2023-07-23 12:00:46
“Blessed” by Meg Stuart has lost none of its topicality even after 16 years.
The City of Vienna has awarded Karl Regensburger a Rathausmann. The impulse dance impresario has more than earned it. For 40 years he has been running a festival that floods the city every summer with a diverse, open-minded clientele. Contemporary dance, which is still underestimated as an art form, keeps producing visionaries and succeeds in stimulating discourse without biting the leg. All the more urgent for that.
On Saturday it was Meg Stuart’s turn to read the riot act to the audience with “Blessed” (24 July, Hall G) from 2007. “You are a predator,” Francisco Camacho sprayed on the wall of his cardboard house in his grandiose, unsparing portrayal. It’s already close to collapsing. The constant rain destroys everything: his cardboard palm tree, the cardboard swan, all illusions, his entire pseudo-paradise that offers no protection against nature that has gotten out of joint.
Inspired by Hurricane Katrina
Doris Dziersk came up with the idea for a stage set made of cardboard, which is constantly rained down by the sprinkler system until it almost dissolves, after a stay in Latin America, where people often live in precarious, makeshift dwellings. Then came Hurricane Katrina in 2006.
The storm destroyed New Orleans and Meg Stuart’s belief in the structures of civilization. Because they couldn’t stop nature from destroying everything. And even the expected help failed. Many lost everything. Stuart cast that into choreography bespoke Francisco Camacho in Blessed. Even 16 years after the premiere, this piece is still very contemporary.
Stuart doesn’t let the audience get away with it
The images are also familiar from the current news: houses destroyed by the storm, broken palm trees, people wading through the floodwaters. Stuart doesn’t let the audience get away with it, but challenges them to take responsibility. Because if you’re still sitting comfortably in your little house today, you can be crawling on all fours like Camacho across the garbage dump of your belongings tomorrow.
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#Dance #debris #illusions