“Something small and light but not insignificant, more like a chocolate candy” was what Martin Schläpfer had in mind in 2008 when he conceived his “Pezzi und Tänze”. Not en pointe, free and lively in bodily motion, but also bizarre and in danger of losing control, the dance unfolds itself to a music whose steady flow of fluctuating, endlessly prolongable melody suggests a ritual incantation formula, namely “Three pieces” for saxophone written in 1956 by the Italian Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988). In strong contrast to them is the world unveiled by Franz Schubert with his waltzes. Apparently lightly tossed off miniatures, perpetually new, astonishingly simple variation of three-four time, inspiring Martin Schläpfer to a miniature danced story: tiny tales of the common run of life between a woman and a man, finding in the small space between melancholy and peasant pleasures a wistful outcome in parting, in what Martin Schläpfer calls the “world-weariness which can also smile” in the manner so typical of Schubert. “A small choreographic miracle,” pronounced the dance critic Jochen Schmidt, “twenty-two minutes of perfect joy”.
 
***
MUSIC
Tre pezzi for soprano saxophone by Giacinto Scelsi
15 waltzes for violin and guitar arranged from the 36 original dances op.9 D.365 by Franz Schubert
 

Choreographie Martin Schläpfer
Kostüme Marie-Thérèse Jossen
 
PEZZO 1 Camille Andriot,Remus Sucheana,Anne Marchand,Nicole Morel,Alexandre Simões
PEZZO 2 Maksat Sydykov
PEZZO 3 Camille Andriot,Carolina Francisco Sorg,Remus Sucheana,Pontus Sundset
TÄNZE Yuko Kato,Jörg Weinöhl
 

They are curious stories in an extremely acute movement language with which the Argentinian choreographer Teresa Rotemberg fascinates her public – wavering cryptically between dance and theatre, full of grotesque comedy but also of moving tragedy, everyday absurdities with a temperament and a humour all their own.

Teresa Rotemberg has been head of the Company Mafalda in Zürich since 1999. Trained at the Teatro Colón in her home city Buenos Aires and at the Ecole de Danse Classique of Monte Carlo, her first engagements took her to Ulm, Stuttgart and Giessen, to the Movers Dance Company of Zürich and to the Dance Theatre of the Weimar National Theatre under Ismael Ivo. She worked as guest choreographer with the Cathy Sharp Ensemble of Basel, Ballet Augsburg, the Dance Theatre of Heidelberg and Freiburg, the Bern ballet, at the Budapest Wagner festival in the Palace of the Arts, and also in collaboration with the director Mathias Hartmann at the Zürich Opera. Important events such as the Holland Dance Festival and the Swiss Steps Festival presented her work. As a stage-director for speaking theatre she is a regular guest of the Municipal Stages of Münster.

To piano pieces by John Cage and improvisations by Herbert Henck on Cage’s sonatas and Interludes in Teresa Rotemberg’s new choreography splittings take place: single elements give rise to a whole chain of new movement, the connexion with the beginning is lost, the path once taken cannot be retraced – ways into a new system, a new order, but also into chaos.
 
***
MUSIC
from the sonatas and interludes for prepared piano by John Cage and Solo I, Duo I und Duo II from „Festeburger Fantasien“ by Herbert Henck
 

Choreographie Teresa Rotemberg
Bühne und Kostüme Benita Roth
 
Tänzerinnen Camille Andriot,Doris Becker,Mariana Dias,Carolina Francisco Sorg,Ainara García Navarro,Carrie Johnson,Carly Morgan,Daniela Svoboda,Louisa Rachedi
Tänzer Florent Cheymol,Helge Freiberg,Antoine Jully,Sonny Locsin,Bogdan Nicula,Sascha Pieper,Martin Schirbel,Alexandre Simões,Remus Sucheana,Pontus Sundset,Maksat Sydykov
 

A dancer creates an architecture of lines and curves and intervening spaces, imaginary spaces. Her body grows far out of its actual size, seems stretched, as if prolonged – and then again quite small. With the highest technical demands which are transformed for the spectator into apparent ease, Martin Schläpfer investigates movement and space as between opposing poles in his solo ballet “Ramifications” to György Ligeti’s eponymous composition written in 1968/9. Dancer and music seek each other and break away from each other. Her body makes the impression of a living sculpture, but not as the image of beautiful classical perfection, more as a question – the expression of longing for other conditions which also know what dirt means.
 
***
MUSIC
“Ramifications” by György Ligeti
 

Choreographie Martin Schläpfer
Kostüme Thomas Ziegler
 
Tänzerin Marlúcia do Amaral
 

Concentrated light falls only occasionally on any objects. Hints at a strange world emerge: perhaps the store-room of a museum, but also everywhere strange memories of a garden full of flowers – Paradise and sideshow at the same time. Unintentionally, as if by chance, the dance develops out of one new group of three after the other. Dances which continually give rise to other dances, short fragments beginning to merge into a whole, inexorable and hard but also emotionally strong and honest.

With the ballet “3”, first given in 2007, one of the most signal choreographies of Martin Schläpfer has been added to the repertoire of Ballett am Rhein. “What I look for is not in the middle”, declared the Swiss choreographer of his work; “I am searching for a new intensity, for a choreographic language that is practice inside and outside at once – really deep inside in its emotion and very much outside, extremely extravert physically. But not extreme in its acrobatics, rather extreme in its academic content”. His musical basis for this is a work for voice, cello and electronics commissioned from Paul Pavey, a score which the British composer and performer always presents live. Like an archaeologist he listens into his sounds in a search for unexpected frictional forces which are an essential source of inspiration for dance between a glassy, almost frozen aural landscape in the flageolet tones of the cello, far-reaching, melancholy vocal lines, archaic natural sounds, unchained folklore, swinging echoes of jazz and meditative flow conglomerating into a single musical reality.

In a critics’ forum the magazine “ballettanz” repeatedly declared the “eminent choreography” of “3”. Wiebke Hüster reported about the world première in the Frankfurter Allgemeine: “There is hardly another choreographer today who is able to create works with so many layers of depth besides Martin Schläpfer – dances which really come to grips with the music, dances which open up a new terrain of movement, and finally dances which over and beyond the evening can occupy one’s imagination for so long”.
 
***
MUSIC
Paul Pavey
 

Choreographie Martin Schläpfer
Bühne Thomas Ziegler
Kostüme Catherine Voeffray
Cello, Voice, Electronics Paul Pavey
 
Tänzerinnen Sachika Abe,Marlúcia do Amaral,Camille Andriot,Mariana Dias,Géraldine Dunkel,Carolina Francisco Sorg,Yuko Kato,Anne Marchand,Nicole Morel,Julie Thirault
Tänzer Callum Hastie,Boris Randzio,Bogdan Nicula,Ordep Rodriguez Chacon,Alexandre Simões,Remus Sucheana,Pontus Sundset,Sascha Pieper,Jörg Weinöhl