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New York Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
At Theatertreffen Festival, Bodies Do the Talking
In this year's Theatertreffen, the annual Berlin festival showcasing the best theater from the German-speaking world, two of the 10 selected works — narrowed down from 600 by a jury — are choreography-led productions where bodies, rather than mouths, do most of the talking. The first of these, 'Sancta,' is the brainchild of the Austrian choreographer, director and performance artist Florentina Holzinger. Like all her shows — including 'Tanz,' which played earlier this year at NYU Skriball in New York — it is comes with trigger warnings, this time for blood, needles, 'self-injurious acts' and sexual violence. Holzinger, who will represent Austria at next year's Venice Biennale, is known for traversing dance, theater and visual art, and 'Sancta' is her first foray into classical music. She has reworked Paul Hindemith's scandalous 1922 one-act opera 'Sancta Susanna,' about a nun tormented by forbidden desire, to critique the patriarchal structures of the Roman Catholic church. When 'Sancta' played in Stuttgart, Germany, last year, the opera house there said some nauseated audience members needed medical attention, and in Vienna, Austrian bishops denounced the show as a 'disrespectful caricature.' At the Volksbühne in Berlin, 'Sancta' opens with a rendition of Hindemith's score by three wild-eyed singers in habits before morphing into a provocative variety show. Naked performers kiss, grope, and grind against a towering metal crucifix. Roller-skating nuns glide along a halfpipe and karate kick suspended metal sheets. In one stomach-churning scene, a strip of skin is sliced from a performer's chest, fried and fed to another cast member in a techno-scored tableau evoking the Last Supper. If Holzinger's intent is to shock, she succeeds — but her efforts also backfire. The relentless barrage of subversive scenes means that, over the show's nearly three-hour run time, it's easy to become desensitized. Its most powerful moments lean into topical humor, rather than excess: When a performer with dwarfism walks onstage dressed in papal robes and dryly declares, 'It's official,' she elicits big laughs from the audience. (It was the day of Pope Leo XIV's election.) Later, the performer proclaims herself the first lesbian pope, to more enthusiastic laughter. Though the cast of female, trans and nonbinary performers finished the show drenched in blood, its members all embraced joyfully, bonded by collectively pushing their bodies to the brink. The applause was rapturous: While few would be willing to perform this ferocious sisterhood's tasks, in Berlin, at least, they seem to appreciate watching them. There is also a supportive onstage community in Theatertreffen's other choreographer-led work, albeit of a very different kind. That piece, called 'Kontakthof — Echoes of '78,' revisits the German choreographer Pina Bausch's 'Kontakthof,' a landmark work of contemporary dance. Nine members of Bausch's cast — now in their 70s, with some nearing 80 — have reunited to perform the roles they created in the late 1970s. They share the stage with ghostly, gray-scale projections from the original show, depicting their younger selves and some absent fellow performers, a few of whom have passed away. Set in a community hall, the original 'Kontakthof' explored dating rituals, longing and power dynamics between the sexes. The male and female performers struggle for dominance, including in a scene where they shout the names of body parts at one another with increasing aggression and struggle in a kind of choreographic tug of war. Many of the original sequences are faithfully reworked in 'Kontakthof — Echoes of '78,' yet the Australian dancer and choreographer Meryl Tankard, who was a member of Bausch's company, has reframed some and condensed others. The new show is a love letter to the company and its artistic achievements, but also a bittersweet depiction of the unavoidable losses that come with aging. Dressed in sharp suits and elegant evening gowns, the performers haunt the stage like phantoms. Surrounded by empty chairs, they sway alone in ballroom holds, their partners conspicuously absent. Later, they scream, slam doors and run in circles while laughing maniacally, tormented by their inability to move on. Negative memories surface, including in a chilling scene in which Tankard mirrors a film of her younger body being manipulated by a group of men. Her older form recoils, flinching from touches that took place almost 50 years ago, in a powerful depiction of physical trauma. There is celebration, too: Smiling flirtatiously, the cast walks resolutely together in processional lines — a Bausch signature — performing a cycle of repeating hand gestures, arm raises and subtle shifts in posture, set to popular German songs of the 1930s. To more rapid jazz, wild, whipping motions bubble up in the performers' limbs. Their gestures are now rougher around the edges than in the projections from the 1970s, and the performers seem to be digging deep into their muscle memories to recall the choreography. Charming, witty duets also reveal a chemistry that comes from years of working together. A skippy, coquettish exchange between Tankard and Josephine Anne Endicott, a fellow Australian, is a highlight, as is a later scene where Endicott cheekily mocks another performer's hip swivels, which are no match for the projections. When the scrim on which those are beamed is lifted at the end of the second act, and the cast sits at the front of the stage to speak about their daily lives, wishes and regrets, we gain a deeper insight into the personalities that shaped Bausch's revered repertoire. Bausch led Tanztheater Wuppertal from 1973 until her death in 2009, and it must be tough for the company's current performers, many of whom never met Bausch, to live up to the figures of that time. But 'Kontakthof — Echoes of '78' shows that honoring the past, while not being constrained by it, can make old works newly relevant. There is room for both melancholic reflection and transgressive provocation on contemporary stages, and the moving body is a powerful tool to express both.
