Alain Platel

In tauberbach, a collaboration with Munich’s Kammerspiele, the Belgian director continues his research on the concept of »bastard-dance«: movements that emerge when dancers investigate the regions of their consciousness that are as yet untouched by civilisation.One day, Alain Platel came across a CD that contained the soundtrack to a video project by Artur Żmijewski. The Polish artist and former director of the Berlin Biennale had invited a chorus made up of deaf people to sing Bach as they might imagine his music. Anyone listening to the result without knowing the background of how it came to be would be struck with a mixture of embarrassment, discomfort, and the urge to laugh. Alain Platel discovered the beauty in this cacophony for himself. He is fascinated by what is usually perceived as ugly, abnormal, dissonant, and described as a sickness or a symptom. Alain Platel wants to put people in a position to see and hear differently.»tauberbach« is not a play in the conventional sense. But there are characters, or better: identities, beings, creatures. One of them even has a name: Estamira. She is a real, existing woman with schizophrenia, who lives on a rubbish heap in Brazil. People like her no longer possess any language, but they do seek control and balance in their own way. The character, inspired by Estamira, is played by actress Elsie de Brauw. Together with five dancers and the music directed by Steven Prengels an otherworldly universe on stage is created. Short sentences and jerky movements produce vague relations to a civilisation that has fallen out of time. This might seem like a pessimistic viewpoint on this evening, but it could just as well be a promise for the future.Invited to Theatertreffen Berlin 2014.