Impromptus

»Not one who understands another’s pain and not one who understands another’s joy! We always believe we are coming closer and all we ever do is walk alongside each other. What torment to recognize this!«
Franz Schubert, Tagebuchaufzeichnung

Franz Schubert’s late Impromptus and Lieder provide the basis for Sasha Waltz’s first full-length choreography using classical music. Her response to the richness of the composer’s imagery comes through choreographic drawing in the space: the dancers meet in an atmosphere which is intimate, emotionally charged and yet abstract. Three duets, performed in contrast to the dense group scenes, form the centrepiece of the evening. The emotion – touched upon by the music – of a sublimated, unfulfilled longing for happiness and harmony runs through the formally defined choreography, as does Schubert’s recurring motif of the Wanderer, who as an image of the creative personality is damned to homelessness and loneliness. The choreographer and her seven dancers use the greatest possible simplicity and clarity to develop powerful metaphorical imagery which both links them to and radically separates them from Schubert’s musical sensibility.