HELENA WALDMANN
REPERTOIRE
DANCE DIRECTOR, STAGE DESIGN AND CONCEPT | HELENA WALDMANN |
COMPOSER | JAYROPE |
LIGHTING DESIGN | MARIO DASZENIES |
COSTUME DESIGN | JUDITH ADAM |
PREMIERE | 12.7.2018 GAUTHIER DANCE//DANCE COMPANY THEATERHAUS STUTTGART |
LENGTH OF PERFORMANCE | 15 MIN |
ON STAGE | 6 DANCERS |
The Whirlwind – Helena Waldmann
Whether male or female, most choreographers experiment willingly and extensively while in the run-up to their careers. When the first hurdles are behind them and they have found the right tempo and their own style, this dynamism weakens, sometimes to the point of disappearing altogether. Their art has become established as a brand, is more or less marketable, their artistic toolbox is well equipped – no need to tinker with what works. Settling into such a comfort zone of looped repetitions has never occurred to Helena Waldmann. The choreographer and theatre director constantly reinvents herself and her art: with each piece, each team and each trip. Waldmann is, so to speak, the whirlwind of the dance scene. As almost as soon as a work has premiered, she and her crew head off on tour through Germany, Europe, sometimes halfway across the world. Her works, on the other hand, bring the world and reality into the theatre. Some- times poetically, sometimes politically she takes aim at things that concern us all: the hunt for happiness, the full-face veil, dementia, exploitation, exclusion – her thematic pallet is as varied as life itself and is gua- ranteed to cause a furore. Helena Waldmann thinks in images rather than abstract concepts and never sets her sights on delivering ready-made messages. Her stage is not a lectern but a dance laboratory that stirs things up and blows fresh air into our minds – as one would expect of an enterprising Berlin whirlwind. Dorion Weickmann
“On average 148 new laws are passed every year in Germany, by the government, and by the upper and lower houses of the parliament”, says Helena Waldmann: “Laws to restrain us, to keep us on a tight rein and to ensure we pull our socks up. In short, we love the whip.” Every stroke of the whip is a new must, a new law, a new command, and anyone who does not respond appropriately is corrected – with a new stroke of the whip, as in horse training. In We Love Horses Helena Waldmann confronts the freedom of movement with the domestication (not only) of horses. For all our pride, we are prepared to let ourselves be domesticated, to engage in an ongoing process of mutual education, monitoring and training without realising how unfree this makes us, how many constraints we subject ourselves to, unwritten and written laws that dictate what we must do and not do – in order not to stand out, in order to please. “We love the whip and we offer our backsides freely.” Helena Waldmann’s exploration of this carrot-and-stick mechanism in We Love Horses results in a work that is a plea for more human freedom and rambunctiousness.