by Elisabeth Ritonja | Jun 7, 2022 | 2021, Tanz, Wiener Festwochen
Bouchra Ouizguen has been part of the touring schedule of cooperation partners in contemporary dance for several years. France and Belgium play a prominent role in this; but the idea of supporting productions across countries is also becoming more and more popular, especially in the festival business in this country.
Although she has now staged her seventh production, she is still a border crosser in contemporary dance. In interviews, she repeatedly says that neither she nor her dancers have had any training in this field. What distinguishes her work, or rather the beginning of her work on this project, is the tracking down of people who still master traditional song and dance forms.
In “Elephant”, Ouizguen has set herself the goal of bringing Moroccan dance and music onto the stage in order to snatch them from oblivion and disappearance. As a metaphor, she has chosen the elephant, which is an endangered species and may already be extinct in the coming century.
Together with three other protagonists – one younger and two older women who have already worked with Ouizguen – she presented the result of her musical and dance search for clues in the programme of the Wiener Festwochen at the Odeon. She intuitively and creatively processes the material she finds into a one-hour piece. A piece that not only reveals the traditional, but also wraps this traditional in a new cloak.
Before her spectacle begins, however, the stage floor is cleaned by two women with large floor rubbing cloths. Then they come on stage – no longer dressed like cleaning ladies, but in festive robes – with two other dancers to clean the space with the help of incense. Here it becomes clear that what will be shown is partly taking place in the ritual realm. And indeed, a dancing creature appears with a colourful headdress, trimmed all around with bright bast strings. Soon it is whirling across the room.
Elephant (Foto: © Beniamin Boar)
Elephant (Foto: © Beniamin Boar)
Elephant (Foto: © Beniamin Boar)
Elephant (Foto: © Beniamin Boar)
Unlike at the very beginning, the music is not coming from the tape now. Now it is the women themselves who sing live on stage. Polyphonic litanies form the main volume of the musical events. Starting with a female singer, they are echoed by the others and at the same time rhythmised by them with the help of djenbes, small bongo drums. This musical setting remains the same throughout the performance, but the individual danced scenes change. One witnesses a solo performance by the youngest woman, who collapses in exhaustion, whipped up by the music, which gets faster and faster. But the women also perform an impressive group choreography.
It forms the artistic climax of the performance. Designed as a contact improvisation, it is, however, anything but improvised. After pieces of clothing have been pulled offstage – which can be understood as a haunting metaphor of human demise – and the women have intoned a litany of lamentations, the three dancers group themselves into a single organism. They move it through the hall in ever new combinations with the help of lifting techniques. The impression is that they hold each other in their grief and pain and never let each other fall. This is a highly emotional and meaningful scene. It shows people in an exceptional situation that they can only overcome through mutual cohesion. How they connect with each other, let themselves fall into the others, are pulled or pushed by them, how they nevertheless do not go down in their loudly articulated pain, but support and hold each other over and over again, can also be read metaphorically to the highest degree.
The mixture of traditional music and new choreography does not seem artificial at this moment, but quite natural. It enables the audience to think far beyond the dance. The fact that Bouchra Ouizguen’s work almost automatically finds itself in a larger, cultural-historical context also makes her work interesting for other disciplines such as musicology, cultural anthropology or sociology.
This article has been automatically translated with deepl.com.
by Elisabeth Ritonja | May 24, 2022 | 2021, Theatre
Michael Köhlmeier became known in the German-speaking world not only for his novels, but mainly for his personally coloured stories about Greek mythology. The Schauspielhaus in Graz invited him to give a reading on this very topic. The author and multi-creative, even song lyrics and compositions come from his pen, told about the origin of the Greek gods and their world in Olympus up to the creation of mankind and the beginning of the Trojan War.
Those who know his CDs on the subject, which he recorded more than 20 years ago, may have been a little surprised. Köhlmeier presented the Greek mythology in a highly amusing conversational tone with many finesses that make a good narrator. In just a few words, he achieved very lively characterisations of the gods and humans, which he sometimes also endowed with a habitus typical of them. That he described Zeuss as a particularly good lover, constantly on the lookout for new adventures, was obvious and handed down over thousands of years. Peleus, the later husband of the sea nymph Thetis, however, he characterised with the remark that the latter was very fond of saying “yes!”. While the audience smiled at this, they did not yet know that they would later be grateful to the narrator for this “yes! At that point, namely, when after countless enumerations of the gods his name came up again and the great pondering began as to who this Peleus had been after all. “You remember, that’s the one who always said ‘yes’,” Köhlmeier skilfully jogged many a memory. This is just one of many examples of how well he knows his narrative craft.
