When language fails

I spent a week in Berlin to develop a new project, and on that occasion got the chance to see American choreographer Meg Stuart's Do Animals Cry  at the Volksbühne. The traditional building has recently been refurbished into a more trendy venue and the audience now gets to sit on big floor cushions. What sounds like a nice idea is very unpractical to say the least. Despite sitting uncomfortably for over two hours, Meg Stuart still managed to draw me into her world.
Her piece is about situations that could take place in a dysfunctional family, with her narratives being communicated through the body rather than through verbal language. I became curious about how she works with her performers, who all seem to be developing their own individual stories with a natural presence on stage. Alexander Jenkins was one of my favorite performers. The balance between details and a bigger scene was intriguing and like nothing I have seen before. There was an intimate feeling within a large work, helped by an impressive set created by Doris Dziersk. It includes a tunnel made of small pieces of wood, which made me want to run through a forest.

Sharing in Berlin

After working for a few days intensively at Jangada Studio, a beautiful space for Capoeira and dance in Mitte, we invited a few friends and colleagues to an informal sharing. What was interesting is that, similar to the first sharing, our visitors all enjoyed the minimalist approach to the material. They liked to be in the same space with us and to see the performance close up. Camilla and I on the contrary are more and more thinking that it would be more interesting to see the work from further away, that this would leave more space for the viewer to create their own associations. We talked about possible sets and lighting, that would help us to create our own "world" that we could draw the viewer into, which is very different to sharing a space. The discussions help me to understand though that the scale of a work is something crucial, but that I would like to decide it along the way by paying attention to the material and the relationships that evolve as a result of the process we set up. I would like to treat this decision (which we haven't made yet) as a logical progression rather than an "ambition". It all seems like common sense, once put in words. But there is so much talk in the dance world about scale that it can be easy to see it as an aspiration rather than the result of a process.