No Tears

Premiere 2020, Haus der Kunst, Solothurn / CH
august 12 to 22 2020

A dance production about the orchestration of people, about power that has no room for tears, and about tears that are no longer cried

Recordings of orchestra rehearsals to Johannes Brahms music provide an atmospheric accompaniment throughout the evening. The stage installation consists of dozens of metal music stands. Formed into a thicket at the beginning, they mutate into border and prison fences, thus transforming the stage into a threatening non-place.
The sound of symphony orchestra warming up and the clattering of computer keyboards frame the evening of dance. The orchestra serves as a symbol for the interpersonal structure with its interplay between harmony and disharmony and its unstable balance; the sound of the computer keyboard symbolises manipulation and influence by opaque structures in the background. The sound of the fleeting rhythm of typing on the keyboard breaks through the orchestral sound, overlays it like a kraken and interacts with the rattling footsteps of the dancers. Typed-in sentences are projected onto the stage – absurd, confusing.

On the carpet of orchestral sounds and keyboard noises, the dancers meander from their unstable interpersonal structure to programmed machines of destruction, lost and disconnected from being human. Questions of guilt and innocence arise. The destruction is followed by healing processes, hope and new beginnings. At the finale, everything is covered up, traces are erased, as if the destruction had never taken place. That's just the way it is. “Each second of every day, there is a long line of people on this Earth who are crying and a shorter one of those who are laughing. But there is also a third line: those who are neither crying nor laughing any more. It is the saddest of all three.” (from “Natural Novel” by Georgi Gospodinov).

Man, people in their interpersonal social structure, impugning life, operating between consensus and dissent,harmony and disharmony, aggression and love. Man’s so called “first nature”, the innate feelings, reactions and preferences. “They have developed over centuries. Formulated in a characteristically ideal way, they ensure an almost frictionless functioning of people in their social and ecological environment. Genetically embedded in us, they must only be learned to a limited extent. They imply a kind of natural morality that regulates interpersonal cooperation” (from “The Good Book of Human Nature”, Carel van Schaik & Kai Michel). Human togetherness is like an orchestra with its harmonies and disharmonies. Warming up, tuning and playing together: a precarious balance; a precarious imbalance. Through misdirected propaganda, unrecognised as such, this “primordial nature” of humanity is dug out, destroyed, demolished: perpetuating itself until there is war. An undergrowth of pursuit of interests, impenetrable and clandestine. The following rule applies: a simple lie is easier to disseminate than the complex truth. Propaganda is followed by censorship. Wars don’t happen by chance; they are prepared for, surreptitiously, years in advance.

People are coaxed into wanting war, making war, tolerating war, by confusing, manipulative propaganda.
The orchestra is orchestrated. War is waged by those who do not experience bloodshed themselves. Those who experience bloodshed themselves are first celebrated, then thrown away; their souls sold; their humanity sabotaged – no room for tears. The orchestra has stopped. It has been annihilated.

As Richard von Weizsäcker said: “Don’t let yourself wallow in hostility and hatred towards other people, towards Russians or Americans, Jews or Turks, alternative or conservative types, black or white. Learn to live with one another, not against one another.”

(R. von Weizsäcker in his historic speech given on the 40th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, 8 May 1985, on the occasion of the ceremonial commemoration in the plenary hall of the German parliament).

“No Tears” is a follow-on project to the production “Kalashnikova”.

supported by

SOkultur Lotteriefonds Kanton Solothurn
Stadt Solothurn
Ernst Göhner Stiftung
Stanley Thomas Johnson Stiftung
Migros Kulturprozent
Kulturfonds Anzeiger Bucheggberg-Wasseramt
Schweizerische Interpretenstiftung
VXCO
Hotel Kreuz, Solothurn
Verein "el contrabando"
Aimée Modes