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
My family escaped from the Nazis, but I know it's time for Germany to escape the shadow of its past
My grandfather served four years in the trenches of Belgium and France fighting the 'Tommies', as he would have called them. Although a cavalry officer, he didn't spend much of his time during the First World War on a horse. Grateful as a Jew to escape his German homeland twenty years after the war's end, it was still a shock to him the first time he saw my father, born Heinz Ludwig Merlaender, in British uniform. Like most German Jews, the family were interned at the outbreak of war on the Isle of Man, but as soon as my father could join up he did, first in the Pioneer Corps (the distrusted German refugees could do little harm digging ditches), then in the Intelligence Corps (how could you waste the talents of the German speakers if you were going to occupy and administer the country?). My family's roots go back a long way in Germany. When the Nazis came to power all the boys in my father's class had to examine their origins and it was to father's great pride that as far back as he could go, they were all Germans. They came from small provincial places in the north like Dassel and Lemgo and moved to larger towns like Essen and Offenbach. They were deeply proud of their nation and its achievements. My great aunt studied at the Frankfurt Conservatory alongside Hindemith and under the tutorship of one of Robert Schumann's daughters. The men of the family did their duty in 1870 and 1914. Being Jewish was with each generation increasingly incidental, making them, in their own eyes, no less German than their Catholic and Protestant neighbours. Even after the horrors of the early years of Third Reich, from which most of my family escaped, they still remembered the positives. My maternal grandmother, cowering at home with two small children during the November 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom, recalled a ring on the bell and when she opened the door a slit, the policeman shouting out to his colleagues 'Niemand zu Hause' (nobody home). My father spoke fondly of how his school mates supported him against Nazi teachers and how the whole school atmosphere was helped by a devoutly Catholic and quietly anti-Nazi headmaster. And the centrality of German culture, particularly music, was passed down. My paternal grandmother took me from an early age to concerts featuring Beethoven and Bach. When I started learning German with my father, we turned to volumes of Schiller he had received as a bar mitzvah present (far too difficult) and Schnitzler short stories (much more accessible). The political sentiments of patriotism and affiliation to the nation were unquestioningly transferred to Britain, the beloved land of refuge, but the culture of the old country was never forsaken. And the links continue. I took German nationality years before Brexit and each of my children has associated in their own way. My oldest and her Zurich-born husband are attempting to bring up their first child to speak German. My second studied German at University and spent a year in quiet, tidy, backwoods Fulda. My third on marriage changed his name back to the one which his grandfather was advised to abandon on going to fight in France in 1944, lest he be captured and treated as a traitor rather than as a prisoner of war. On Sunday, Germany will go to the polls in what might be the most momentous election since the foundation of the Federal Republic in 1949. Although a German citizen, I do not have a vote, never actually having lived in the country (but with characteristic national humility, an official at the embassy told me when I received my certificate of nationality that I could challenge that in the courts). In an extraordinarily short period of time, Germany has changed from being the engine of the European economy and the steady centre of the continent's political sanity to a land that seems to be falling apart. The railways, which ran with clockwork efficiency when I travelled extensively across the country twenty years ago, are now an embarrassment of delays and confusion. Expensive energy, Chinese competition and a resistance to technological innovation are rendering the German economy obsolete and threatening the prosperity achieved since the near-miraculous phoenix-like reconstruction after the Second World War. Leaders seem incapacitated, operating out of coalition mantels of ever-more clashing and incoherent political colours. But at the heart of the problem, it seems to me, lies a deep cultural malaise. My grandparents would be horrified at the shoddy, litter-strewn centres of German cities. They would be depressed to find out that, lacking confidence and pride, Germans have not been having enough children to replace themselves for more than half a century. They would find it deeply worrying that synagogues in Germany continue to be attacked and anti-Semitic slogans daubed on community buildings. They would be honest enough to see that the threat to Germany's small and vulnerable Jewish communities, remnants risen from the ashes, comes from a new direction. One friend told me of anti-Israel demonstrations at which Islamist participants shouted 'Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the Gas' while their Left-wing allies shifted about uncomfortably but said nothing. The threat of a revival of anti-Semitism is Germany is real but it is far from the only problem Germany faces as it struggles to absorb the vast inflow of Middle Eastern immigrants it has received in the last decade. Germany must be ever-mindful of its past, and indeed its contrition for the Holocaust has been sincere, long lasting and exemplary. But it must also take responsibility for its future. It cannot do this if it is forever hobbled by a cultural guilt that prevents an honest and open discussion of what ails the country. It is not for me to tell German how to vote. But I hope they do so with an urgent desire to fix their country and an understanding that their history and culture should not just be a matter of shame but also pride which, despite it all, was instilled in me by my forebears. Paul Morland has been a senior member of St Antony's College, Oxford and an associate Research Fellow of Birkbeck, University of London Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
