Hören.Sehen.Vergehen  - perder el sentido

premiere 2001, Zürich


Pictures in the era of communication


What about communication in the era of communication? We mainly communicate with the senses of hearing and seeing. And the other senses? It is about sense and intoxicating the senses, but also about nonsense and senselessness of modern communication, about means of communication and interference  of communication. How do people in this time move and what are they moved by?  What are the foreground and the background of their need to communicate, what are their typical patterns of behaviour and their rather concealed states of mind? What senses are sensitised in this era, which of them turn blunt?
What happens if we lose our senses of hearing and seeing?

On stage two female flamenco dancers and a female and a male dancer of contemporary orientation face each other. Four strong dancers, two suspenseful styles of dance, one ranging from audible to ear-splitting, the other not so. One nimble, often floating, the other not so. The two styles charge each other, provoke each other, chase each other, meet again, converge, only to move away from each other again. The contemporary dancers are inspired by the flamenco with its very own power and further develop elements of it in their on dance language. On the other hand the flamenco dancers are inspired by the dancing sequences of the ”contemporaries” and adapt these in their dance. What does a contemporary dancer have to offer in the face of the determined, domineering movements of a flamenco dancer? How does a flamenco dancer react to a contemporary dancer that sprawls on the floor effortlessly?


On the acoustic level they work on the one hand with modern flamenco music. The various moods, timbers and tempi of this music are associated with the dance scenes that change emotionally in the course of the performance. In co-operation with the flamenco percussionist Andi Pupato existing pieces of music were developed further and tailored to fit the production. Furthermore Andi Pupato created pieces of percussion that were sketched directly during the rehearsals, based on the improvisations of the dancers.

«Noises and voices»

Conversations and voices play an important role, too. A conversation, a voice, have contents, a rhythm, noises, tones, a melody. The play is accompanied by the voices of old people whose communication is intermittently slotted into the events (on stage) and contrasted to them - mainstays of the production.