Mira Hülsmann is 14 years old and visited the performance "Kleine große Sprünge" at TANZKOMPLIZEN on behalf of Offensive Tanz. She wrote down her impressions for our blog.

If you would like to become a dance ambassador yourself, please have a look at our call for applications.

Kleine große Sprünge
Visit of the show at TANZKOMPLIZEN im Podewil on October 2nd, 2022

It's about to start. The audience takes their seats in front of the still empty stage and the excited children's voices slowly ebb away. But before the dance and the music begin to fill the room, the audience is also given a task. A wish for the world, written on blank paper. Various thoughts, colorfully thrown together now in a box on stage.

And then the music swells as the drummer handles the instruments at the edge of the stage, experimentally forming his own dance for people to hear. Finally, as the four dancers begin to fill the stage with their movements, it seems as if they are one person. So attuned. So sure. Waves of the same sea, gusts of the same air. Situations and landscape images also crystallize out of the acting dance. With a little imagination, sparking volcanic mountains begin to rise from the black ground, desert sand flows around the wooden boxes and the atmosphere freezes into weightlessness.

The dancers, who create all these images around them, trust each other. The audience notices it. Everyone notices. The four struggle through time and space, impressed and frightened at the same time by the mighty forces of nature on earth. Curiosity drives them forward, fear makes them retreat again. They keep each other away from the danger, only to meet it themselves immediately afterwards. Hands pull back arms, feet hurry ahead. Protecting the other and yet being there first at the same time. Wild movements to loud music. Hesitation. Dare. Falling down. Getting up again.

The dance tells a story and the daring leaps, movements and sounds immerse the room in breathless waiting for the next step.

Every now and then, scraps of text fly across the stage, children's voices. They talk, ask questions. How far is it until you even get to the end there, or is there even an end to it? How far is it to Mars on foot?! It is not about the answers to these questions, no, it is about the questions themselves. Traveling through forest and water, the dancers search for a way to save nature and find the last tree in the world.

At the end, the collected pieces of paper are pinned to the lines stretched across the stage, creating their own universe of wishes.

by Mira Hülsmann, Dance Ambassador

"Kleine große Sprünge" is a production by TANZKOMPLIZEN as part of the Offensive Tanz for young audiences. The dance piece for everyone aged 6 and up celebrated its premiere in June 2021.

>> more info about the piece