Aline oat maas
Zaghafter breakthrough
The dance performance ‘Fabelhaft’ by Veronika Heisig and Manuel Lindner invites you to re-experience the body and its movement patterns.
The text was written on the blog of the Theater o.N.’s ‘Berliner Schaufenser’ series of events.
The forehead wrinkles crumple through the hole as if they were an independent being. An elbow pushes out and squeezes through the small opening. Organic, a bit unfamiliar. Fingers like feelers explore the room and timidly dare to break through. One mouth, one ear, one nostril.
The body parts are familiar to all of us, but in the 25-minute dance performance by Manuel Lindner and Veronika Heisig they appear unexpectedly independent: As individual living beings that function autonomously and only by chance represent the human body in this arrangement for a brief moment. Fragmentarily, the big picture is formed, soon a strong arm, a long leg appears. The individual parts are formed into two performers who will design this afternoon for children from the age of four at the FELD Theater for young audiences in Schönberg.
The set design is simple and stretches in strips of tarpaulin – like strands of water flowing down from above and into the audience. The strands have holes in different sizes and heights. This is about deconstruction and sensitization to the small: A blink stands for itself. Ears without context. It is a curious image that breaks down the familiar body into its individual parts. Unusual and playful. The bodywork is accompanied by fast snorting and shapes the atmosphere in the audience. A child asks out loud: ‘When do they start dancing?’
About half of the piece, the artists emerge behind the tracks and experiment together in space with different types of movement. The starting point for this is again the body in its individual parts – but this time in connection with the counterpart. From the connectedness of the hands grow chains of movement. The movements of one person are transferred to the other. The movements have a mechanical, researching effect and irritate the usual view of the body – and how they move as expected.
A short moment of silence makes you pause, the two dancers separate spatially. A child asks: “Why is it quiet now?”
The tension breaks open and with jerky, strong and strutting movements the dancers take up space. They shift the focus away from their body and its details towards external perception. They let their movement language work. At times, a person has their solo moment before they dance together again a small choreography. Again, the usual picture is disturbed and visible to the viewers: There is no prescribed type of movement, every body can and may try something new.
The mental state can affect our body, especially our posture. Conversely, our posture can also influence our psyche and evoke certain emotions.
The official performance ends after 25 minutes, but now the great fun begins: The moving aftermath. The children are invited to look at the stage room and explore it together with the dancers. Many children take their parents with them for safety, almost all of them accept the offer. First of all, it's about getting to know the stage. How does the floor feel? What is it like to sit under the lights? Then the research begins on your own body. The children explore their hands in fast, leisurely, large and small-scale movements. The circle is broken open, the children meet each other in the room and start experimenting and trying out themselves. After the energetically charged dance performance, they are finally allowed to dance and move. They use the tarpaulins to test for themselves what it's like to move and stage body parts in isolation. They dance together with others and observe where body boundaries merge and break open. How much closeness and how much space do I need myself and how much my counterpart?
After ten minutes, the two dancers encourage you to break the habitual habit of movement and try out jagged, angular, delimiting and proud movements. Some children are guided by the offer, others have already dived into their own world of movement.
The performance impresses with its connectivity. No language skills are required to understand the stage. You can also participate in the add-on time without any prior knowledge. In addition, the play encourages imitation and experimentation in the theatre. This is especially good for children – even if they cannot concentrate for a very long time or have a strong urge to move – because it gives them the opportunity to combine the theatre experience with the feeling of after-time.
This work and the follow-up time stimulate unknown or perhaps rarely tried-and-tested movement patterns. Since it also explicitly draws attention to fast and delimiting or proud postures and movements, this performance offers the opportunity to try out similar movements and experiment with them. It can be helpful, especially in this playful context, to try out how proud, jagged and delimiting movements feel and try them out on a trial basis. In addition, it is made possible to experience what it is like to be on stage and to be in the spotlight. Children get the opportunity to explore their bodies in new ways and in encounters with other bodies.
A father says to his daughter: ‘This was not a puppet show.’ The girl shakes her head: ‘No, that was theatre!’