Along the genesis of the gods, one also learned all kinds of interesting cultural-historical facts, such as the invention of the guitar by Hermes, who achieved this feat as an infant on his first day of life. Or also that the artists simply “lied” in their depiction of Leda and the swan. Leda had taken the form of a goose during her union with Zeuss, but this is not visible in the paintings. One could marvel at the preservative power of divine armpit sweat just as much as at an original action by Odysseus, who hoped that he would not have to go to war with it. The statement that this made him the first conscientious objector in history was, like so many humorous comparisons, very well received by the audience.
In addition to all the sometimes meandering life stories and incidents, the author also shared his personal thoughts on how this mythology came to be. He pointed out that this storytelling, which took place from generation to generation, began when there was no rule-of-law structure. Also interesting was his idea that these narratives could also relieve people of a burden. To learn that one’s fate is not unique in this world, that acts such as murder and manslaughter, adultery and betrayal or character traits such as cowardice and arrogance, exuberant anger and vanity and all the resulting suffering have always existed, meant a relieving realisation for many people.
The idea of taking Michael Köhlmeier on stage in Graz, someone whose name has charisma beyond the theatre scene, was rewarded with a very well sold house. A clever move at a time when some audiences are still hesitant to accept live cultural offerings.
Michael Köhlmeier filled the Graz Schauspielhaus with his “Evening of Greek Mythology”. A good idea to get still hesitant audiences back into the house after the pandemic-related break.
Michael Köhlmeier became known in the German-speaking world not only for his novels, but mainly for his personally coloured stories about Greek mythology. The Schauspielhaus in Graz invited him to give a reading on this very topic. The author and multi-creative, even song lyrics and compositions come from his pen, told about the origin of the Greek gods and their world in Olympus up to the creation of mankind and the beginning of the Trojan War.
Those who know his CDs on the subject, which he recorded more than 20 years ago, may have been a little surprised. Köhlmeier presented the Greek mythology in a highly amusing conversational tone with many finesses that make a good narrator. In just a few words, he achieved very lively characterisations of the gods and humans, which he sometimes also endowed with a habitus typical of them. That he described Zeuss as a particularly good lover, constantly on the lookout for new adventures, was obvious and handed down over thousands of years. Peleus, the later husband of the sea nymph Thetis, however, he characterised with the remark that the latter was very fond of saying “yes!”. While the audience smiled at this, they did not yet know that they would later be grateful to the narrator for this “yes! At that point, namely, when after countless enumerations of the gods his name came up again and the great pondering began as to who this Peleus had been after all. “You remember, that’s the one who always said ‘yes’,” Köhlmeier skilfully jogged many a memory. This is just one of many examples of how well he knows his narrative craft.
Along the genesis of the gods, one also learned all kinds of interesting cultural-historical facts, such as the invention of the guitar by Hermes, who achieved this feat as an infant on his first day of life. Or also that the artists simply “lied” in their depiction of Leda and the swan. Leda had taken the form of a goose during her union with Zeuss, but this is not visible in the paintings. One could marvel at the preservative power of divine armpit sweat just as much as at an original action by Odysseus, who hoped that he would not have to go to war with it. The statement that this made him the first conscientious objector in history was, like so many humorous comparisons, very well received by the audience.
In addition to all the sometimes meandering life stories and incidents, the author also shared his personal thoughts on how this mythology came to be. He pointed out that this storytelling, which took place from generation to generation, began when there was no rule-of-law structure. Also interesting was his idea that these narratives could also relieve people of a burden. To learn that one’s fate is not unique in this world, that acts such as murder and manslaughter, adultery and betrayal or character traits such as cowardice and arrogance, exuberant anger and vanity and all the resulting suffering have always existed, meant a relieving realisation for many people.
The idea of taking Michael Köhlmeier on stage in Graz, someone whose name has charisma beyond the theatre scene, was rewarded with a very well sold house. A clever move at a time when some audiences are still hesitant to accept live cultural offerings.
(Foto: ©Udo Leitner)
Text was translated automatically with deepl.com
