Danced philosophy

Choreography. Henrietta Horn’s new piece “Freigang” opens to enthusiastic applause at Pact Zollverein. A reflection on freedom and its limits.

NRZ-Essen, May 14, 2007
Dagmar Schenk-Güllich

Once more, Henrietta Horn surprises us with an unusual dance piece. The choreographer presented the premiere of “Freigang” with her company within the context of the “tanz nrw 07” festival. Music sets the tone at Pact Zollverein, music for her is the impulse giver - not just for the rhythm but also for the invention of movements. She shows how the dancers incorporate the sounds, achieving a new dance vocabulary in the process which - so varied, so new - fascinates from dance to dance. Her choreographies follow a primarily musical dramaturgy. This time, Henrietta Horn collaborates with composer, performer and improviser Jens Thomas, who drew his melodious, melancholic lines in head voice, who boomed into the grand piano, pulled strings, set the rhythm, beat and dynamics, pulling many a sparkling impromptu solo with the dancers out of his hat.

Communication as the time base
Communication, reacting to the partner’s most subtle physical signals, became the time base for gripping escalations. “Freigang” is a piece which deals with the creative tensions between total freedom and fixed structures, as Henrietta Horn describes it. “Freigang” is the freedom of spontaneous inspiration in a predefined space.

The space, that’s a stage scattered with sofas, armchairs, stools, table lamps and the grand piano. It’s the setting of a bourgeois living room in which the less-than-bourgeois action unfolds. This is where the agile dancers perform - including Henrietta Horn.
The game starts with a dialogue of lamps being switched on and off. Then the music sets in and the interaction between dance and music is on its way. The dancers loll around, lurch on the floor, two young women meet in an enchanting pas de deux, later all of them, driven by an implacable rhythm, leap into the cone of light, romping, performing acrobatic leaps and pirouettes in the air, driven through the space. One of the dancers launches into a complaint, but this is not to be taken too seriously, because Henrietta Horn’s pieces are full of tongue-in-cheek humour. The quiet passages take us into the “lowest depths”, but the “highest peaks” are never far away. Thus the spectator is guided through an opus which manages to go straight to the heart of feeling and thinking. It is actually a philosophical piece and yet it is dance above all, a wonderful kind of dance which was rapturously received.

Without it all

The Folkwang Tanzstudio practices “Freigang”

K-West, June 2007
Melanie Suchy

Not knowing the next step is embarrassing when one dances a choreographed piece. Isn’t it pure bliss then if no movements are prescribed, if instead there is only the freedom to take a step here or there or not at all? Improvisation on stage: precious discoveries, getting stuck in routines, the lust and horror of having to take decisions and not knowing what your counterpart’s response will be. With its new project “Freigang”, which premiered at PACT Zollverein, the Folkwang Tanzstudio once more enters uncharted territory. Outside the prison of a choreographic dictate (the merry implication of the title), every performance will therefore be different.
Watching one musician, Jens Thomas, and eight dancers producing - and not too slowly, either - movement thoughts while dancing is an exciting thing. Thomas, as the audience quickly realises, is the grand sovereign: he sings, makes the stringy bowels of his open grand piano whine and ring, charms percussion rhythms out of the wood and his musician’s body, songs out of the piano keys; and he can shake himself like a dancer. Henrietta Horn, too, the director of this company of professionals, joins in lightly and with small, angular curiosities. The art here is to be whimsical, not pleasing. Any dancer who takes a short respite from dancing rests attentively in a white armchair at the edge of the field. A basic structure of the action and its participants is prescribed; this day release is not a wild cross-country run but follows paths and squares, while the improvisers pleasingly obey the rule: do not swarm! They reduce to a single plot, united with sound and silence.

… The dialogues especially are superbly achieved, embarking on an unknown road while truly listening - ears, bodies -, letting themselves be guided by perception, without fear, without ambition. Amazing! It works after all. More of this!

Whizz-kid drives dancers

Daring piano player Jens Thomas moves on choreographer Henrietta Horn’s dance floor
Guest performance “Freigang” convinces by its interaction of whirling movement and musical ecstasy

WAZ Bochum, May 21, 2007
Werner Streletz

… Everyday gestures are defamiliarized by means of choreography; dancers taking measured steps form different tableaux - almost non-dramatic action. Like the calm before the storm. Later, Thomas - tempered differently - will work his grand piano, sometimes the traditional way by pressing the black and white keys; sometimes by drumming on the bare strings or the wooden body of the piano with his flat hands, growing more and more hectic - almost rock’n’roll. Jens Thomas adds squeaky sounds, fragments of words to support this rhythmic thunderstorm.
A furious whirl which is communicated accurately to the dancers who leap into the centre of the stage to execute ever new movement sequences, downright uninhibited, the wild performances in their sweeping dynamics escalating, losing all restraint, almost falling over themselves: an ecstasy of music and dance from which the musician and the company awake visibly exhausted. Even Jens Thomas needs a sip from his plastic bottle after this.

The passage where Thomas teaches a dancer who seems to fly into a sudden rage how, in order to achieve inner calm, he can create an amazing percussion instrument with the simplest means - just his voice and the cap of a water bottle - is enchanting. Everything can be music - and everything dance. Perhaps we can interpret this as a kind of “day release” from the constraints that surround us most of the time. “Freigang”, too, proves that artistic director Goerden’s decision to re-establish a slot for dance theatre at the Schauspielhaus with Henrietta Horn and her company was right.

WAZ, May 14, 2007
Sonja Mersch
… Then the delightful contact improvisation of two female dancers in the twilight - the exact opposite of the preceding scene: the dancers touch each other slowly and very gently, lift up each other, entwine their bodies and communicate a feeling of intense closeness. Thomas accompanies the performance with harmonious sounds and finishes with an emotional song containing the fitting line “how connected we are”. This clearly spoke to the audience who celebrated the opening night with storms of applause and minutes of enthusiastic stamping.