-influenced dance work, in a small gallery, in which a woman, Biljana Bosnjakowich, lay on the floor and invited people to sit around her as she linked and unlinked their hands across her naked body. Layering (of states), gentleness and subtlety are on the rise. But then violence is also still ever present in larger works, along with some explorations of 'failure' on stage
People in NZ are making new dance also; not necessarily supported by institutions. NZ and Europe are very different socio-culturally, but both are pushing the art form of contemporary dance in interesting ways.
|
