impressum – vaya

Multiple-Limbed Beings and Cephalopods

“A Pebble Falling on a Silent Lake” is the title of the current dance production of the Freiburg-based Company VAYA. Watching it in E-Werk theatre you just can´t stop being amazed.

The stage of the practically sold-out theatre presents itself like a futuristic lab: covered in white dance flooring up to the ceiling, illuminated in a cold light; a spot from above first creates a growing circle, then a shining ring (stage and light design: Steffen Melch). A dancer twirls along its edge in powerful breakdance moves to bombastic electro sound, shirt and pants are off-white. A strong intro to the production of the Freiburg Company VAYA Art of Human Movement around choreographer Tina Halford – with funding from the city of Freiburg and the county of Baden-Württemberg – “A Pebble Falling on a Silent Lake” its programmatic title. Unfortunately, the energy of the piece then decreases temporarily – Alexander de Vries, Matilde Casini, and Tina Halford walk forward and backwards in a circle with lots of eye contact, move along an imaginary axis in a synchronic and self-forgetful round dance. The young composer Iksander Yerimbetov from Kasakhstan accompanies with a poetic classical mix. But then things really take off: There are cascades of acrobatic movement loops around gravity and centrifugal forces; as a spectator you watch yourself dizzy and cannot stop being amazed, being catapulted almost meditatively into the moment: head over heels and around the waist they spin each other in complex lifts, quick as a flash they roll down shoulders and backs of the others, are being caught, and leveraged again, turn cartwheels and flick flacks, rotate with crossed arms like wind wheels, swing on hands and feet in cogwheel-like entanglements. Fantastic. And not without danger. Action and reaction combine into an exploding chain reaction inside an imaginary petri dish. The light changes again and again from white to blue or yellow-pink, together with the music, it marks diverse atmospheres and dynamics. The composition by Yerimbetov (funded by the Goethe Institute) creates magic moments but also frequently fades into softened elevator background music. Also, there are various choreographic redundancies – but they do not disrupt the flow, on the contrary. Incredibly powerful, present, exact and yet with great ease and suppleness, the three dance their endless cycle of encounters and contact in vertical space, they jump and throw themselves into ever new collective actions, in a flash they mutate into multiple-limbed beings and cephalopods, into a flying Laocoon group. Standing ovations for a fantastic achievement and choreography.