Calle Libertad

premiere 2006, Solothurn, Kreuzkultur

People in a free world, controlled remotely by the multitude of offers for consumption, ownership and leisure, trends and fashions. They sit in their cars, stuck in traffic, pulled by their dogs through the landscape, intrigued with enticing possibilities for consumption, squeezed into tight-fitting clothes by the demands of fashion.

Calle Libertad devotes itself to this topical theme. People moving about unfreely in a free world. The flamenco dance serves as the fundus for that. – Flamenco, on the one hand, as the dance of deliverance; on the other hand as the dance with a form-strict vocabulary of movement and clear rhythmical and musical guard rails. Calle Libertad introduces you thematically and choreographically to the interface between freedom and imprisonment.

Taken-out-of-context, alienated, repetitive port de bras that caricature people stuck in traffic; taconeos to dance with sticks that render the stereotypical fitness programs of western people. Abrupt, uprooted remates and looplike buleria sequences that reflect our consumer rage, “Kafka beetles” lying on their backs and dancing sevillanas that signal helplessness and impotence, followed by an attempt to squeeze themselves into tight pants to the lamenting chant of a seguiriya. The corset caused by excessively tight clothing is associated with the compulsion to master ever faster and more difficult taconeos. The unbuttoning of the pants brings release. The control over the strict flamenco movements is gradually abandoned, the port de bras becomes vague and free, the neck loosens up, the back gives in, the legs bend and deprive the dancers of their foundations. They contort themselves into four-legged creatures, stray street dogs – “The freedom, of course the freedom the way it’s possible today, is a paltry growth. But it’s freedom, still a possession!” (from: Investigations of a Dog, Franz Kafka).