Amelie Mallmann

Dance told

Contribution from the booklet "Ways of Play for Young Audiences"

A dancer and four dancers stand outside a large circle of sand. The atmosphere is tense, the light dark. No sound can be heard. But then one begins to move, slowly but powerfully he stomps up with his leg. The arm moves upwards, the whole body follows the impulse. His movements are called stomp and jab: While the stomps anchor the feet in the earth and cause stability, the arms stretch with the jabs towards the sky, collect energy and throw it into the room. Slowly the others also get moving, not only their body, but also their facial expressions begin to dance. Then the music starts: Le Sacre du Printemps by Igor Stravinsky.

This initial scene from the dance piece A Human Race – The Rite of Krump by French choreographer Grichka Caruge establishes each figure with its own way of moving. The slowness expresses caution, a watchful wait and see what will happen to the group. The tension rises through the silence, which is then surprisingly broken by the music. Now begins the story of this group, which unravels neither chronologically nor verbally in front of the eyes of the young audience from the age of 11. It is the story of five people who have experienced discrimination and find an outlet for repressed feelings in their dance. The community offers them the shelter to show themselves relentlessly.

The style in which this happens is called Krump. Created around the turn of the millennium in the Los Angeles black community, Krump seems aggressive and angry on a superficial level. The stomping legs, the swinging, but also beating and threatening arms, the distorted facial expressions – but Krump is much more. It is danced resistance, it puts the body in a kind of emotional trance, in which all feelings are allowed to appear.

The piece is currently part of the program of TANZKOMPLIZEN, a venue in Berlin that exclusively shows dance for young audiences. Confronting young people with an urban dance style and a piece of music from 1913 is a venture, as they have to engage in emotions whose vehement expression hardly allows for any possibilities of retreat. What does the dance tell them, what do the bodies that dance themselves so much in rage tell them? The audience perceives that the body is able to transform feelings outward by shaping and shaping the movements in certain ways. The body acts as an archive: All muscles, tendons, skin, bones, all fluids and organs store sensations, experiences, traumas. How we move shows who we are and what we have experienced.

On a stage, many things can be transported through words, but only through body language can the content of a message actually be experienced. 

In the case of A Human Race, movements make it clear: The dancers fight against borders that are set from the outside, but also against those in their own minds. They dance against racism, against exclusion and dehumanization. They dance for a strong community, for truthfulness and mutual support. To top it up: They dance for their lives. Where a purely intellectual or verbal solution remains mere assertion, the body can have its own who we are and what we have experienced. On a stage, many things can be transported through words, but only through body language can the content of a message actually be experienced. In the case of A Human Race, movements make it clear: The dancers fight against borders that are set from the outside, but also against those in their own minds. They dance against racism, against exclusion and dehumanization. They dance for a strong community, for truthfulness and mutual support. To top it up: They dance for their lives. Where a purely intellectual or verbal solution remains a mere assertion, the body can find its own way out. By empowering, encouraging, stabilizing and sensitizing himself to reactions to the movements of others.

If you dance alone, you need access to your own feelings and the will to create. Then almost everything can be translated in motion. Then the way becomes clear to express yourself without words and let go of stored emotions. 

This is a message that can be exculpatory, especially for young people who walk through a labyrinth of contradictory sensations and are not sure what they are allowed/want to say and what they do not want to say.

When dancing in a group, everyone needs empathy to take impulses and use them as inspiration for their own movement. Joint dancing tells how individuals can tune in to a common rhythm by paying attention to each other; but it also tells how this creates a community in which individuals can cheer, support and strengthen themselves.

Let's move away from the concrete example of A Human Race and look at the history of dance: from folk and tribal dances to court dances to ballet, from expressive dance to modern and postmodern dance to the urban dance forms we know today – dance was and is universal on the one hand, as everyone with a body can also dance.

On the other hand, dance is culturally and historically shaped and truly not, as is often said, a language that everyone understands. 

Children and teenagers who have never seen a dance play are surprised and sometimes irritated by what happens on stage. It is not so easy to trust one's own perception and to let danced movements have a value-free effect. At best, your own mirror neurons are fired up and you feel like dancing yourself – this is also an act of empathy.

In the mediation, i.e. in the accompanying workshop or follow-up conversation, you can work on three levels and trace the narrative of dance: physically, emotionally and mentally.

• What movements have been remembered, can they be retraced again, without words?

• What was the quality of the movements: flowing, angular, fast, slow, expansive or very close to the body?

• What feelings were felt while watching?

• What movements caused these feelings?

• What was thought and remembered while watching?

Thus, the narration of dance is extended by a physical and emotional effect, which enriches the cognitive, on which so much value is otherwise placed in our everyday life, many times over.

Dance is an invitation to understand oneself as a holistic being and movement as an integral part of our lives. He teaches respect for the body of others and raises awareness of vulnerability and the possibility of empowerment.

Amelie Mallmann is a dramaturge and dance facilitator. Since 2018 she has worked for TANZKOMPLIZEN – Tanz für junges Publikum, before that she was engaged at the Landestheater Linz, the Theater an der Parkaue and the Deutsches Theater Berlin and has worked freelance for the ‘Kunstfest Weimar’, the ‘Festival Theaterformen’ and the ‘Augenblick mal! – Festival des Theaters für junges Audience’, among others. She was on the board of the dramaturgical society and is currently co-director of the certificate course ‘Biographic-documentary theatre’ at the Berlin University of the Arts. E-Mail: mallmann@tanzzeit-berlin.de

This text was published in WG Jugendliteratur und Medien - AJuM (ed.): “Spielweise für junges Publikum. ^ "Insights into the Children's and Youth Theatre", kjl&m 22.2 | forschung.schule.bibliothek, Munich 2022.