18-02-2025
- General
- Telegraph
My family escaped from the Nazis, but I know it's time for Germany to escape the shadow of its past
My grandfather served four years in the trenches of Belgium and France fighting the 'Tommies', as he would have called them. Although a cavalry officer, he didn't spend much of his time during the First World War on a horse. Grateful as a Jew to escape his German homeland twenty years after the war's end, it was still a shock to him the first time he saw my father, born Heinz Ludwig Merlaender, in British uniform. Like most German Jews, the family were interned at the outbreak of war on the Isle of Man, but as soon as my father could join up he did, first in the Pioneer Corps (the distrusted German refugees could do little harm digging ditches), then in the Intelligence Corps (how could you waste the talents of the German speakers if you were going to occupy and administer the country?). My family's roots go back a long way in Germany. When the Nazis came to power all the boys in my father's class had to examine their origins and it was to father's great pride that as far back as he could go, they were all Germans. They came from small provincial places in the north like Dassel and Lemgo and moved to larger towns like Essen and Offenbach. They were deeply proud of their nation and its achievements. My great aunt studied at the Frankfurt Conservatory alongside Hindemith and under the tutorship of one of Robert Schumann's daughters. The men of the family did their duty in 1870 and 1914. Being Jewish was with each generation increasingly incidental, making them, in their own eyes, no less German than their Catholic and Protestant neighbours. Even after the horrors of the early years of Third Reich, from which most of my family escaped, they still remembered the positives. My maternal grandmother, cowering at home with two small children during the November 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom, recalled a ring on the bell and when she opened the door a slit, the policeman shouting out to his colleagues ' Niemand zu Hause ' (nobody home). My father spoke fondly of how his school mates supported him against Nazi teachers and how the whole school atmosphere was helped by a devoutly Catholic and quietly anti-Nazi headmaster. And the centrality of German culture, particularly music, was passed down. My paternal grandmother took me from an early age to concerts featuring Beethoven and Bach. When I started learning German with my father, we turned to volumes of Schiller he had received as a bar mitzvah present (far too difficult) and Schnitzler short stories (much more accessible). The political sentiments of patriotism and affiliation to the nation were unquestioningly transferred to Britain, the beloved land of refuge, but the culture of the old country was never forsaken. And the links continue. I took German nationality years before Brexit and each of my children has associated in their own way. My oldest and her Zurich-born husband are attempting to bring up their first child to speak German. My second studied German at University and spent a year in quiet, tidy, backwoods Fulda. My third on marriage changed his name back to the one which his grandfather was advised to abandon on going to fight in France in 1944, lest he be captured and treated as a traitor rather than as a prisoner of war. On Sunday, Germany will go to the polls in what might be the most momentous election since the foundation of the Federal Republic in 1949. Although a German citizen, I do not have a vote, never actually having lived in the country (but with characteristic national humility, an official at the embassy told me when I received my certificate of nationality that I could challenge that in the courts). In an extraordinarily short period of time, Germany has changed from being the engine of the European economy and the steady centre of the continent's political sanity to a land that seems to be falling apart. The railways, which ran with clockwork efficiency when I travelled extensively across the country twenty years ago, are now an embarrassment of delays and confusion. Expensive energy, Chinese competition and a resistance to technological innovation are rendering the German economy obsolete and threatening the prosperity achieved since the near-miraculous phoenix-like reconstruction after the Second World War. Leaders seem incapacitated, operating out of coalition mantels of ever-more clashing and incoherent political colours. But at the heart of the problem, it seems to me, lies a deep cultural malaise. My grandparents would be horrified at the shoddy, litter-strewn centres of German cities. They would be depressed to find out that, lacking confidence and pride, Germans have not been having enough children to replace themselves for more than half a century. They would find it deeply worrying that synagogues in Germany continue to be attacked and anti-Semitic slogans daubed on community buildings. They would be honest enough to see that the threat to Germany's small and vulnerable Jewish communities, remnants risen from the ashes, comes from a new direction. One friend told me of anti-Israel demonstrations at which Islamist participants shouted 'Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the Gas' while their Left-wing allies shifted about uncomfortably but said nothing. The threat of a revival of anti-Semitism is Germany is real but it is far from the only problem Germany faces as it struggles to absorb the vast inflow of Middle Eastern immigrants it has received in the last decade. Germany must be ever-mindful of its past, and indeed its contrition for the Holocaust has been sincere, long lasting and exemplary. But it must also take responsibility for its future. It cannot do this if it is forever hobbled by a cultural guilt that prevents an honest and open discussion of what ails the country. It is not for me to tell German how to vote. But I hope they do so with an urgent desire to fix their country and an understanding that their history and culture should not just be a matter of shame but also pride which, despite it all, was instilled in me by my forebears.
