COMMON GROUND

Understanding common requirements is part of the nature of artistic work. From there on progress can be made and new work created. The three choreographers whose works form the Common Ground performance share a connection with the Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) in The Hague. Along with a shared artistic conviction, in which humour also has its place, their choreographies are interwoven with connections filled with subtle content – and all of them have had world premieres at the NDT. The first two are inspired by music for string quartet. And the first and third pieces are each based in their own way on the concept of seduction.

In Alexander Ekman’s 2010 choreography, Cacti, the mechanisms of the cultural sector are taken to the test station. The question as to whether precisely in the area of art critique the woods sometimes perhaps can no longer be seen for the trees is posed with plenty of humour and the use of a speaking voice. In Cacti Ekman also turns the members of a string quartet into equal footing players on the stage alongside the dancers.

For IMPASSE (2020) Johan Inger was guided by the idea of how we can find ourselves in a very specific spatial situation of hopelessness, and that also in the figurative sense as a society. How much we should stay true to ourselves in such a situation, how much we can be seduced by different life plans – Inger negotiates it all in poetic, and sometimes even bizarre images.

Jiří Kylián's piece Bella Figura (1995) sends nine dancers on a ‘journey through time, space and light,’ as the choreographer put it. Through the dance movements of nine dancers set to music from the Baroque period, concepts such as beauty and vulnerability are explored. It also raises the question of whether there can ever be a clearly defined performance, or whether we are actually ‘performing’ our entire lives.

An initially seemingly innocent object such as a cactus can take on immense importance, if it is simply described verbosely enough. Alexander Ekman presents this on the stage with 27 cacti, also cacti in Latin, and with other bizarre means also scrutinises the conventions of the art sector and above all the speaking and writing about artistic products. There is much to laugh about in this piece, not just because of the theatrical situations in motion, but rather also because of the merging of text, music and movement.

Impasse in French also means something like “dead end”. In a spatially corresponding stage situation Johan Inger explores how people react to the dawning of new facts, how they approach other people who have previously gone through life in an entirely different way to themselves. To energetic and multifaceted music from the pen of Ibrahim Maalouf and Amos Ben-Tal, Inger strings together episodes, which despite the basic hopelessness, are characterised by wit and above all by hope.

According to Jiří Kylián, Bella Figura is a "parable about the relativity of sensuality, beauty and aesthetics in general, and about how we encounter this phenomenon in our everyday lives. It is a journey through time and space that illuminates our dignity, but also our doubts. Finding beauty in a grimace – in an entanglement of the mind – or in a physical contortion. It is like trying to perform a balancing act on the umbilical cord."