Alan Lucien Øyen / Tanztheater Wuppertal: Neues Stück II. 01.09.2018, Volksbühne, Tanz im August, Berlin.
Who is harder than Pina Bausch to follow? An exciting but formidable task, surely, and, anyway, making things is hard, let’s not forget that. We can’t deny the beauty in those arms, the sheer presence she had, the ever perfect timing—we couldn’t stop watching the veterans, for everything they did, even nothing, was immense, but it was a pity to watch them do that, viz. nothing, to be just glorious in their own thick beauty and magnetic power, while dance hung sparsely as decoration, the text gave them little (in fact made it all rather foolish), and the music proved decidedly unhelpful in its unceasingly relentless nostalgia. Yiiiick. Investigating the loss of our (male) family members is not an uninteresting subject, but without any dramaturgy, without any reason for caring about that loss—happy memories, memorable lessons, moments of comfort, joy, surprise—we care not, and so sit, alone, for nearly four hours, in the dark, astonished in the wrong way.
sasha amaya 