In March of last year, how long ago it seems now, Sasha Waltz sent her dancers dressed in different pastel shades – fuchsia, turquoise and pink – onto a bright playing surface and started the live stream. “In C” was the name of the hour-long, simple but quicksilver choreography named after the music. Jumps, swings, runs, gaits, shoulder circles, lifting and lowering, sitting, lying and standing – the whole course exuded a Trisha Brown-esque serenity, just a little rougher, Berlin style. Nonetheless, the dance flowed like a cheerful stream in the beautiful musical riverbed of Terry Riley’s minimalist composition.
This music consistently sounds like a clear call that is repeatedly uttered in small variations: “Awakening!”, “Renewal!”. It was wonderful to see that play pouring into the living rooms, one of the best of the whole period of the theaters being closed. “In C” is light-footed, fluid and energetic, undramatic but not superficial, a continuous, infectious, glorious call for movement, movement! The theme of the piece is timing, and how to try to ride the wave while paying attention to the others and making decisions within the dance improvisations on the basis of varied structures, as is necessary for everyone and for the work on most interesting is.
Lots of mathematical cleverness
“In C”, composed in 1964 and written in music history as the first minimalist work, sounds similar to what Steve Reich and Philipp Glass then composed, and like their works even better when a clever choreography illustrates the music , plays around, rushes ahead of her or pursues. Sasha Waltz succeeded in doing this, and the fact that the result looks so natural and correct gives an idea of how much thought, planning and structuring, how much mathematical cleverness this also required.
At that time the world was slowed down and intimidated by a threatening situation. In the meantime, “In C” has long celebrated its second premiere, this time in the presence of spectators, and is touring the world as a matter of course.
A few days ago, the choreography experienced a third, very special premiere in Marl in North Rhine-Westphalia, which has a population of around 83,000. About 160 Marl children, young people and adults from general education and dance schools had learned the 53 movement figures from Sasha Waltz and her dancers, which the piece has analogously to Riley’s 53 musical figures. At seven architecturally interesting locations in the city, one of the lay groups presented an excerpt of the work for fifteen minutes. After each performance, the procession of dancers and spectators set off on foot, guided by small flag-wavers and the ringing of bells.
Great citizen arts adventure
The course began outside the Scharoun School and led in a spiral through the theatre, the sculpture park, the Grimme Institute and other stations to the bus station forecourt in front of the large shopping center built in 1971 and opposite the planet settlement, which was also used. A one-hour central performance with the dancers from “Sasha Waltz & Guests” and all Marler participants ended the five-hour great civil art adventure. It should catch on and continue, said the enthusiastic Mayor Marls at the end, and judging by the applause, everyone present thought what Werner Arndt said was right.
Seeing a city and its architecturally interesting, if not consistently beautiful Federal Republican buildings from a different perspective was one thing, the other was to experience how the postmodern ideas of improvisation and participation and the even older amateur dance ideas of Sasha Waltz were combined with a light hand something new were transferred: an art and a pleasure at the same time, for everyone, for everyone together.
