FARM DER TIERE IM EWIGEN EIS
In ihrer Mischung von Video, Computermusik, afrikanischen Trommeln, Bewegung und surrealen Aktionen hat Helena Waldmann eine einzigartige Bildersprache entwickelt.
Schwäbische Zeitung 7.4.2003

DÖSEN IM KÜHLSCHRANK
Helena Waldmanns Geschichte ist ein innovatives Stück Tanztheater zum Schauen, Genießen und Nachdenken, eine ästhetische Show im allerbesten Sinne.
Die Rheinpfalz 17.2.2003

SUNBATHING AT THE SOUTH POLE
The music, arranged by Tricky Chris, that comes out of the loudspeakers emits an obstinate electronic rhythm and includes quotations from rock and rap and noisy allusions to natural phenomena. It deliberately guides the movements of the six dancers and is an ideal accompaniment for the video clips designed by Anna Saup, that reflect not only the Antarctic world of ice and water, but also the threats of climate change, with lightning, thunder and sunshine. Waldmann spins a delightfully opalescent tale, which subtly shifts between reality and fiction. (…) This imaginative tragicomedy about the penguins, which look so droll but which fight tooth and claw for their last space, met with enthusiastic applause at its premiere performance.
Darmstädter Echo, 28. Oktober 2002

WHEN THE WORLD GOES OFF ITS TRACKS
Video clips, music, light and dance combine to form a grandiose collage, cancelling out reality and sending the audience on a voyage of experience by deceiving the senses. The result is an all-genre work of art, multimedia theatre in which sound and space converge. (...) Waldmann’s dance theatre also lives by the irony, the tongue-in-cheek narrative of ”Invasion of the Penguins”. What appears so funny – penguins living it up on a beach with iced drinks and entertainment – raises our awareness of the global threat posed by such things as the greenhouse effect. And when the penguins cast out fishing lines because global warming has dried up their brains, it makes a sad finishing tableau. But Waldmann points the finger at no one. This extravagant choreography is a parable of a world that has gone completely off its tracks.
Mainzer Allgemeine, 29. Oktober 2002

ODD BIRDS
Never short of original ideas, Frankfurt-based choreographer Helena Waldmann, inspired by a true story about the arrival of a colony of aggressive penguins in a small settlement at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, makes these elegant swimmers and ungainly tailcoat-wearers the tragic heroes of a fable in dance form. ”Invasion of the Penguins” gives comic treatment to concerns about global warming by greenhouse gases. (…)
It is a fitting open end to a play that, of all the apocalyptical possibilities that threaten us, chooses the least awful and plays around with it – as casually, amusingly and entertainingly as society is dancing over the abysses it is digging for itself.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 7. November 2002

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