A look into the tanz.dance kitchen

Once upon a time,

people started dancing differently, painting differently, composing differently, filming differently, writing differently. Whenever art did something different from what culture expected of it, criticism arose – criticism which was by no means always against dancing or painting or composing differently, but which took this disturbance emanating from the arts as an opportunity to publicly reflect on why art changes and why the same world of yesterday is seen, heard and described so differently today.

Such criticism has always been voiced in the media – traditionally in newspapers and then later on the radio and on the Internet.

Ukraine is a completely different story. In her contribution to tanz.dance, author Polina Bulat gives a moving account of the role the body plays in the face of an existential threat such as the Russian attack. It becomes clear how important dance between the air raid sirens has become in Kyiv, how crucial the dance séances of choreographer Khrystyna Slobodyanyuk are after the terror of the bombing of the Academic Drama Theater in Mariupol, where 2,000 civilians sought refuge. More than 600 people died under the rubble of the theater, the story having since been carefully buried by Russia. Dancing not only helps people in Ukraine, but also the countless refugees in Poland, Germany, France and elsewhere.

And yet it is also bringing countries like Greenland an unexpected boom. The Arctic Circle is home to a growing dance culture that does not look backwards to a long-gone Inuit culture, but has created an alliance that is leading to an increasingly lively exchange of Arctic stage arts and their own unique aesthetics in the Scandinavian dance landscape. It is now also revitalizing the small capital of Nuuk, a boomtown, because more and more international mining companies are using it as a hub to reach the north of Greenland to dig for new mineral resources thanks to melting ice sheets – all while the workers’ children learn to dance.

Choreographer Gavhar Matyokubova works in Uzbekistan, in a tiny province called Khoresm. Here, people dance for every occasion: Lazgi is the art of setting the entire body in motion from a tremor. It looks as if 3,000-year-old spirits are being awakened. Gavhar Matyokubova has not only managed to get this ancient dance onto the UNESCO World Heritage List, but has also worked hard to ensure that Lazgi can be cleansed of the folklore kitsch that is still taught in the capital Tashkent, a relic from Soviet times – like a fake fairytale.

When the uprisings in Iran began with dances, the arduous but rewarding search began – the quest to find an author in Iran who would dare to tell the long history of the suppression of dance and look for the motives that led to this ban on dancing, the only one of its kind in the Muslim world. The author found the ban not in religion, but in the system itself, which has managed to censor public expression over generations through constant mistrust of the people. Dance is just one victim of this mistrust. The writer’s insights into brief moments of liberalization alternating with all the more fundamental censorship have resulted in a reportage that leaves us speechless.

This is the case in Mexico, for example, where murder seems to be a social normality. Lukas Avendaño, an indigenous artist from his country, free enough to think and act differently than the norms dictate, is taking a stand against it. He offers resistance through dance and his naked male body, which he likes to wrap in a skirt offstage. Journalist Juan Levid Lázaro Nava accompanied him for weeks, not only out of admiration for his open queerness, but also for the courage that overcame Avendaño when his brother, like so many others, “disappeared” without a trace as a murder victim in 2018. Courage is an attitude that goes beyond all choreographic finesse: an upright walk in a giant state where, as Làzaro Nava writes: “the mute are overlooked, the overlooked remain mute.”

One such community has formed on the German Baltic coast along the border with Poland, in a rather sparsely populated landscape called Western Pomerania. Many people are familiar with this stretch of coast as a summer resort. But when the vacationers leave, an initiative called Perform[d]ance has been ensuring for twenty years that choreographers from all over the world meet dance enthusiasts who are highly motivated and devoted to each other. Even if dance were not responsible for children learning more effectively and old people doing more than just spouting old slogans, this powerful photo series by Peter von Heesen and the accompanying reportage by Elisabeth Nehring prove how bright the mood can become when you get involved with the political animal that is physically inside you.

This is completely wrong, writes John Barrett, an acknowledged expert on Japanese culture and language. In Kyoto, he had the opportunity to visit Inoue Yachiyo V – the grand master of a classical dance style called Kyomai. It is the dance of the geisha, which requires an extremely high level of artistic skill that becomes more and more firmly linked with the character of mastery as the years go by. It only reaches its full bloom towards the end of a life – and Barrett was able to experience it at the National Theater in Tokyo. He felt very fortunate to be able to have an in-depth conversation with Inoue Yachiyo V, the fifth successor in a long line of traditional Kyomai masters, about this ancient dance style. For us, it was previously unheard of to get such a deep, authentic insight into the classical Japanese art of dance.

But when it comes to the world-famous Tanztheater Wuppertal, there is nothing to glorify. Not with Jo Ann Endicott, the dancer who dared to publish her latest book on the events following the death of Pina Bausch in tanz.dance. Her memoirs are not truly memoirs at all, but describe a long struggle from within the bowels of the dance theater. The result is a reportage that does not attack anyone personally, but is all the more unsparing and humorous in its portrayal of the complicated relationship left behind by a dance legacy, including various desires and vanities, for those who live on. She describes this in a wonderfully enjoyable way.

The most recent victim of the citizenry is Trajal Harrell, whose immense productivity he owes most recently to his collaboration with the Schauspielhaus Zürich Dance Ensemble. Journalist Lilo Weber has followed his era in Switzerland very closely, including the disruption with the citizenry, which, along with the departing artistic directors Nicolas Stemann and Benjamin von Blomberg, will also be putting an end to the tenure of this great, stubborn dance artist from New York in 2025. His ensemble in Zurich now faces the same fate as choreographer Richard Siegal’s Ballet of Difference in Cologne. In view of the political decision, Weber looks closely at the question of what has made this highly talented artist so famous – given that Trajal Harrell is currently bringing the people of Paris to the theater in droves.