The graduates of the Inter-University Centre for Dance (HZT) showcased their final pieces from 18-26 September 2024. Although they don’t fall into one category, I find that they are all a reflection of our time – a time spinning around in circles.
If you head to the Uferstudios these days, you’ll see a roller coaster1. The ride is smaller than the ones you would see at a carnival. At its highest point, it is about three times my size (1.62m). Feel free to do the math. The term ride is also actually wrong since no one is riding it. Instead of people, the artistic roller coaster chases papier-mache and plastic objects in circles. Its swift descent is accompanied by loud rattling. However, before each new ascent, its cables groan – until its strenuous effort has prevailed and the object being transported has once again attained its upward trajectory. “The only way is round”, my friend Yoad comments, referring to the cycles in which bodies, thoughts, and society so often appear to turn. This text, which references six of the eight final projects from the BA Dance, Context, Choreography program, is about just such cycles.
I leave the roller coaster behind and head into Studio 8. On a white-clad stage, Núria Carillo Erras’ clownish solo performance, The Numbers of this Performance are 20, 18, 20, 8, is an absurd game of obsessive order and masterfully situated disarray. A metronome ticks. A digital clock jumps from 11:11 to 23:23, 14:14, 18:18 in the background. Everyday routines like getting dressed and undressed become choreography, everyday objects become magical. With a serious expression, Carillo Erra reads the motto of the evening out loud from a tear-out calendar: “Hold on tight to what you hold on to. Do what you do tirelessly.” A subtle and humorous work, which breathes life into the quiet passion of the search for that which is alive in seemingly lifeless things, for the meaning(ful) amid the banality of the routine.
Núria Carillo Erras | Sophia Obermeyer
©Dijana Zadro
Sophia Obermeyer’s 0 Euro, but Perfect Alignment also deals with the supposed commonplace. It addresses upright posture, upright stance. While Darwinism likes to cite the two-legged stance as a reminder of humans’ unique position (!) among animals, Obermeyer is primarily focused on the occupational imperative of graceful straightness, or “perfect alignment”. In four chapters, she and her fellow performers experiment with various possible “mis-leanings”. We see stooped, prone, and converging bodies. At times wild, at other times tenderly, they improvise with contact, practice dependence, and constantly find new (by)ways to each other. While watching, it becomes clear to me that those standing alone are not necessarily worse off, but usually lonelier.
When I return one week later, the roller coaster has been dismantled. The individual pieces of its wooden frame are piled in the courtyard. Rain patters on the bare beams, which now lay horizontally on the ground, no longer a spectacular sight. In the middle, a ladder. The abandoned site feels sad.
Longing to Be ©Dijana Zadro
In Studio 8, Suet Wa Tam’s body rests on the stage in semi-darkness like a statue. Enveloped in a soundscape of swirling drones, her slow movements coalesce as if in a dream. Projected images, which can barely be glimpsed, bathe her body in light for split seconds at a time. I am overwhelmed by a feeling of nostalgia. However, before I sink into it, part of Longing to Be is already over. Tam’s greeting (part two) frames the performance like a book publication. From A to O is a collection of scores (instructions). With their help, Tam attempts to respond to the question of what she wants to express with dance. Score P (“remember, recall, recollect, never forget”), which she then performs live, provides insight into her practice of self-examination. I follow the movements and words that summon the past, and once again: nostalgia.
Before I sink into it, I remind myself that my program isn’t over. I rush to Studio 11 for the dress rehearsal of Lucas Godoi’s No Time for Titles. However, he’s not yet there, the photographer says. Fifteen minutes later, the door to the courtyard opens and a soaked Lieferando courier complete with bike shuffles towards us onto dry land. He seems surprised. The rehearsal was canceled. He was just talking to his lawyer about his residency status and before that he was at the doctor’s office for a sick note. Otherwise he would’ve had to cancel his performance tonight. “Today, I killed my sister for the second time”, he adds. Deaths always work for sick notes. After a few more outlandish anecdotes about German bureaucracy, immigrant policy, and labor law, I take my leave – with Godoi’s Husband-CV in my bag. I promise to mention it in my article.
Lucas Godoi
©Johanna Ackva
During my third and final HZT visit, I see Auro Orso’s PERREO ENTRE LOS MUNDOS, which takes a completely different approach to addressing the complexity of global migration flows. Regaetón, originally practiced by the Black residents of Panama and now mostly marketed and consumed by Caucasians without any knowledge of its history, is at the heart of the performance. Transmasculine performer Orso steps into this discord to stir up this complicated history with the fast and energetic hip movements of his dance (perreo). Shifting constellations between performer and audience negotiate the significance of visibility and self-care in the context of a critique of (post-)colonial structures and binary thinking. Even before the applause, the audience is cheering for the sweat-drenched, upside-down dancing Auro. Emancipation is not a to-do list item, as this work makes clear, but rather a process that must and will be revived again and again.
PERREO ENTRE LOS MUNDOS ©Dijana Zadro
On the same evening, I head by bike to Schönhauser Allee for Alejandro González’s Then We Will Become Obsessed with the Idea of Losing Everything We Have Achieved. In the intimate atmosphere of his own home, González serves up the flavors of his homeland in small groups. The appetizer is a stone baked in mountain herbs, which we shift from one cheek to the other while still warm, as our host dances an expressive solo. Gonzáles completes the main course, which is served on the floor, by walking over it with oiled soles. The dessert can only be eaten as a duet. This dinner is a lot of things: social choreography, an act of entreaty, a tasteful composition. Last but not least, it raises awareness of the fact that the elementary principle of life is a cycle of (re)formations. “The only way is round.”
1 The installation was part of Berlin Art Week.
The graduates of the Inter-University Centre for Dance (HZT) showcased their final pieces from 18-26 September 2024.
