The "Awtomat Kalaschnikowa", the Kalashnikov, the most famous automatic rifle weapon in the world. The starting point of the dance choreography of the Kalaschnikowa reproduces the sound of the automatic rounds and the fusillade of flamenco heel and toe beats. The energies of perpetrators and victims, of violence and vulnerability are explored in an interplay of thematic and physically reactive points of contact. Irrespective of what ideology they are fired under, the shots puncture the silence with brutality, ravaging the space of the soul, the principle of live and let live, the feeling of security. The powerful steps of the flamenco dance demand a will and a hardness of the dancing body for its performance. The body wrests from these relentless beats. It fights for and through her. Intricate footwork like a fight against the ground, the body, the acoustics of the room, against the outside and inside. The body becomes the perpetrator and victim of itself. The perpetrator and the victim in one person, in one body, quickly firm and armoured, quickly brittle and vulnerable. The fusillade of steps is beguiling and deafening at the same time, they find their resonance and reception in the bodies that produce them and on which they collide. Shock and recoil, tension, relaxation and collapse as mutually reinforcing processes. The weapon, a construction for destruction. The autodestruction of human beings.

On stage, a concertante structure of strong rhythm and silence develops, of well-rehearsed sound recordings of wolves, which howl their readiness to react to the unforeseen, howling into the black night; Wolf songs, which are reminiscent of the lamentations of the Flamenco song. A reminiscence of the guitar as the central flamenco instrument forms the well-rehearsed composition "Hey Gipsy Boy" by Jimi Hendrix - a guitarist and singer, who was known in the course of the Vietnam War in his music with war weapons.

Soli uses the so-called loop technique, which enables the dancers to record their footwork live on stage and then play it in an endless loop. The use of this technique allows the dancers overlays and interventions to the specially "produced" foot volleys: shock and recoil with one and the same body, perpetrator and victim in one person.

The endless series of shots, which leads to the endless tragedy of the story, is acoustically and visually translated into "Kalashnikova": the repetitive footsteps, the loop recording and playback technique, the "song without end" by Robert Schumann, the wheels, the overlong red dress in the final image.



Press review


Flamenco becomes a weapon

The scenery offers only old car tires. Martial is this place, admonishes at ghettos, at end time moon, raw lostness and it is absolutely consistent. The light subtly focuses the dramatic of the moving atmospheres. No superficial story is told.
But violent attacks of flamenco footsteps. Gloomy, body-intensive answers to the suffering, violent signs of wrestling, fleeing and resistance, confluent, diverging, gestic suggestive alternating images. Hardly any sound that underlines the happenings - instead the flamenco steps, the breathing of the dancers.
One quickly becomes fascinated by these dense figurative images and danced reflections, which trigger a constant lasting associative tension. The flamenco, puristically hinted at, reduced to radical flamenco stomping, recorded as a repetitive loop that animates the dancers to the interplay of expressive body language and dramatic gesture, of aggressiveness and resistance, harmonies and disharmonies, power and powerlessness, life and suffering.
Flamenco drives, is rhythm, gives strength, dissolves, becomes quiet, becomes a weapon: an intensified dance event that finds its own, highly variable language. And then suddenly the howling of the wolves, Jimi Hendrix's "Hey Gipsy Boy", comes to finale to Schumann's "song without end", musical resonances to the images that involuntarily set in. (...)
Flamenco also stands for extreme footwork, for a large physical, strong-willed presence in the room. And so Anet Fröhlicher also questions with this work flamenco as a dance-like attitude, the emotions, the energetic expressivity that this martial rhythm triggers. And poses choreographically with the expressively acting dancers the question: What remains if the foot no longer dances flamenco, when the tension passes into relaxation? Then the Flamenco-Kalashnikov association enters into a tense, dance-like relationship with the suggestion of perpetrator victims, and the conceptual choreography becomes a kind of story. Rather associative than narrative, which breaks down boundaries with soft irony and consistently finds its allegorical climax: The dancers get rid of the flamenco shoes and thus break away from the "kalaschnikov-like" volleys, stepping off with high heels and crutches like a victory of the fragile elegance over the vulnerable power. The high heels still staple. And a red dress combines blood and eroticism. Somehow the flamenco has won after all.

Solothurn newspaper, 2016



Icon of Freedom

The company el contrabando is known for its innovation in flamenco dancing. In the latest piece Kalashnikova she succeeds in contemporary political relevance. Stacked car tires limit the dance floor. Imputs of noise haunt the silence, like the echo of shots in the mountains. Four dancers rock in the wind of the noises; her views point at same time into the vastness and the deep within. Gripping calm before the storm. A short breathe in - the first stone rolls and an avalanche of non-stop footsteps catches the viewer and takes his breath away. The Kalashnikov - the most famous series firearm in the world - does not appear as a prop, it merely stands for the dynamics in the show: over and over again the bodies are spurred by volley-like footsteps to build up and disintegrate body tension and to impulse of movement. Until the end, the piece heats up through the explosiveness of the dancing bodies. The flamenco rhythm is itself impulse and music at the same time. (...)

ANDA, Flamenco Magazin, 2016



Flamenco reflects on violence

(…) Flamenco is a very strong dance that allows women to express themselves very powerful and emancipated. It has a high rhythmic base, which gives a special dynamic on stage. The company explores the possibilities of this dance to go beyond the traditional path.
Their intention is to create an allegory of destruction that can cause violence, embodied by firearms, and although female symbols such as high heels are used, the issue goes beyond gender issues. The dancers represent more the phenomenon of human beings than specifically women. They are somewhat androgynous in this work. Sometimes the public see them as women, in others as men, sometimes in the middle.
The duality between violence and vulnerability reaches its peak at the end of the presentation. High heels are used as protests at the end of the show after the dancers take off their flamenco shoes. With their high heels they are less stable and need crutches, and that is a surreal moment that leaves room for associations and interpretations. The rifles as weapons of men, the high
heels those of women.

Diario de Pernamuco, 2018



Flamenco reflete sobre a violência

(…) O flamenco é uma dança muito forte, que permitem à mulher se expressar de uma maneira muito poderosa e emanicpada. Tem um alto nivel de base ritmica, o que da uma dinâmica especial no palco. A companhia pesquisa as possibilidades dess dança ir além da forma tradicional.
A intenção dela é criar uma alegoria da destruição que a violência, materializada pelas armas, pode causar e, embora símbolos femininos como a salto alto sejam fortes, o tema transcende as questões de género. As bailarina estão representando mais seres humanos do que mulheres propriamente. Elas estão de certa forma, andróginas nesse trabalho. Em alguns momentos, os espectadores as vêen como mulheres, em outras como homens, em outros momentos also no melo.
A dualidade entre violência e vulnerabilidade atinge seu clímax no final da apresentação. Saltos altos são usados no final do espetáculo como próteses, depois de as artistas tirarem seus sapatos de flamenco. Com os saltos, elas estão menos estáveis e precisam de muletas, e este é um momento surrealista. Isso dá margem a associações e esse  momento não foi criado de forma lógica, mas em um context intuitiov. Fuzis podem ser interpretadas como as armas do homem e os saltos altos, como as armas da mulher.

Diario de Pernamuco, 2018

Kalashnikova – song without end

Premiere 2016, Haus der Kunst, Solothurn / CH further performances in Madrid_Teatro Fernan Gomez; Chile_
International theater– & dance festivals Fintdaz and Zicosur; Brazil_Festival "Janeiro de grandes Espetaculos"
Berlin_Performance Arts Festival_Hamburg Lichthof Theater_Potsdam Waschhaus Arena.